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Book Review-Developing a Positive Culture where People and Performance Thrive

Developing a Positive Culture where People and Performance Thrive

By: Marcella Bremer

Motivational Press, 2018

 

Many times, managers or organizational consultants, Change or Development, forget the “O” part of their role. Marcella’s book, Developing a Positive Culture where People and Performance Thrive, puts us squarely back on target. So, what is the culture and how is it serving the overall objectives of the organization?  Marcella want us to seek out, understand and embed the value culture has to an organization as a key critical success factor, to the efforts of employees, consultants, and all stakeholders.

Also she helps us seek, in her book, not just any culture. We should strive for a positive one.

Providing us methods, tools, approaches, Marcella encourages us to apply both the Competing Values Framework to assess change and the wonderful positive work of Seligmann and Cameron to asses and build. She also provides a free workbook to support the planning and execution of her recommendations.

She reminds us that we have to be the change and provides questions for our personal and organizational consideration. She also applies Ken Wilber’s work on Integral Thinking and Beck & Cowan’s work on Spiral Dynamics, for example,  providing useful lenses and tools for assessment and intervention. I look forward to book 2.

 

Seymour Hersh

Marcella’s site:    www.positive-culture.com

 

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Trust is one very key enabler to success

Executing Organizational Change is neither simplistic nor easy. It requires we, as practitioners, not assume success. Whether the change is at the individual, group, department or enterprise level, no matter what the change is, there is always an underpinning of empathy and observation we must maintain as we address the health of the organization.

One of my clients asked that I build a Change Management strategy and plan, for a new product rollout that had been in the works for a while. Just build the plan. It should be straight forward.

As I attended various team meetings, as part of my engagement assessment, I found a whole new story. Teams and individuals talked freely and secretly to me about miscommunication between themselves and the senior executive team, and mis-direction between middle management and the teams on the ground. Digging deeper the level of trust between employees and management (their words) was very low due to the many mis-steps made by the executive team through, for example, a lack of effective, consistent and professional delegation and communication.

A lack of trust is bred as employees begin to see a lack of fairness and justice in the workplace based on their expectations and their realities. This lack of trust raises a number of concerns, for example:

.increases conflict among employees

.decreases engagement, loyalty, productivity and quality of work

In my little story I stopped my planning and worked with the organization to execute programs to improve trust, before, they started effecting change.

Some of many actions included:

.Improved communication at all levels – encouraging transparency and two way dialogue

.Ensured open policy and procedures were available to manage disputes thru facilitation, coaching and mediation

.Identified and modified the organizational process touchpoints ( from initial talent scouting, hiring and beyond) to ensure consistent messaging on engagement, leadership, communication and dialogue among all employees

With those actions in the works, my impossible mission became possible, though, admittedly, still not easy. Trust is critical.

Seymour Hersh

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Listen to your people – One thing we can learn from the US election

Through this election what can we learn, from an organizational perspective? One clear point is to know your employees. Trump appears to have taken advantage of a simmering thread sewn throughout the fabric that is the United States. Few identified that thread or its need to be addressed.

Organizationally it begs the question: How well do you know your organization? What do your employees think and feel? Is there alignment, dissonance or what? Is there a thread you have not addressed that can impact meeting objectives?

The simple ask is to talk to them! The harder task and more important, listen to them, hear them and engage them. Too often senior executives think they have their thumb on the pulse only to find out the negative after an attempted new product / service launch or other change fails. And that lack of success is very costly to organizational energy &performance, competitiveness and stakeholder value.

Surprised election pollsters complained that people often lied about their voting preferences when surveyed so pollsters allotted some numeric quantity to take this “problem” into consideration. For organizations it is about sustaining a dialogue and an underlying level of trust in the ability of senior management and the organization as whole to execute with alignment.

I have served organizations that from start-up to one’s with a history of over 100 years. The reality is our level of active, honest, transparent and active dialogue is lacking.

On line surveys and assessments are nice as one of the sources of data to glean insight. Streamed videos for the large and vastly disbursed as a start to talking is just a start, not an end. And assuming employee’s managers communicate consistently what they heard from their managers (and so on), this communication is also a start as well.

As opposed to 330 million people, organizations have a smaller and more manageable task.
Get out there, meet and engage face to face. Do it way more than once, do it deeply, meaningfully, with clear measurable objectives and very clear communications messages and engagement plans. Else you too may lose to a not so silent thread.

Posted on by shersh

Before you start, stop! – change readiness

Before you start, stop!
Those first few steps of change

If culture eats strategy then speed and hubris in organizational change, kills culture.

Ignoring culture, its characteristics and responses, will doom the project to repeat past transgressions. This is a fundamental history lesson. But this is only the first lesson of readiness.

The term organizational readiness refers to that very early part of the change process where organizations self-assess their ability to effect change successfully well before project start. The organization can continue applying this assessment over time as one way to measure project direction.

The second lesson is first building your business case for change. This business case, respecting culture, sets the foundation for moving forward, measures readiness and sets the foundation for success metrics.

Ignoring these two basics, and just jumping in and executing, sets the stage for project failure and cultural/organizational resistance.

This resistance, to culture and business case, is fertile ground and it will eat and kill what treads upon it. The final result being an environment without the organizational energy to change, serving as a red flag for future growth.

The organizational drivers for this hubris-like attitude can stem from the culture itself, and/or from the leadership personality of the sponsors as they respond to the stress/inexperience from within themselves, shareholders, regulating stakeholders and/or competitive market pressures. Leadership has a tempo to it, all its own, that feeds or ignores the basics.

The longer you wait to implement the basics the greater the successful project cost and the sharper the cultural pain, with less guarantee of any percentage of success.

Do we wait and do nothing? Do we analyze ourselves into paralysis? Of course not!

As leaders your role is to pragmatically act with intention, and voice your empowered position at the outset. Demonstrate the value of the basics, influence and then execute the first steps as best you can. If need be, constantly measure with awareness if you cannot do it all up front. This will at least mitigate some of the organizational, cultural and project risks.

Posted on by shersh

Inequality – A Broad Global Step Blog Action Day October 16, 2014

Inequality is a bully. It is a yoke on the shoulders of humanity, that is 20,000 years old and a milli-second young. It hurts.

It is a conflict that kills the young, and decimates cities. It enables global rifts and skewed self-perceptions manipulating benefits of “the one” over “the other”.

Inequality, through a minority of lenses, is also a motivator, encouraging the reach and span of individuals. These are individuals who can think critically, and independently, globally, on their own two feet. These are individuals that take the open risk of dialogue and debate with an ear to learning. Extending beyond the individual though, we are subject to the madness of crowds, where there is no “we” in inequality, only “i”, the “other”.

Transforming “i” to” “we” using external influence is difficult. The “i” must share itself with the “other”, breaking into two elements, so that each element can together be flexed, angled and curved to form a “we”. Does the “i” have the strength and will power, stamina and flexibility, to achieve this sharing? Is the “i” too old and rusty to show the empathy required? Is the “i” independent enough?

Political, social, economic and geographic arguments be damned. We, individually and together, must tap into a source of optimism, and willful intent to create movement to overcome the inequality of thinking/doing that hurts. It does require risk and it is not of sesame street immediacy.

Every continent is in turmoil.

Creating and leading a spirit of openness and intention that makes economic sense is a start.
Can we cost justify this approach and prove country by country, a quantitative return on investment so they buy in? The first answer is yes. The second is sadly, but. Will they listen, accept, understand and act?

Putting the world on a psychologist’s couch, what would you see? Can you the reader, sit back, with unbiased intention and listen to the world’s issues, and hear its cries? Do we have global methods and structures to understand and empathize, assess, counsel, cause action, lessen fear and measure results? Can we use power to leverage the realization and execution of these methods?

We are so locked in, we cannot see outside our old, comfortable, history laden boxes. We are in pain and fear, placating ourselves by washing the old walls.

As we absorb the external economic revolutions, we must finally invest in and pay attention to the education of our inner selves, starting with ourselves and definitely our children. Fostering global education, spanning knowledge and skills, coupled with self-awareness, new metrics and our place on the globe, is an objective. Can we use new measures for each other, which, like gross domestic product, serve as accepted yardsticks of achievement?

We have the technology. Do we have the will? When will we have it? Now.

There are still children/youth, if not adults as well, who only know of their personal surroundings. They are locked into the “i”. Who in this world is being educated based on narrow focused tenets that enable the “i”? Too many, yielding, too much inequality. Instead of a security council, reverse the model, and have an achievement council.

The World Bank (http://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-monitoring-report , October 2014) suggests two goals :
• Essentially end extreme poverty, by reducing the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to less than 3 percent of the global population by 2030
• Promote shared prosperity by improving the living standards of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country

Unless we raise the level of required education (approach, content, global context, delivery, measurement) of our children/youth, globally we will be hard pressed to reach these goals.

The real impact comes when we seed the sense of curiosity, openness, action and acceptance, in our children, all our children, everywhere. No fear, No hurt, Just collective reach to exceed beyond our walled bounds, together. There is no right or wrong here. There is a collective measurable agreement based on global principles of, such as, acceptance or inclusion or respect.

Let us seed the contents and messages globally and enable a new world order. Not a wave but a seed. Yes, seed! This is a farming task not one of hunting.

Far from the external industrial revolutions of the engine, or light and power, or technology and the web, we must focus our efforts to develop inward to better manage and lead outward.

Seymour Hersh
Seymour@dynamic-dialogues.ca

Posted on by shersh

Don’t forget to change your underwear

Some people in organizations feel forgotten, taken for granted, sat upon, kept in the dark. overworked , overused, not refreshed!

Well the metaphor can work! and now that I have your attention!

Note to Project & Program Managers and their Sponsors:

When Starting a project – Include Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategies, methods, processes, techniques.
OCM is the glue that deeply connects all levels of your organization to meet and exceed project objectives.

Project managers and their sponsors curiously complain, after implementation, about the lack of adoption of their objective. So much for project success! And that is because the majority of projects lack the integration of Organizational Change (OC) in their planning.

Before you even start, integrate OC . The later you wait, the steeper and more precarious the voyage to acceptance.

Managers: Here are some phrases that may stand for BRIGHT RED FLAGS and I hope will remind you to include OC or to at least contact me:

Well I asked them once and am still waiting
When I was doing this job I did not need anything
Let’s develop this now and ask them after
Ahh, they’ll just do what I tell them to do
Hey, we know this best, right?
What do they know about our product?
It’ s too complicated to involve others
They are too busy to involve them
I don’t want to spend the money
In my day we just did it and sucked it up
We are the bigger department. Right?

share more phrases!

Seymour

Posted on by shersh

Introducing new technology standards is Not About introducing new technology standards!

“Dear Chief Technology Officer(s),

It has come to my attention that, in our wonderful company,  you want to introduce some new standards.  I hear they may include things like a PMO ( Project Management Office), risk management, a SDLC ( services or systems delivery life cycle process), business analysis processes and quality audits.

How nice.

Over lunch with my friends from networks, business architecture, and project management ( et al) ,  we smiled at the news and of course wish you luck.”

Does this sound familiar?

To really net this out,  the essence of the story is that introducing a new technology / process/ standard… is really about Effecting Change in an organization. This simple truism applies whether you are a Bank, Manufacturer, Consultant, Retailer. The second truism is that this is hard work. The third truism is that effecting positive change is valuable, exciting, gratifying and has the potential to act as “organizational glue”.

Before you write that email or send that missive, stop, step back, get out of your office and involve the organization or empower someone who can.  Maybe next time, you’ll be at that lunch too.

Posted on by shersh

WANT A JOB? – JUST HAND-OVER THE CASH!—NOT!!!!!

For those of you who are hiring or want to hire a firm to find YOU a job ( guaranteed?)   STOP .

I have read too many sad articles reporting on the fate of the unemployed paying out thousands of dollars to firms “promising” to find them jobs.  And, of course, the promise never comes true. For example, Rewriting a resume for you and sending you out to do cold calling is not a  service  of value. We need to refocus on ourselves and reposition. are we getting value??    and you say  YAH, RIGHT!!!!!!    I do not have a magic bullet, no one person does!   Remember that…

So,   what is going on with you?  ( I’ll exclude 4 letter words in this blog. You can add them as you read)

You are out of a job. In this world of ours the resulting pressures are immense and create/drive emotions in ourselves like:

.Pressure to do something –

.Anxiety about money, family, self respect, ego, physical-mental-spiritual health

.Anxiety about achieving our expectations of ourselves, and maybe meeting the perceived expectations  others have of us

.Anger at others, disbelief, sadness, self recrimination,

.Anxiety over the morass of data and information that impales us, adding to our challenge of next step decsions

.Frustration over the coldness of the job search process and the realization that the relationships you have may not be as warm as you thought

Given all of this, and more I am sure, we are all open to anything and sometimes  relent to others suggestions.  In some ways, for a short time, we even feel better that someone else will solve our problem. No matter what it costs.    The weight comes off our shoulders, for a second, minute, day , week. Feels good. But no answer.

We forget, as everyone and everything around us each looses its head,  how strong each of us can be in facing this job search. We are a resilient race, we humans…

So when that phone call offering you nirvana, please , please stop, and don’t give any  answers. Hang up.

Take a deep breadth, and count to ten. (This advice has been around for thousands of years, and still works..)

And start having a dialogue with yourself ( and write down the answers).

At this point the “Yah, RIGHT” people and over-wrought Type As people  stop reading or listening and run off in all directions.

For the rest of you:

You are your job search – No one else can ultimately do the job for you. In the end, when you get a job, it is You who will be sitting at that desk, or talking on that phone or serving  that customer.  Just you.  No one else.

And if at this point you say, I don’t care about this stuff I just want a job. C’mon!!!!!

Remember If you don’t know where you are going, nobody else will.

Remember too, that when you are really frustrated, you are like a fish on a hook. The more you struggle, the deeper the hook penetrates.  Please stop, rethink and regain control. In this case, you can get off that hook!

Some simple starting questions I like to  ask

.Do you have a written detailed and specific plan ( not in your head) for your job search? Do you have a written career plan and a go to market strategy?  Have you created your foundation resume based on you career?

Without these documents you may not be in control of yourself and thus can be at the mercy of others.

I am a believer of human resiliency. I believe each and every one of you can build and execute a plan. I believe that the thousands you may want to spend on someone else, is much better invested in you, ( intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically).  Start planning, so you start doing!

more later….