Author: gothamCulture

How To Make Training More Impactful During Rapid Growth

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
training more impactful

Rapidly growing companies, startups or otherwise, are faced with a daunting challenge while they scale. Having the right growth strategy, hiring the right people in the right positions, and having a culture to support them are all crucial elements to sustainable growth.

You may already know that the balance between all of these elements is critical. But there is one component of strategy that is often overlooked in the scale-up discussion for small, growing businesses: Training.

Training as the Linchpin for Growth

Training is often considered a component of strategy, and is often discussed as part of the balance needed for growth. As your organization grows, you want and need a dynamic, well-trained workforce, and professional development becomes a strategic objective in the company’s overall planning. But there is a place for further–and dare I say more impactful–integration of strategy and training. That is, bringing a strategy component into training.

Integrating your company’s strategy into training ideally produces two key outcomes:

1. Alignment. Your workforce, managers and senior leaders are trained and get better understanding of how strategy works for the company.  This has a positive effect as change (vision, new objectives, etc) is managed across your rapidly growing organization.

Misalignment between culture and strategy can happen in many different ways. For example, if the culture and strategies don’t align, the organizational culture is one of creativity, new possibilities and collaboration, where the strategies are rigid, prescriptive and highly structured. Here, workforce has an opportunity to inform the strategies, helping leadership more effectively tailor the strategies around collaboration and not structure.

Another example exists in the case of an organizational culture that is non-existent or splintered.  There is no hope of aligning with said strategies, because the workforce can’t work effectively together. This provides the organization an opportunity to affect culture change through training, be it related to strategy, process, safety, and/or performance.

2. Input. Your workforce and leadership are provided an opportunity to actually INPUT into the strategic process. For instance, as they learn about vision setting or goal setting, they are brought through an exercise of coming up with goals they can support within the company. This ultimately creates greater buy-in for the entire strategic process. Which, in turn, leads to bottom line results.

Training can potentially act as a bridge to help prepare or refine the culture to understand and buy into the strategy more readily. Furthermore, by integrating strategy into training, real work gets accomplished, and it gives managers the opportunity to talk to their teams after the training, to keep it alive.

At gothamCulture, we talk about culture eating strategy for breakfast. Meaning, you can have all the right strategies in place, but if you don’t have the culture to support them, your best-laid plans go nowhere or mean nothing. Leadership, strategy and culture are inextricably linked, and training may be your untapped conduit for integrating these fundamental business components and help successfully scale your growing company.

What Does A Leadership Coach Really Do?

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags:
executive leadership coach

Guest Article Written By Kelly Meerbott

When your board of directors suggests you bring in a leadership coach to improve on some facet of the organization, How do you react?

If you’re like most CEOs, it might be, “Coach? Why do I need a coach? What’s wrong with me?”

Well, I’m here to tell you two things:

  1. There’s nothing wrong with you. We all need feedback because that’s how we progress.
  2. Coaches, especially leadership coaches, are brought in to help launch you to the next level; to develop high potential into high performance, and high performers into superior leaders. They are there to hold you accountable to the best version of yourself; not to fix what’s broken.

Here’s what you need to know about coaching.

Coaching: A Mindset Shift

Coaching has often been portrayed as a punitive or corrective tool to be used when circumstances have turned negative. However, in progressive companies coaching is considered to be a positive, proven method for helping executives explore their current goals and ambitions and achieve new or higher objectives.

When partnered with open and willing participants, the power of executive coaching is to:

  • accentuate your skills and abilities already in existence
  • boost performance with a more positive outlook and mindset
  • help identify and deal with issues, concerns, and challenges before they become unmanageable problems – on a personal and organizational level

The coaching and mentoring process is about shifting mindsets to see the possibilities, creating a plan, and taking consistent action to realize success once objectives are identified. The best practice approach is to observe and analyze the organization from a holistic point of view. Together, we look for positive, feasible, practical, and attainable improvements.

Even Coaches Need Coaches

After an unexpected layoff in 2009 I made the best decision of my life and professional career in hiring a business coach. The experience taught me firsthand about the transformative power of coaching and professional mentoring. With a great coach I was able to spin the negative events I was projecting onto myself as something happening for me, not to me. This mindset shift in myself–from victim to owner–was most powerful distinction I learned from my coach.

Steve Chandler, success coach & best-selling author of more than 29 books, noted, “Owners have an awareness of their own freedom of choice and they love to make and keep agreements. They own their spirit and energy and have a sense of personal responsibility and self-control. Victims are victims of circumstance who navigate their days based on their shifting feelings.”

The distinction between “owner” and “victim” shifted my primal level instinct from blaming others and things around me, to taking responsibility for my choices, helping to launch me to my next level in business and life.

Good coaches will do that. They change perceptions you have of yourself. In turn, those new perceptions change how you view the world around you. Simply put: “Change your thoughts; change your life (Wayne Dyer).”

You, Loud and Clear

One of my favorite examples from my work is when I was engaged to work with a COO in a medical organization. She had 49 direct staff reports responsible for operations, medical personnel supporting doctors during procedures. The COO’s department was responsible for 80% of the company’s $20M annual revenue. The business unit had become a revolving door (attrition at 59%). Morale was terrible. The culture of the department had evolved into a morass of negativity.

During our first coaching session, the COO sat across from me with her arms crossed in a closed off stance. I asked her, “What would you like to achieve during our work together?”

COO: I’d like to get to the bottom of why so many people are quitting. I’m doing everything I can. I don’t understand it. I reach out to them often, yet I get the sense that they’re afraid of me.

Kelly: Well you do appear to be quite angry.

COO: Really? I try not to be. (begins to cry) I’m going through a very tough divorce. My spouse is a violent alcoholic.

Kelly: Did you know, the more we try to hide our emotions, the more they show?

COO: (Calming down) I can see that.

(At this point, I sit in silence allowing the COO’s emotions to flow and giving emotional space. When they are ready, I ask a question.)

Kelly: When was the last time you had one-on-one conversations with your staff?

COO: It has been so busy that it’s been about 18 months.

Kelly: And aren’t your employees bonuses and salary increases based on quarterly evaluations?

COO: Yes.

Kelly: So what could you do to achieve the outcome you want?

COO: Start scheduling evaluations?

Kelly: That’s one option. Are you open to some coaching around this?

COO: Yes.

Kelly: How do you think it would affect your team if you had one-on-one conversations with them without an agenda? Allow them to come in ask one question and then listen.

COO: No agenda?

Kelly: No agenda.

COO: I could try it. What’s the one question?

Kelly: How are you?

COO: I think my staff would be surprised and shocked.

Kelly: Good. That’s what I was hoping for.

Together, we implemented a first round of meetings. It took two weeks to complete them, but morale demonstrably improved. The COO and I co-created a plan of action to complete all the employee evaluations in 90 days, which were completed in six weeks. By the end of the second quarter, attrition dropped to 17%, and by the end of the year the team brought in $5M more in annual revenue than budgeted.

The point? Although they seem to use similar techniques, coaches are not therapists, psychiatrists, and/or consultants. Executive coaches are creative partners that hold the mentee and associates accountable to be the best versions of themselves. The result? An evolution; a mindset shift: from good to great!

kelly meerbott - leadership coachKelly A. Meerbott  is  a  respected  thought  leader,  speaker  and  Leadership  Coach  to  C-suite  executives. In her  work  with  the C-Suite & senior  leaders,  Kelly  creates  personal  strategies  and  action  plans  to  help  implement  long-term,  positive,  behavior  change  for  themselves,  their  people  &  their  organizations. Find her on LinkedIn, Twitter, and her website.

Unshackling Silicon Valley From Its Golden Handcuffs

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
golden handcuffs

Silicon Valley is known for its buzzwords around corporate culture, having adopted (or been labeled with) such terms as “bro culture”, “work hard/play hard culture” and “culture of failure.” Startups that operate at breakneck speed, encouraging all-night hackathons and weekend work retreats, are often held up as shining examples for aspiring young entrepreneurs to follow on the road to success. But the reality is not quite so appealing for those who don’t fit into the strict tech mold, and who don’t buy into the assumption that the only way to succeed is to sell your soul.

Many startups unknowingly reinforce these types of behaviors as they work to keep up with the Joneses (or keep up with the Facebooks in this case). In Silicon Valley’s war for talent, benefits and perks in tech companies have reached a fever pitch, all in the spirit of encouraging employees to stay as close to the company campus for longer.

The “golden handcuffs” that tech companies use to lock down their talent—the beer in the break room, catered lunches and office yoga classes—are beginning to come under fire as tactics for these companies to attempt to squeeze extra hours (and hopefully, productivity) out of some of their most valuable resources; their people.

This is not the case for everyone, however. There are those in the industry who have been intentional about growing their companies in ways that seem to go against the crowd. One such company is npm, a venture-backed startup based in Oakland, CA with over 2.7 million developer users and several major enterprise customers including Wal-Mart, Blizzard, Docusign and Autodesk. The company eliminated catered lunches at the office in favor of company-sponsored outside lunches. Employees are encouraged to prioritize family, and discouraged from working extreme hours or weekends.

I recently had an opportunity to chat with npm’s CEO, Isaac Schlueter to learn about his personal challenges with the tech stereotypes and what he is doing to grow a successful tech startup by bucking the system. Here’s what he had to say:

CC- Tell readers a little bit about npm, what you do, and how you got started.

IS- Before npm, I worked for a handful of well-known software companies like Yahoo and saw a bunch of different approaches to managing a company’s culture over the years.

When I started npm in 2014, I wanted to make sure that we were very intentional about who we were and the way in which we would operate. Many of these values stemmed from my own personal values and, surprising to many, some of these ways of working are in direct misalignment with some of the typical tech startup stereotypes and assumptions about how to succeed.

CC- In your words, what are Silicon Valley’s “Golden Handcuffs”?

IS- Some see the typical benefits associated with tech companies as key in attracting and retaining talent. Others see them as ways to keep driving people toward productivity.

The term golden handcuffs bugs me because it holds several meanings. In one sense, it is defined purely in terms of financial compensation. At npm, we have a bonus-vesting program but we don’t want to provide that along with an expectation that people need to stay in the office for an unhealthy amount of time.

golden-handcuffsI once worked for a company (now out of business) that had catered lunches. But I rarely took part, as I prefer to get up and go outside to get lunch. It gives me a chance to take a mental break. It was against the norms of that culture, and people would often ask me if was okay (thinking that something obvious must be wrong with me to make me leave the office to take a break) whenever I left the office to get lunch. There, people would pile food on their plate and sit down to keep working. Catered lunches were supposed to help with productivity, but without taking a pause, these people tended to make worse decisions in the end.

This is a really hazardous situation with startups. There are always urgent things to deal with and you have to be able to make smart decisions about what urgent things you will prioritize and what you’ll have to live with letting slip by. The ability to think strategically is a matter of life and death and driving continuous, long hours increases the risk of making poor decisions, in my opinion.

CC- How, specifically, do you want the culture at npm to be different? And how are you and your team supporting these goals?

IS- One thing that we did to manage the pressure to work more was to establish an explicit no working on weekends or after-hours policy.

This is a clear set of guidelines about when people are expected to be working and not. Leaders have to live it and set the example for others to make it real for people. And when people do work late or over the weekend despite the policy, we give them feedback, acknowledge their efforts to go above and beyond and encourage them to take a day off the next week. How we as leaders react to behavior reinforces certain things in our company and we have to be ever mindful of that.

Second, our values play out in the day-to-day, which helps shape the culture. For example, we try not to talk over each other in meetings. We keep meetings small, and use a talking stick to help keep conversations inclusive. If more than five people are in attendance, we appoint a moderator to make sure everyone is heard.

This process of slowing down and getting all of the data helps with our decision-making quality and promotes a more grownup approach. It may take longer to make a decision up front, but I don’t want to work in a place where the person who beats their chest loudest is the only one who’s heard. It’s not good for quality decision-making.

Third, unlike many tech cultures, at npm we focus on processes and not people. What I mean by that is there’s not a lot of hero worship going on. We value our people but we focus our attention on refining our processes to help everyone shine, rather than rewarding individual efforts.

A final difference is that we don’t foster a culture where people need to drink with the boss in order to get ahead. I’m sure there are a few beers in the fridge in the break room but alcohol is not a centerpiece of our culture. We realize that there are highly experienced, professional tech workers out there who have families and active social lives outside of work and that many of these people are not interested in working in organizations where those types of behaviors are required to succeed.

We’ve been very intentional about saying that we are different in this way and, while it may prevent certain people from applying to work with us, we attract and retain those people who want what we have to offer.

CC- Why is it important to put your employees work-life balance at the forefront of your employee’s benefits?

IS- In almost any modern company, things have become so cheap that the biggest investment is usually in the people. As business owners, we often feel like we have to get the most out of them as possible. The fatal assumption most people make, however, is that working people harder and harder will yield better results. Unfortunately, more is not necessarily better. It’s counterintuitive, but in order to get the best out of your people you may want to stop driving so hard.

There are a huge variety of problems that stem from pushing these high intensity cultures. People make worse decisions, it drives a pressure to engage in less ethical behavior, etc. You’re now paying a premium for people who are giving you less than 100% in return.

CC- How has your culture at npm impacted your company’s performance?

It’s extremely difficult to measure software development performance. For example, measuring people’s performance based on the number of lines of code they produce just tells you who’s typing more; not who’s making good software.

When starting npm, I had an opportunity to be very methodical and deliberate about the culture and what we stand for. We looked at what we were and where we wanted to go, and realized that we didn’t need to rapidly spew out prototypes.

I stepped back and asked, “what kind of company do I want to work at?” I had observed in previous companies I’d worked at that better ideas were coming out of more introverted environments. Open bars and free lunches didn’t ever make me feel as good as doing great work and living a better and more fulfilling personal life outside of work.

But, the surprising thing is npm has moved faster than any other software team I’ve been a part of. It seems counterintuitive, but by having a strong foundation and clear expectations about how we will get our work done, it actually saves a ton of time in the end.

Hiring is easier here than any other job. npm has great brand recognition among developers. We have lives outside of work. There is a small, noisy minority who hates the idea, but the overwhelming majority of people in the industry are seeing the value and are very attracted to our culture. We see a high caliber of very diverse applicants applying all the time as a result. That breadth and depth of experience would be unattainable without actively supporting the work-life values that we have in our culture.

While there is certainly no shortage of deeply rooted beliefs and assumptions about how tech startups rise to glory, there also exists a subset of tech CEOs who are bucking the trends and stereotypes, intent on proving that there are still better ways to do things that yield the same or better results in terms of performance.  Time will tell as these new practices impact behavior and long-term results, but one thing is for sure: there is no silver bullet recipe that works in all situations.  My conversation with Isaac reinforced for me the critical importance of being intentional about what you stand for and how you align your ways of working with what’s most important to you as a leader.

 

This article originally appeared on Forbes

 

Shifting Organizational Culture To Enable Collective Impact

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
collective impact

By Chris Cancialosi & Stan Schneider

In 2011, the Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) released a seminal article by John Kania and Mark Kramer, which stimulated a much-needed resurgence of social reform initiatives that follow the collective impact paradigm. The concept of collective impact (CI) asserts that multiple, diverse agencies and groups must work together – not in their separate silos –to achieve the shared goal of effective and sustained social reforms – whether they are reforms aimed at children, disconnected youth, families, returning veterans, or other underserved groups.

What is the potential power of collective impact, and what internal cultural changes must occur before organizations can harness it?

In their paper, Kania and Kramer identified and defined five common components for organizations participating in successful social-change initiatives: a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and the support of a “backbone” organization.

Understanding the fundamental components of collective impact efforts and actualizing and sustaining positive change as a result can be a significant gap to bridge for a variety of reasons.  A key element in driving this success is the ability for participating organizations to evolve their cultures (their normal way of getting things done) in order to develop a new way of collectively engaging that drives results.

Among the central tenets of collective impact that we address here are the notions that participating organizations (i.e., the “collective”) share a common reform agenda and are willing to engage in mutually reinforcing activities. For example, if a community is interested in improving student achievement, proponents of collective impact would argue that the school system should not tackle this issue on its own – it should collaborate with a wide range of other public, philanthropic and community organizations who share a common interest in public education.

An often-cited exemplar of collective impact in action is the United Way-sponsored Strive Network, begun in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in northern Kentucky. The Strive Network has brought together a diverse set of community leaders to develop cradle-to-career supports for young people, resulting in promising gains in academic achievement and system-wide improvements in education.

Challenges In Bringing Collective Impact to Fruition

While collaborative engagement can be a significant contributor to social reform, we have learned, from our experience in collective impact initiatives, that it is often easier said than done for organizations to truly align themselves around shared goals – especially when these organizations have a history of competing against each other for funding, and, in some cases, for populations to serve.

To illustrate the point, the school choice movement has fueled unprecedented competition for students between and among public, charter, and private schools. If a city’s public, charter, and private school administrators were to participate in a collective impact initiative intended to improve citywide education outcomes, would they be able to subordinate their own institutional agendas (for expanding enrollments, for higher-performing or better-behaved pupils, etc.) in favor of what might prove to be in the best interests of the community’s students and families?

Similarly, could publicly operated child welfare agencies collaborate with private foster care agencies without bias in a public-private collective designed to systematize foster care referrals in the best interests of the children requiring placements? Perhaps, but doing so might require a substantial organizational culture change for some of the groups involved – and changing an organization’s culture can be a daunting challenge.

Collective Impact and Organizational Culture

collective impactImplementing the kind of cultural change that may be required by organizations participating in (or asked to participate in) a collective impact initiative would necessitate a carefully planned and well-executed change management process. Such a process would require participating organizations to engage in new ways of approaching and interacting in their work in order to create new, mutually agreed upon ways of collaborating to drive the potential collective results that this model can provide.

In order for the five foundational components of CI to truly add value in terms of tangible and sustainable collective gains, each member of the collective must adapt the way they “do business” in potentially fundamental ways that can grind against the existing beliefs and assumptions people have used as a guide for their work for a long time. Helping people to understand the changes, and reinforcing the idea that ways of working up until this point were not incorrect, can be beneficial in reducing the anxiety that people may be feeling when confronted with these transitions.

If organizational culture is defined as the shared beliefs and norms of behavior that an organization develops over time, it would not be surprising that, oftentimes, “right” might look different from group to group. The “right” behaviors that are adopted over time can look different from organization to organization primarily due to the fact that they each found their path to success through different means.

So long as this way of working yields success for the collective, it only serves to reinforce that those ways of working are, in fact, the right ways to do things. It is this basic tenet of culture that makes it so solid and difficult to evolve. If, through engaging in CI efforts, leaders are asking their people to behave in ways that misalign with the historically “right” way of doing things, a significant amount of anxiety can develop and resistance to such changes may well derail any hopes of achieving the benefits of such an effort.

“Are you telling me the way we’ve always done it is wrong?” “I know how to succeed in this current environment- I may not be as successful doing things a new way?” “If this worked so well for so long, why would we even think about changing the recipe?”

In order to effectively prepare their organizations to evolve existing systems and processes to fully reap the rewards that CI can offer, leaders must first set the conditions that will help their people challenge and adapt their thinking around these dramatic new ways of operating. Below are several critical considerations for leaders contemplating utilizing CI as a way of bringing about significant and sustainable reform.

Prepare Yourself.

  • Examine your own beliefs, values and assumptions as a leader and try to gain an understanding of those with whom you may partner.  Misalignment of fundamental beliefs about how things get done can be an enormous hurdle to try to work through, taking focus and effort away from your CI efforts.
  • Come to grips with the fact that you may have to give up power for the greater good of the collective and be sure that you are okay with that prior to getting into a situation. When this happens it can undermine the benefit of the CI effort before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

Prepare Your Team.

  • Take the time, as a team, to really understand the culture of your organization. What is truly valued? What unique philosophies about the work you do are fundamental to your organization’s identity? Having a clear understanding of your culture will help you understand the potential implications of attempting to partner with other organizations in a CI effort.
  • Work with your team to discuss and come to grips with the possibility that by giving things up to the collective, the organization may in fact have a lot to gain. This may include giving up total control of how things are done, giving up data and information that was once held close to the vest, or relinquishing certain aspects of peoples’ roles in order to maximize the impact of the collective.

Prepare the Collective.

  • Before diving into the work at hand, advocate that time and attention must be allocated to the formation of the new collective. Engage as many stakeholders as possible in discussions about the big picture, roles and responsibilities, and allow people to work through questions and concerns together.
  • Help stakeholders at all levels to understand how their day-to-day efforts and new work methods are going to add value to the collective. Having a clear understanding of where you fit in can make a huge difference in peoples’ experiences with the new normal.
  • Don’t make it a one-hit wonder. Set aside time along the way to continue to give people a chance to come together, to share lessons learned, and to take an active role in continuing to work through challenges that are affecting the collective.
  • Collaborate early, at all levels, in identifying the systems and processes that will help smooth out interactions.  Figure out how data will be shared in a way that makes all parties comfortable as trust develops.

As the collective impact model continues to gain momentum, and as valuable lessons are learned with regard to best practices for setting a solid foundation for success in such efforts, we submit that larger, cultural assessment and evolution be a key foundational component in this process. The cultural shift that would enable participating organizations to step out of their traditional silos to support the collective agenda seems a necessary condition for achieving the desired social impact, and is worthy of systematic attention from proponents of the collective impact movement.

This article was co-written by Stan Schneider, President and CEO of Metis Associates, Inc., a national, employee-owned consulting firm that brings over 36 years of experience in evaluation, information technology, and grant development to its work with a wide range of organizations committed to making a meaningful difference in the lives of children, families, and communities.

3 Things to Know Before Eliminating Performance Evaluations

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
performance evaluations

The HR scene has been up in arms recently as several large firms; including Deloitte, Accenture and GE have made the decision to eliminate their traditional performance evaluation processes. But before you go storming the gates of your CEO’s office with torches and pitchforks demanding that your organization follow in their footsteps, you may want to step back and consider a few things.

The biggest media splash around the topic came from Accenture, who will be eliminating their annual performance review and ranking process this September. According to the announcement and the subsequent press coverage, they cited empirical research that suggests a lack of clear value, an overwhelming amount of time and energy that’s expended supporting the process each year, and the plain and simple realization that their annual performance review process was failing to drive the performance they are looking for as an organization.

But, Accenture did not say that they are getting rid of the process altogether.  Accenture’s CEO Pierre Nanterme told the Washington Post in a recent interview that, “We’re going to get rid of probably 90 percent of what we did in the past”.

Rather than being a once-a-year process where people are force-ranked, the general sentiment seems to be moving away from structure and administrative burden to more frequent, real-time periodic feedback to let employees know where they stand on an ongoing basis.

And this, like GE’s new real-time performance development process, allows employees and their managers to clarify expectations, provide feedback, and set goals on an ongoing basis throughout the year.

Consider This Before Eliminating Performance Evaluations

I recently spoke with Philip Hendrickson, Chief Talent Strategist at Qwalify, about some of the more important considerations around employee evaluations. Collectively, we came up with the following three critical considerations every leader must know before eliminating performance evaluations in their organization:

1. Consider the importance of feedback. Your employees need feedback. They do. Performance evaluation processes are vital for a company. Done well, they reward certain behaviors and acknowledge business success. They also provide developmental guidance, ensuring that people feel they are growing and learning in their role.

Good programs make employees feel valued and retained. There is no better way to build a positive company culture than on a foundation of transparency and respectful acknowledgment of performance.

2. Know what will replace your current process. If your annual performance evaluation is tied to compensation and incentives, how will you make those decisions if you completely do away with your current process?

Professionals at all levels are used to a process that recognizes quality performance that rewards consistent behaviors. Whether you use formal performance evaluations or not, leaders must ensure that there is something else in place before eliminating their company’s current processes for rewards and recognition.

3. Make sure the new way is an improvement. Most companies view the annual performance process with cynicism. But most of the issues with typical performance processes are with the final ranking that individuals receive, not the evaluation itself. People feel that however hard they strived and pushed themselves during the year, they were still ranked as “meeting expectations.” It takes the wind out of them.

A lack of transparency is another cause of cynicism with many performance evaluations. It creates a feeling that there is some mysterious back room where the real decisions are made and some criteria not related to real performance that tips in favor of some people and not others.

Poor reviews, without clear communication of the process, literally chase employees out the door. Be very cautious how yours is structured and delivered.

How We Manage Performance

Our small firm currently has an annual performance evaluation process and we’ll probably stick with it.  Since our employees work with numerous supervisors on several project teams each year, it’s nice for folks to have a chance to get formal feedback from the Partners and Managing Directors at the end of the year. It’s not a very labor-intensive process and it ensures that people are getting feedback from everyone with whom they interact throughout the year.

That said, because people work on many different project teams over the course of a given year, we rely more heavily on the more frequent, specific feedback employees receive at the conclusion of each project. This feedback is delivered individually with the project lead as well as in a group during the after-action review process. Team members work together to identify the things that went well and those that didn’t go so well, in order to continually refine our processes.

Is There A Better Way?

While it may seem that there isn’t a single person walking the face of the earth who looks forward to annual performance evaluations, it doesn’t mean that performance feedback is not desired. Feedback is essential for driving behavior and success.

The talent marketplace has shifted and more employees have begun looking for other opportunities. When someone doesn’t feel their skills and experience are valued by their employer and they feel that they are not getting the level of feedback on their performance that they need to grow, they are much more likely to take a call from a recruiter.

So before you do away with your evaluation process for good, consider the needs of both your organization and your people. Be intentional about how you evolve your systems and processes to provide a winning formula for providing feedback on a more consistent basis.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

How Workplace Design Impacts Employee Productivity

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog
workplace design performance

Guest Article Written By Lee Parsons 

With the UK’s productivity persistently lagging between 10-25% behind that of France, can a workplace design consultancy provide answers where operations, HR, sales and even government have collectively failed? An unconventional proposition maybe, but when these figures stretch back over 25 years, and the comparison is with a country often viewed with disdain for its culture of strikes, long lunch breaks and collectively shutting down for the whole of August, convention may not have the answer.

The factors that impact productivity

Productivity in the workplace was a key business topic in the chancellor’s recent budget. Which got the people at OfficeGenie thinking about what really motivates employees to be productive in the office. They ran a survey of around 1,000 office employees to try to get to the heart of the issue. While the top motivations were financial, there were some other key issues that drove productivity, including workplace design.

Each of the 1,008 office workers was invited to choose their top three boosts to productivity and, unsurprisingly, the top two results in the survey confirm the old adage that money talks. Almost half (49%) of respondents chose a pay raise as their top motivator, while over a third (36%) said a financial bonus would drive them on.

This news may lead to a groan of despair for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with tight budgets that simply can’t afford to dish out pay raises to all employees. But it’s not the end of the story. The survey also highlighted other areas where a cost-free boost to productivity could be obtained with a few simple adjustments to health and wellbeing policies, flexible working and office interior design.

Flexibility is the Key

A 2012 study by the International Labour Organisation (Geneva) shows that since the 1950s, productivity per hour universally drops as hours are increased. They also found that there is a point at which the percentage drop in the level of productivity actually matches the increase in percentage of hours worked. Likewise, a survey in the US of Fortune 500 companies revealed that productivity increased by 1-3% of those companies that improved their family friendliness index ranking, supporting their workers with flexibility for family commitments.

Other strong examples of flexibility improving worker’s performance come from the Lloyds Banking Group, where 66% of line managers reported improved work rates after flexible working patterns were introduced, and early adopters, MTM Products, who have tripled production since introducing such arrangements back in 1996.

Taking Advantage of the Changing Face of the Workplace

There is great reluctance to changing working practices. CIPD’s recent HR Agility survey asked workers to identify from four groups, the type of business they were in. 31% identified the business as Family. This business type is traditional, paternalistic, and usually small. This type stated they were least likely to change their working culture. Next was Structured, with formal, structured working practices. 42% of these businesses wanted to change to either Dynamic or Results-Oriented. Dynamic is currently the lowest ranked business type, with only 11% of respondents identifying their workplace as entrepreneurial, creative and risk taking. The largest group, at 32%, was Results-Oriented, with some of these businesses identifying Dynamic as the type they wish to become.

Despite their reluctance, businesses will have to accept that the workforce is changing, and the workplace will have to change with it. The Future of Work Institute 2012report on the changing workplace highlighted four areas of change that is driving the need for flexibility:

New Technology—Communication has transformed the business landscape, allowing individuals and whole departments to work remotely, removing barriers for international collaboration and removing much of the need of a traditional workstation. Technology has also driven change in company hierarchy, with work becoming more team based rather than line managed. It has also created a meritocracy, where younger workers can achieve through skill rather than time served.

New Societal Values—Today’s workplace has become more democratic, with more two way, mature relationships, and employees being given greater independence and becoming more proactive.

Changing Demographic—Some companies are now seeing up to five generations in their workforce for the first time. Flexibility in both the workplace and working practices here is vital to accommodate different cultures across a fifty plus year age span.

Globalisation—Again, led by technology, the world has become much more accessible, and suppliers and clients will be working across all time zones. A traditional 9-5 working pattern will not flourish faced with these demands.

The Role of workplace Design

To accommodate flexible working practices an office needs to be adaptable. Part time and remote workers need to feel welcome and part of the team, so temporarily borrowing the space vacated by a vacationing or sick full time colleague is not ideal. And for those full time staff members, technology has removed the need for them to be rooted to the same spot all day, every day. Creative hubs, break-out areas, quiet zones and meeting spaces, used in conjunction with laptops, tablets and phones all help to drive this new, proactive, collaborative work-ethic that will, in turn, drive productivity. This new agile working concept has been successfully adopted by companies including BT, Google and Unilever, who value its measurable impact, not only on productivity, but also recruitment and retention of their best staff. And when delivered by a workplace design consultancy with the right expertise, agile working can also deliver up to a 20% savings of usable office space.

Although change is inevitable, successful workplace design and flexible employment practices will help businesses and their workforce embrace the great opportunities it brings. This could well be the catalyst to ending the UK’s productivity woes.

Lee Parsons is the marketing manager at Office Principles, an office interior design and workplace consultancy firm based in the UK. He enjoys attending design events all over the country and organizing seminars on new ways of working, workplace design and agile working. When he’s not busy with running these events for the company, he likes to dabble in some creative furniture designs himself in hopes of stumbling upon a new ‘must have’ invention for the industry.

4 Leadership Lessons From History’s Most Successful Coaches

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
leadership lessons from successful coaches

Not only do sports imitate life, but sports also imitate business. CEOs and managers at all levels can learn a trick or two from the most distinguished sports coaches in history, incorporating both the technical and management sides of being a successful leader.

Here are four timeless coaching philosophies that can be adopted by today’s leaders to get the most out of their employees.

“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming” – John Wooden

John Wooden was a basketball coach who won ten NCAA national championships at UCLA during the 1960s-1970s. He was named national Coach of the Year six times and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame both as a player and a coach.

Rather than using the usual metric of wins and loses, Wooden looked for a better way to define success for his team. His personal definition of success thus became encouraging his players to do the best that they were capable of. As long as his players pushed themselves to do their best, the score became the byproduct of all their hard work and training.

Great leaders train their employees well, giving them every tool they need to succeed in their jobs. There are always forces outside a person’s control that may lead to a disappointing outcome. However, as long as that person does the best that he or she is capable of, the foundation to create eventual success is firmly in place.

“Competing at the highest level is not about winning. It’s about preparation, courage, understanding and nurturing your people and heart. Winning is the result.” – Joe Torre

Both a former player and manager, Joe Torre’s most successful run was as the coach of the New York Yankees from 1996-2007. Under his leadership, the Yankees won the World Series four times. Torre was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2014.

Torre’s keys to leadership success were knowing each of his players as individuals and taking the time to listen to each of them. He talked individually with his players to clarify expectations, build confidence, answer questions, and offer support. He also treated them with honesty and encouraged their trust. It was understood that if players didn’t trust Torre, or any manager, they would never listen to him and wouldn’t strive to live up to his expectations.

Every player was told that there would come a time in the season when he would be put in a significant situation to help the team realize its goals. Torre made all his players feel valued; a part of something bigger than themselves.

A great leader knows each of his or her employees’ strengths and takes the time to get to know each of them on an individual level. This builds a relationship of trust and transparency, which can lead to improved levels of productivity, organizational citizenship behaviors, and workplace well-being. No one employee is responsible for the success of a team. Each worker will need to step up to the plate during a critical moment in time to bring home a win.

“It isn’t about the words you say. It’s about the energetic message you send.” – Pete Carroll

Pete Carroll is the current head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, and is one of only three football coaches to have won both a Super Bowl and a college football National Championship.

Influenced both by John Wooden’s principal of carrying a strong, clear message and the Grateful Dead’s desire to do something that no one else could do, Carroll realized that his coaching philosophy was going to have to be strong and clear so that each of his players knew what was expected of them. He emphasizes focus, clarity, and belief in oneself as the elements that allow someone to play freely. Carroll plans surprises and pranks to lighten his team’s mood, and he rewards players for their hard work. Juxtaposed to this, he also has strictly prescribed routines that cover what players eat, what vocabulary they use, and the themes of daily practices.

Great leaders have clearly articulated expectations and goals so employees know what is expected of them. This clarity allows employees to work towards an idea with the greatest level of dogged commitment and efficiency. As important as the precision of the goal is, it is equally vital to not let it become monotonous to obtain. Rewards and levity should be interjected into the workplace to improve morale and encourage continued hard work.

“The strength of the team is each individual member… the strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

Phil Jackson was a basketball coach who won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

Jackson used a holistic approach to coaching that was influenced by Eastern philosophy and mindfulness, leading to his nickname of “Zen Master”. His strengths were in his ability to create a strong team culture by developing leadership, empowerment, communication, trust, and motivation. Jackson’s use of the triangle offense demonstrated his thoughts about how a team should work together, with no one person being put above the others. Additionally, Jackson believed in being authentic and true to who you are, letting what was important to him drive practices infused with a positive spirit.

Great leaders are only as strong as the team they lead, so creating a healthy and empowered team culture leads to positive outcomes. Every member is equally valued and the ability to work together is an important quality for each individual to possess. It’s easy to let activities become mundane, so having a positive attitude and spontaneous spirit can help end the routine of a day. Above all else, leaders should lead authentically, showing their employees who they truly are and what they value.

Each of these coaches was irrefutably successfuland each used a different coaching philosophy to get to there. But, within each of these unique styles, there is one key message from sports to business: leading based on what you believe in and valuing how your team can work together to succeed will lead to a prosperous and healthy workplace culture.

New Employee Onboarding: Lessons From Philmont Scout Ranch

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: ,
new employee onboarding

The onboarding process is one of the most important experiences your new employees will have at your company. It’s a way for you to welcome them with open arms as a valued new member of your organization’s culture.

If done well, your new hires will feel important, supported and immediately motivated to do their best work for you and your organization. When left as an afterthought, however, new employees may end up feeling undervalued, unsupported or even ostracized from the rest of your team.

Like many companies, gothamCulture aspires to be better at the way we bring new members onto our team.  We are constantly refining our onboarding process to make team members feel welcomed by the team and get them the information and resources they need to quickly ramp up.

Surprisingly, one of the best experiences I’ve had recently around onboarding came from a backpacking trip with my son. While you may not think the two are related, there are some critical lessons to take away from this recent experience.

Onboarding, Culture and Philmont Scout Ranch

Philmont Scout Ranch in Cimarron, NM, is the oldest Boy Scouts of America (BSA) high adventure camp. It sits on over 130,000 acres of New Mexican wilderness. They have welcomed over 1 million ‘customers’ to date, including 22,000 scouts and advisors over this summer alone. They have over 1,000 employees to help make this an adventure of a lifetime for many of those scouts.

With so many new visitors travelling their backcountry, Philmont must have an effective, consistent, onboarding process in place. It is this process that has kept Philmont and its culture as an enduring legacy since 1939.

Here is how it works:

 Arrival

Like any new team member, you are excited to be on board but aren’t quite sure what you are supposed to be doing. In most cases, you have come by plane and then bus to get dropped off at the welcome station. There, a staff member welcomes you and asks your crew to form a pack line (just line up your backpacks against one another on the designated post).

You are then introduced to your Ranger (in our case Ben), who will be your mentor at Philmont and accompany you for the first two days in the backcountry.  They give you some basic orientation, answer any immediate questions and arrange to meet you at the mess hall for dinner.  After you get your gear all put away at the tent city, there is some downtime for scouts to visit the trading post to buy ice cream and soda.

Takeaways:  Constant communication is key for new employees. On their first day, they need some direction as to what they’re supposed to do. But, don’t overwhelm them with a constant barrage of orientation. Allow some downtime for them to digest information and informally get to know the rest of your team.

The Day Before Heading Out

The morning before heading out, you’ll meet your Ranger at the mess hall for breakfast. Afterwards, they take you on a tour of basecamp and get the required stops out of the way: logistics/registration, medical pre-check, equipment and initial food pickup, and facilities like the post office and lockers.

After lunch, they meet you at your tent cabins and pull absolutely everything out of your packs to show you what you need and what may have been unnecessary to bring. Though they might have the best of intentions, for example, scouts generally don’t need to carry 5 lbs. of m&m’s in their backpack for the next several days.

The night is capped off with a welcome campfire program, where they introduce you to the history of northern New Mexico, Philmont and the scouting legacy. The evening ends like every campfire program; the Philmont hymn, which, like the Philmont prayer before meals, is another reinforcement of the Philmont culture.

Takeaways:  Onboarding requires a few different things in order to succeed. You need to educate your new team members on the policies and procedures of your organization. But, in order to instill a sense of belonging, you should also fill them in on some of the company lore that exists below the surface. Stories are a great way to communicate your culture—from the history to current traditions—they can help make your new hires feel as if they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

On the Trail

At your first camp, your Ranger introduces you to the ‘bearmuda triangle’:  the red roofed outhouse, a sump for dumping smellable liquid waste and the bear cable. You don’t camp inside the triangle and usually try to set up your tents in previous tent spots to minimize impact. Your Ranger then shows you how to hang your bear bags and takes you through the first meal. Lessons include how to sterilize cookware, prepare your meal, and cleanup before getting the crew down for the night.

The next morning, you pack up, make a wonderful breakfast of snack bars, pop tarts and/or instant oatmeal. Meals may seem like a brainless routine, but during this time, our Ranger was constantly showing the boys how to follow ‘leave no trace’ and, in the case of the bear bags, reinforcing the idea behind them as protecting the bears. New Mexico policy is to tag a nuisance bear twice and then kill it, so the point is that the scouts know they are helping to possibly save a bear when they follow these rules.

Finally, each night they do ‘roses, thorns and buds’ – this is a chance for every scout and advisor to tell the crew what they liked about that day, what they didn’t like and what they are looking forward to the next day.

Takeaways:  Hands-on mentoring with a combination of demonstration and delegation helps each team member learn to follow the processes and execute them competently. Regular check-ins are a chance for the team to build camaraderie while making sure your new team members are engaged in the process. From beginning to end, constant communication is key to success.

The Rest of the Journey

On the last night together, your Ranger hands out wilderness cards to each scout and asks them to think long and hard before signing them and committing to protecting the wilderness (they also, at their discretion, share a Sara Lee pound cake and tub of icing that they have been hauling along, depending on how good of a crew you have been).  The next morning your Ranger is gone and the crew is on its own. In our case, we were on our trek for another nine days, hiking for over 75 miles and seeing some of the most beautiful backcountry there is. We stayed at trail camps and staff camps and got to enjoy some great campfire programs. We had our ups and downs as only a group of thirteen and fourteen year-old boys can, though we didn’t descend quite to the level of Lord of the Flies and managed to bring everyone back without any major injuries.

Takeaways: While mentoring and constant check-ins are important to ramp up your employees, empowerment is truly tested when they are on their own. At the end of the process, your team should be ready and able to carry on the behaviors and values that make up your company culture.

Lessons Learned

I have never met someone who went to Philmont and not described it as one of the best and most memorable experiences of their lives. I did not have the chance to go when I was in scouting and took this as an opportunity to bond with my son (and maybe show a fourteen year old that I am not as old as he thinks…). I hope that in future years he will look back and remember the experience fondly as well.

From an onboarding perspective, I have to admire the way the Philmont takes in hundreds of scouts on a daily basis, plugs them into the program and gets them on their way into the backcountry, all while instilling them with the idea that they are doing something awesome. Scouts know they have a responsibility to their teammates, and to Philmont, to dig deep and be the best team member that they can be.

How are you instilling these kinds of values into your onboarding process?

Build A Culture of Trust: Sharing Financials With Your Team

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , ,
sharing financials with your team

The open sharing of company financials can still be a touchy subject for many leaders. For years, it was generally accepted that a company should have closed books. No one questioned a company’s success if they were able to please investors, and employees certainly did not need to have access to closed door financial forecasting and investor reports.

Today, we are beginning to think about these things differently. With companies like Buffer leading the way to total financial transparency, it’s becoming clear that corporate success is measured differently today than it was 10 years ago. Organizations are not only expected to please their investors, but their other stakeholders as well.

Things like transparency, openness, and active engagement are not only highly valued, but expected. We now question the motives behind the levels of secrecy that were once widely accepted as the way it’s always been done.

Still, many privately held companies today do not, and have no intention of, sharing their financials or other closely held information in any form with their staff.

My question to the leaders of these organizations is: why?

Three Arguments Against Financial Transparency (and why they’re wrong)

Over the years, I’ve heard many leaders try and explain why they are not opening up their books to their employees. Here are a few:

“Our People Wouldn’t Understand.”

This may be true, at least at first.  Many employees out there (and some business leaders too!) are not adept at understanding simple company performance metrics, mostly because they’ve never been afforded the opportunity to see them and learn.  Sharing financial information gives your employees the opportunity to develop their business acumen.

By learning how to read and interpret financial information related to the company, they will develop their professional repertoire while developing a deeper understanding and appreciation of how their day-to-day actions impact the bigger picture. By cascading financial discussions throughout the organization, you give your people the information they need to take ownership in activities such as budgeting and expenditure control.

Mark Emerson, our General Manager at gothamCulture, has experienced the benefits firsthand. “I have had a number of colleagues throughout the years thank me for teaching them how to make sense of a P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statement. These skills actually carry over for them into all aspects of their work, from projects to product launches.”

“I have also seen that it makes conversations about difficult company decisions easier. Without a financial presentation to show a significant change in revenues, for example, and how the company decision helps adapt to those changes across the organization, employees may find it difficult to embrace those kinds of actions.”

“Our People Wouldn’t Care.”

Let me ask you this: Do your employees care how much they’re getting paid?  Do your employees care whether or not they’ll have a job in six months? Showing them how every dollar is allocated helps employees understand the real context in which the organization is operating and how they can individually contribute to the organization’s success.

Without knowing how much money the company is making and how it’s being managed, the only thing they know is how much they are making in relation to your last big sale, or the last public revenue announcement. In this context, it’s easy for your employees to feel undervalued.

The best way to combat this is to make your financial information openly available to them.

“Sharing Information Means We Lose Power.”

While it may seem counterintuitive at first, sharing financial information openly and honestly with your employees actually helps you gain power. An open and honest dialogue around financials creates increased transparency and helps build trust.

Rather than viewing this sharing of information as losing power, I’ve found that employees who understand the financial performance of their companies tend to begin to take much more ownership of their day-to-day behaviors and decisions.  Rather than losing power, these organizations become more powerful.

The fact is, your employees will likely find out about the information anyway. Whether through gossip, social media, or through sites like Glassdoor, who recently found that 98% of job seekers say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency. You may as well openly share it with them first, before they hear it secondhand.

Building A Culture Of Trust

Whether your organization shares financial information with all staff or not, and to what level of detail you share information, is your decision. Know, however, that what you do sends clear messages to the people in your company about what you think of them.

If your end goal is increased engagement, better customer service, and higher performance, you have to start by empowering your people with the information and tools they need to succeed. If you want your employees to trust you, show them that you can be trusted. And when it comes to financials, the messages you send by hiding information are likely not doing you any favors.

Change Begins Where Strategy, Culture And Leadership Connect

By gothamCulture
Published at In Category Blog Tags: , , ,
culture and leadership change

Many organizations know when they are in need of change. Things that once worked don’t seem work any longer across the organization. Small issues in one area or function or department now seem systemic. Behaviors and attitudes about work, and with work, are changing. Austerity, ambiguity and productivity issues may be permeating.

Organizations recognize when there is a need for change, even if they don’t fully understand what needs changing or where to start in order to address these issues. Often, leaders address performance or engagement opportunities at the surface level, when in reality these may be indicators of a much deeper problem that can only be identified by addressing the organization’s strategy, culture and leadership.

In these cases, leaders must address all of these facets of the organization rather than focusing on a single issue. And while there is no universal resolution for every organization, I’ve found that addressing these performance issues effectively always begins with the following 3 steps.

Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

So you know you need change. Check.

Then, as any good leader would do, you immediately jump to what you believe should be step 2:  solve the problem. You start attempting to change everything all at once. But, while you’re testing new changes, overwhelming your staff with new roles and responsibilities and asking a litany of perhaps unplanned, random, unconnected and overlapping questions, you may be watching your ‘systemic’ issues persist or even get worse.

You ask yourself, “Where do I go from here?”

Where you go is really a question of where you start. It’s important to realize that step 2 is not to solve the problem, because you haven’t yet addressed the cause of the problem. Step 2 is about truly assessing the problems, the situation and the current reality of what is going on in your organization.

Step 2: Assessment

Before you can begin to find effective solutions, you must first accurately and reliably assess the problem you’re trying to solve. Assessment of key variables, regardless of where you company is in size or maturity, is key. This is often a difficult concept for us ardent, type-a leaders who want to see results and see them now.

Patience, we will get you there. But first, let’s assess the situation correctly and thoroughly before we spend resources on solutions that may not be the root-cause of your issues.

There are a few consistent key areas of assessment any organization should start from when embarking on a journey of organizational change. Taking the time to accurately assess the reality of your organization’s issues will help you better identify the root cause and allow you to understand how to best prioritize your approach to the change at hand.

The key assessment areas fall within four key areas: 

The first two assessment areas help you understand the reality of your ROI (return on investment) or value:

  • Mission (direction, purpose and blueprint) “Do we know where we are going as an organization?”
  • Consistency (systems, structure & processes) “Do our systems create leverage?”

The second two assessment areas help you understand innovation and customer satisfaction:

  • Adaptability (pattern, trends, market) “Are we listening to the market / our customers?”
  • Involvement (commitment, ownership, responsibility) “Are our people aligned and engaged?”

Once the assessment in these four areas is completed, you now have an understanding of your current operating environment. Now you can begin to prioritize the problems you’ve uncovered, and how you need to address them.

Step 3: Solution Strategies

The most critical solution strategies you put in place will likely require some level of initial action in one or more of the areas of strategy, leadership, and/or culture change. These three areas encompass the triad of successful organizational change attributes.

As I mentioned before, you cannot try to solve everything all at once without overwhelming your team. In order to prioritize these three change navigation attributes, then, you want to choose one of these three as your area of focus:

  • A Strategy focus starts the change journey by first understanding your direction, purpose and blueprint and how these impact organizational success.
  • A Leadership focus starts the change journey by first understanding who you are as leaders in your organization. Consider how you show up collectively as a team and individually as an executive and how this impacts organizational success.
  • A Culture focus starts by first understanding the underlying organizational behaviors, values and assumptions that exist and how these impacts organizational success.

You should start with at least one of these change navigation attributes, but wherever you start, you will realistically tap into all three at some point on your journey to high performance and organizational improvement.

Strategy, culture and leadership all go hand in hand. Your organization will only find sustainable success at the intersection of all three.