Solve for These 7 Tensions to Reset Your Work Culture This Year
These seven tensions, along with corresponding probing questions, will allow leaders to best devise Culture 3.0 in the year ahead.
Originally published in Fast Company, January 2023
Entering 2023, leaders are actively thinking about the hopes they have for their organizations, and many are struggling to envision an ideal culture. They know COVID-19 irreversibly changed many workplace norms, but still need to see key behaviors emerge in order to realize their strategies going forward.
These leaders have the opportunity to borrow the best attributes from their legacy cultures, couple them with the flexible, empathetic practices they embraced during the heart of the pandemic, and create newer and stronger workplaces this year. But achieving Culture 3.0 requires them to be honest, thoughtful, and intentional about the behaviors that will work best.
David Eaton, FMG Leading
Leaders can actively shape new cultures by deeply considering their ideal norms and competencies. That said, they should set aside the idea that they can pick and choose from a menu of options. Rather, they must identify where their ideal culture lives across a series of defined dimensions or spectrums that add complexity to and create challenges for most organizations and industries. This difficult work helps leaders make deliberate, focused, and strategic choices about the behaviors that reflect their organizations’ values and will allow them to meet and exceed their goals.
Here are seven tensions, along with corresponding probing questions, that leaders can seek to resolve to best devise a Culture 3.0 in the year ahead.
POWER
The extent to which organizations operate authoritatively, with most decision-making happening at the top, versus empowering its employee base. Questions that provide insight on where organizations exist on the power spectrum include:
Who has power within the enterprise?
When did these power dynamics first form?
PERSPECTIVE
The focused attention senior leaders place on internal agendas, centralized processes/systems, and profit margins versus the influence felt by external stakeholders and other larger priorities including mission/purpose. Questions that help clarify organizational perspective include:
To what degree is the organization set in its ways?
How agile can it be in response to market forces?
CREATIVITY
The degree to which leaders prefer status quo and precedent ways of working versus their willingness to drive change through innovative approaches. Questions that reveal organizations’ ideal place on the creativity spectrum include:
How open are leaders to new ideas and challenges to the way things have traditionally been done, especially when they come from new hires and employees further down in the organization?
To what degree is the organization making major decisions through a historical lens?
TIME
The priority placed on short-term gains, like executing tasks in the most efficient manner possible, versus values like quality, respect, treatment of others, and long-term relationships. Questions that provide insight on how organizations prioritize time include:
How willing are leaders to delay short-term gratification for long-term gain?
How do they measure success over time?
INTERDEPENDENCE
The extent to which leaders opt to stay siloed versus encourage cross-functional interactions toward solutions that support enterprise goals. Questions that help clarify organizational interdependence include:
To what extent do leaders maintain control over decision-making and/or choose to prioritize budgets that primarily help their individual agendas?
How much do teams focus solely on their individual lanes versus stay involved with the entirety of the enterprise?
COMMUNICATIONS
The preference by leaders to be guarded in how much information they share with their direct reports versus embracing a more transparent approach and a climate where courageous conversations can occur to strengthen relationships and performance/results. Questions that reveal an organization’s ideal place on the communications spectrum include:
How open and transparent are leaders with information, especially bad news?
How willing are leaders to build better solutions through dialogue and debate, even if it feels confrontational at times?
INCLUSION
The degree to which organizations form teams with the same like-minded individuals versus fostering a climate where diverse-by-design teams form and the leaders of those teams create a safe climate to benefit from all ideas. Questions that provide insight on inclusion include:
How flexible are leaders with their styles of managing teams?
How important is it to the organization to welcome diverse perspectives?
Of course, after organizations go through such cultural assessment exercises, they have to do the more difficult work of advancing real cultural change. When done well, this process encompasses interviews, focus groups, examination of historical records, and even “walkabouts” during which senior leaders take on the role of corporate anthropologists, examining their own organization’s DNA.
“Companies that aren’t intentional, strategic, and diligent about culture-building will inevitably see norms emerge organically—behaviors that do not necessarily reflect an organization’s strategic priorities or values.”
From there, a timeline comes together. After 30 days, senior leaders hand over their data to a diverse-by-design, cross-functional “culture squad” that begins to define desired behaviors against a discreet set of competencies.
At 60 days, they begin pulling the competencies through key systems and practices, including recruiting, talent development, performance management, and decision-making processes.
And at 90 days, they cascade the new culture through the entire enterprise using a clear and effective change management roadmap as well as a robust communications plan to help the organization embrace and practice the new culture on a daily basis.
Admittedly, it is a lengthy process and requires that leaders clearly communicate the importance of these exercises and give employees the space to participate in them fully, setting aside their to-do lists, regardless of other institutional priorities.
But is also extremely necessary. Companies that aren’t intentional, strategic, and diligent about culture-building will inevitably see norms emerge organically—behaviors that do not necessarily reflect an organization’s strategic priorities or values. More often than not, these accidental cultures will make it more challenging for companies and teams to live up to their potential, creating unnecessary hurdles to clear.
The beauty of taking the first step—identifying cultural ideals across a set of seven dimensions—is that it offers a place to start and delivers key data from which additional efforts can emerge. It makes the exercise a worthwhile New Year’s resolution, paving the way for leaders to begin revealing and realizing their ideal culture in the coming year.
David Eaton is a Principal at human capital advisory firm FMG Leading.