Not only is meaningful, sustainable cultural change possible in the workplace, but it's also something that can be mapped and measured.
In this episode of Building Better Cultures, Karen Jones spells out the many elements of the gold standard diagnostic model she deploys as a Managing Director at Denison Consulting. The inquiry starts with a survey of 12 key cultural measures, but those results are not an endpoint. On the contrary, they are meant as a starting place for critical conversations about what's working within a workplace culture – and what most clearly is not.
The kind of diagnostic consulting that Karen does depends on tremendous buy-in. While her initial point of entry is most often through Human Resources, the work can't fully succeed unless support comes from the top echelons of leadership. That ownership and willingness to be accountable are what fosters the atmosphere of trust required for employees throughout the ranks. The Denison process depends on candid, vulnerable feedback from team members at every level of the enterprise and, says Karen, that will never happen if they don't feel safe to speak out.
And once they do share thoughts? It's on corporate leadership to take real, meaningful steps towards adopting solutions. Failure to put evident muscle behind the outcome of a cultural survey will only leave employees dispirited, if not cynical, about the entire process.
Learn how high-performance culture can go to the next level when a concrete methodology, open communication and leadership integrity converge. It's a conversation timelier and more important than ever for companies adapting to today's quickly evolving hybrid workplace.
An overview of Denison's model is available here along with other resources
To learn more about the Building Better Cultures podcast and related services, visit www.BuildingBetterCultures.com. You can also find out more about Scott's coaching and consultancy by visiting Inspiring Change's website.
If you're struggling with communications, especially within the context of the hybrid workplace, click here to explore Workvivo, a collaboration platform that offers seamless digital integration.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The path through medicine, psychology and research ultimately brought Karen to where she is today, working as a coach and expert on organisational culture.
- Karen believes culture isn't something that can be summed up quickly, but that can – with the right tools – be measured and modeled. This requires balancing mission in the market and systems/processes to enable desired results.
- Diagnostic measures assess beliefs and assumptions that people are making in their organisational context – which originate from their own personal context.
- Throwing terms and affirmations up on a wall or into corporate literature will only breed cynicism if leadership has not committed to putting infrastructure and sustained support around those professed values.
- The very real impacts of having a toxic team member, even one who is highly successful, and at what point they must be asked to move on. And, if the employee is invited to leave, will leadership make clear that it was a values-based decision?
- Setting the Bar: Communicating values and systems in support of a high-performance culture will inspire specific conversation about the strengths and challenges to getting there.
- Culture is Business: It doesn't matter what strategies or innovations leadership tries to implement, it will fail if team members aren't fully bought in. Denison's focus is on ensuring adoption, which requires thoughtful strategic mapping.
- It's essential to establish an open climate of trust in which behaviors can be discussed and members of the enterprise at all levels feel safe to speak candidly about conditions on the ground.
- Culture most often sits with HR, but the owner should be the CEO along with the entire senior management team. If the effort is compartmentalized in HR, that's a red flag. It needs to be adopted from the top-down, bottom-up and everywhere in between.
- Karen's thoughts about the single most impactful thing that leaders can do today to improve their culture: Be curious. Ask your teams how they are feeling, what they need, what they don't have. Set clear expectations and stay open.
KEY QUOTES
"In order to really understand your current state of culture you have to have a mechanism that starts to elevate those beliefs and assumptions that are driving people's perceptions of the business."
"I believe people want to come to work to be their best. They get distracted when systems, processes or indeed people bring them down in motivation or emotionally or tap into fears."
"We have failed as a consulting firm if culture is a separate piece that people do when they have a bit of capacity. Knowing your culture, understanding, diagnosing, discussing it on a daily basis with your teams is really doing culture work."
"You can't create trust. Trust is an outcome of reliability, keeping promises."
"If we've done the strategy mapping, all the leaders understand their contribution to the culture. It's also the responsibility of every single person; every individual creates and impacts culture."
"We have the quantitative number on the measure but after diagnostics, for us, comes honest conversation. The number isn't the be-all, end-all. It's significant, but what really matters is teams sitting down and sharing the story (behind the numbers)."
"We like to assume we leave our emotions at the door when we go to work. We absolutely do not. We're human. It's about the being, not the doing."
"Sometimes leadership teams might need to do some work themselves before they're ready for this level of exposure."
ABOUT KAREN JONES
Karen works closely with clients and certified partners to turn what is often ambiguous and intangible into something energising and productive. She helps organisations define the high-performance culture they are seeking to create in order to drive their business results, through aligning people to their strategy and ensuring they are able to deliver the promises they make to their customers.
Working in the board room and the shop floor to align corporate culture and leadership climate, Karen aligns with teams to build their strategic clarity and create an environment that builds commitment.
Website: www.denisonconsulting.com Email: [email protected] @LinkedIn
ABOUT SCOTT MCINNESLearn more about Scott McInnes, founder and director of Inspiring Change, by clicking here.
ABOUT WORKVIVODiscover Workvivo, a workplace communication and engagement platform that offers seamless digital integration, please click here.
