Dare to Share: Building a Courageous Culture

David Dye and Karin Hurt are experts in innovative leadership development and co-authors of the popular book Courageous Cultures. In this short interview they share how companies can build a high-performing, high engagement culture, and the important role HR plays bringing courageous culture to life.

https://youtu.be/28EAAMPPIq0

Diversity and Inclusion for Introverts

I spoke at an HR event recently where the key themes were company culture and employee experience.  Following my talk, I was asked by the event moderator if I would accept less money in exchange for more fun at work. 

‘No way,’ I said.  ‘I’m an introvert.  If you want me to have ‘fun’ at work, you have to pay me more.’

That got a big chuckle, but I wasn’t trying to be funny.  I like working with people, but for me ‘fun’ is reading a book alone in my house.  That’s how I shake my funky stuff.  

Just to be clear, introverts like me aren’t shy or unsocial but unlike extroverts we recharge in solitude.  Whereas extroverts find solitude lonely and tiring, and recharge in more social settings. 

In all the HR forums speaking about diversity and inclusion I’ve participated in, I have yet to see anyone bring up how to include introverts.  No one considers that if your company culture is highly collaborative, it can suck to be an introvert.  No one takes introverted work styles into account although it impacts everything from how people do their best work to how they communicate.

Hiring for cultural fit should mean hiring people who are passionate about your mission, not people who all behave or think the same way.  

Sadly, however, despite so much focus on diversity and inclusion, companies expect people to be extroverts at work if they want to advance. This isn’t as unfair as it sounds because communication and relationships are the cornerstone of successful business and no one can do great work in isolation. 

Nonetheless, while extroverts are more likely to excel at sales and proactive customer service, it’s typically introverts who show up in areas that require methodical execution and deep expertise.  That’s because introverts are more likely to invest the time and solitary deep work required for mastery of complex topics than extroverts.

LEADERS TAKE NOTE: Not everyone on your team has the same preferred work and communication style.  A one-size-fits-all management style won't bring out the best in everyone.  Take time to understand your team and help them play to their strengths, not yours.

But it is what it is.  For the time being, extroverts will continue to be in the spotlight at work and are also more likely to advance and earn more. So, here are some tips and reading recommendations for introverts to help you design your dream career without attending lots of networking events and pretending to be someone you aren't: 

Know what you want – If you feel stuck in your career, you may be Barking up the Wrong Tree.  Do you want to lead a team or be an executive?  You’ll need a support base to get promoted and if you’re an introvert who hates talking to people it’s worth asking yourself if that’s really what you want.  Do you want to work remotely or part-time?  You’ll need expertise and in demand skills to earn that flexibility.  Most things are easy if you know exactly what you want and what you’ll compromise – or not compromise – to get it.

Focus on relationships, not networks – You don't have to be an extrovert to be friendly and supportive of the people you work with.  Most opportunity comes from either being top of mind, where extroverts have an undeniable advantage, or being someone who helps others be successful, where introverts do.  Remember, no one succeeds without support, including you, so pay it forward.

Walk the talk – People who get what they want adapt their approach until they get it.  I’m not saying you should try to change into an extrovert because you’ll fail but you may have to have a difficult conversation or change jobs to get what you want.  Take a deep breath and commit to asking for what you want and finding something better if you don’t get it.

Play to your strengths – Great ideas are cheap - the real magic happens in the execution.  If you have a dream and lack the charismatic charm of an extrovert that creates its own luck, work at getting so good they can’t ignore you.  Fortunately, as an introvert, you have a natural advantage when it comes to deep work.

Find a communication style that works for you - Just because you don’t enjoy team lunches or networking doesn’t mean you can’t proactively reach out to different stakeholders in your company or write energized and positive emails.  Introverts can be great communicators if they organize themselves around outreach activities and use their natural empathy and powers of observation.  You may never be the life of the party, but you can be a great communicator.

Let’s face it, if you’re an extrovert with acceptable skills the world is your oyster.  Sadly, my introverted friends, that’s not you but you have your own superpowers.  Figure out what they are, develop them to peak performance, be nice to people along the way and the world can be your oyster, too.

Breaking News: Meetings Make Us Miserable

In recent headlines, a large global tech company used data analytics to discover that people who get pulled into too many crowded meetings are miserable at work. 

My reaction to this can be summed up in a single word:

Duh!

I mean, the only surprising thing about this discovery is that it required analytics to figure it out.  Am I right?

Seriously, if there’s a bigger bummer than sitting in crowded meetings for 50-75% of your work week, it’s working for people who can’t figure that out for themselves without technology.

On the other hand, at least they took the problem seriously.  Too many companies either ignore the problem or fix the wrong thing.

They also used real data to correlate people's feelings (biased) with what was actually hapening in the business (unbiased), thus avoiding the tricky problem of getting people to tell the truth.  

Let's face it, even assuming there would be no repercussions for saying, 'You morons call way too many meetings!' people don't always know why they're miserable and can be quite expert at misdiagnosing their feelings.

So, I guess it’s a win, but I can't help thinking...

WHY DO PEOPLE NEED ANALYTICS TO TELL THEM STUFF LIKE THAT???

If you'd like to read more about why meetings are expensive and make people unahppy, check out htis article: Collaboration: $199/lb

And if you're interested in how to run happier and more collaborative meetings, read Games People Play: A Guide to Gamification for HR.

Alchemy: The Secret to Leading Innovative Teams

There are so many books, articles, blog posts and tweets about leadership I hesitate to add to it.  

Clearly, we haven't hit on the magic formula yet. 

And yet, what strikes me about many of them is that they try to describe an ideal style of leadership.

If you think about it, that makes no sense.

Imagine a team made up of different generations, ethnic groups and work styles and just to make it interesting, imagine they work in different locations on various short- and long-term projects. 

Looking at how work and tech are trending, that’s the composite team of the future but we find teams like that even today.

So who thinks all these people with different cultural backgrounds and at different stages in their careers will respond positively to the same style of leadership? 

Exactly.  They won’t.  So how do you go about leading such a team?  It’s simple, really. You do it by helping each member of the team play to their strengths while being very clear about your expectations.

In order to do this, you need to be radically honest about your own leadership style and where you can and can’t be flexible. Don’t leave your team to figure this out for themselves, lay out the things that are important to you as a leader and are therefore non-negotiable. 

Leave the rest up to the people in your team.  Let them decide when, where and how to work.  Let them decide when to ask for help and when to work independently.  Let them spend time on projects that interest them, so long as they line up with team priorities.  

One very important point of clarification here: This doesn’t mean everyone just runs off and does whatever they feel like.  It’s a leader’s job to set clear priorities and deadlines, manage expectations within the team, ensure people interact professionally, and hold each person accountable for bringing their best self to work. 

In fact, how you lead the team shapes the team culture, which in turn impacts how well the team functions – so much so, that many companies continue to hire for culture fit rather than diversity. This is problematic and here's why:

Imagine a Venn diagram where individual personality and company culture overlap.  You immediately see a trade-off because the bigger the overlap, the less cultural diversity you have.  

Hiring managers also frequently try to hire people who will ‘fit in’ and therefore – let’s say it – be easy to manage.  Here again, the larger the overlap between team culture and individual personality, the stronger the sense of tribe and the lower the likelihood of conflict – or true innovation - within the team. 

As you can imagine, it's easier to lead a culturally homogenous team than a culturally diverse one because one size is more likely to fit all, which means the manager has to expend less energy to lead the team.  By the same token, diverse teams with inflexible leadership tend to underperform because people have to expend so much energy trying to fit in.  

The glue that makes a diverse team great is the leader, who sets the tone, shapes the behavioral norms, encourages (or discourages) personal expression, provides support for professional growth, and keeps the team focused and on track. 

Here’s why it matters: A team with a high degree of personal autonomy – or a large ‘personal expression zone’ – led by a skilled leader is likely to outperform and out-innovate a culturally homogenous team because more perspectives engender more ideas, which in turn create more possibilities.  

Diversity creates alchemy, which if properly channelled has the potential to turn crazy ideas into gold.  If the overlap between company, team and individual culture is too great, you get high complacency and sense of belonging but low alchemy.

If, however, company and team culture allow for a high degree of personal expression and creativity, you might just get… magic.

You may also enjoy:

Diversity's the Secret Sauce of Great Culture

Work Hard, Wear Jeans, Have Fun

Ageism: Is it True or Is it You?

New Research: Employee Experience Design for HR Practitioners

Great employee experience doesn’t just happen – it’s designed. From how you define the jobs in your organization to leader selection processes and how work is done, exceptional EX requires more than just picking the latest and greatest technology. HR now has the mandate to design employee experiences with the same care given to delighting customers.

But how?  Your help is needed to answer that question.

NextGen Insights, Red Rocks Impact and UNLEASH have teamed up to explore the state of employee experience design and create a best practice framework for HR practitioners. You're invited to participate in this research with an opportunity to join UNLEASH in London March 19-20 where the results will be presented.

COMPLETE THE SURVEY for a free copy of the research findings and a chance to win a complimentary ticket to your choice of the UNLEASH Conference and Expo in London 19-20 March 2019, or UNLEASH America in Las Vegas 14-15 May 2019.

To recap: Take the survey now (it should only take about 15 minutes), receive a free copy of the results, and you may also win a free ticket to UNLEASH.

Hope to see you there!

You may also enjoy these related posts on design thinking.

Work Hard, Wear Jeans, Have Fun

Could it be we are overthinking employer brand?

I mean, my husband's an IT architect.  He helped design the technical foundation for the world's most successful SaaS-based HCM solution.  He's the guy who can talk to busy executives, inflexible power users, nerdy propeller heads and uptight clipboard carriers.  IT companies want to hire more people like him.

None of which is my point.  My point is, how does someone like that decide where to work?

While companies compete with one another to have the most complicated answer to that question, for him it's always been really simple.  Back when he had just graduated from college and was avoiding 9-5 jobs like the plague while helping a friend build software in a garage, this job advertisement caught his eye:

Work Hard.  Wear Jeans.  Have Fun.

That's it.  He applied, got the job, and the rest is history.  

What does this tell us?  It tells us that people who know what they want are really good at self-selecting the work culture that will work for them.  

The other thing worth noting is that this advertisement wouldn't work on him today, because he's at a different phase in his career.  Today he wants to work in service to ideas that create positive social and economic impact so, 'Help us save the world,' might be a better lure.

To continue on this, 'It's really simple,' theme: The best way to attract great talent is to be the kind of place to work great talent wants to work for.  The catch is this means different things to different people, with creative freedom, interesting projects, work life balance, money, increased responsibility and finding your purpose of more or less importance depending on where you are in your career.  

That noisy foozball table in the break room may be a big hit with twenty-somethings who hang out in the office late, but highly annoying to your Sr Digital Marketing Manager who has a campaign to get out the door, and of no interest whatsoever to the working mom who has to leave on time to pick up her kids.

So here's a crazy idea: Identify the kinds of employees you'd like to attract more of and talk to them about what they like - or don't like - about working for your company.  Then do more - or less - of that.  

Don't guess or copy what other companies do.  Ask.  Try.  Iterate.  (It's called #designthinking.)

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Work Design Experience: Interview with Karen Jaw-Madson

The HR Journey from Productivity to Purpose

How to Find, Hire and Lead Great Talent

Here's a handy #designthinkingforhr infographic:

Work Experience Design: Interview with Karen Jaw-Madson

Soon after writing The HR Journey from Productivity to Purpose, I came across an article written by work experience design expert Karen Jaw-Madson and realized I'd discovered a kindred spirit.  Several emails and high energy conversations later, I'm very excited to publish a guest post with Karen.

With a fresh perspective on the hot topics of company culture and employee engagement, Karen combines deep insight with a pragmatic approach to creating meaningful work experiences.  Somewhat atypically within a corporate landscape that tends to view culture as something top down, she uses design thinking principles to ensure that employees play a key role in co-creating their own work culture.  

Read what she has to say in this exclusive interview.

1. Why does work experience design matter for HR?

We know from the study of the human mind that people’s memories are coded by way of experiences. It’s how we frame our thinking and remember things. Whether or not it is consciously acknowledged, experience design matters to HR because it matters to people.  Experience must be a cornerstone if we are to ensure the “human” in HR. Those that understand the importance of employee experience have an opportunity to differentiate themselves above others in the war for talent. That’s because intentionally designing experience aligned with company values and culture increases the chances of intended, positive outcomes. Check out an article I recently published in HR Professional magazine, “What HR Should Know About Employee Experience.”

2. Who owns / should own work experience design, if not HR? 

I’m chuckling because of how much we think alike. Over the summer I wrote an article for People + Strategy Journal, “It’s More Than a Job Title: The Role of HR When It Comes to Organizational Culture.” It won’t be released until November, but let me summarize and note that the same goes for work experience design: because culture and the outcomes of work experience design are shared, no one can realistically “own” them—they are communal. That being said, HR has several roles to play, as educator, evangelist, sponsor, and connector. Advisor is not on the list because that would support the misperception of ownership and creates an emotional distance from being an equal partner within the culture.  

3. Can you briefly explain your methodology and how you developed it?

Design of Work Experience (DOWE) percolated for years, but was catalyzed with the introduction of design and design thinking into its development. The other big influences on this work are appreciative inquiry, positive psychology, and values-based leadership. A concept, methodology, and framework rolled into one, DOWE “partners employees with their employers to co-create customized and meaningful work experiences that set the conditions for people and business to thrive.” The model is comprised of four main components: the combination of DESIGN and CHANGE processes enabled by leveraging and building CAPABILITY and ENGAGEMENT throughout.

The process is segmented into 5 phases: UNDERSTAND, CREATE & LEARN, DECIDE, PLAN, and IMPLEMENT. These in turn are organized as a series of iterative learning loops, each with its own specific set of activities that break down complex culture work into digestible, focused, exploration spaces.

Ultimately, the practice of DOWE yields an in-depth understanding of the current state, a design for the future state, and a roadmap with action plans for how to get there. This can be applied to a variety of opportunity spaces in organizations, from business strategy to the employment life cycle, to interactions, and capability development.

4. How did you end up writing and publishing a book on this topic?

The book was written as a humble contribution to the study of company culture, but born out of a frustration with how often culture is blamed for failures in companies after the fact. We know that many corporate scandals blamed on culture are quite preventable. There’s a lot of content out there around “best practices” and “how we did it,” but I wanted to offer a step-by-step “how to” for intentionally creating culture on the front end that is specific to the intended context—your organization.

5. Do you have any advice for people who want to develop expertise in this area?

In a word, learn. Learning is demonstrated by changed behavior and because of that, it is transformative. You should learn in all 3 ways: experientially, inwardly, and externally—continually and simultaneously. Building culture--particularly with Design of Work Experience (DOWE)--is best learned by doing. The first phase of the process, UNDERSTAND, will identify your organization’s highest priorities, develops an unprecedented level of organizational self-awareness, and requires practitioners to do a lot of self-learning and examination. The CREATE & LEARN phase has a learning loop dedicated to building knowledge and inspiration by hunting and gathering anything that could inform perspective. By seeking external stimulus, we are able to build our “knowledge banks” and incorporate them as new learning. Expertise isn’t built over night, but with persistence and an open mind.

6. What is next for you?

I try to follow the same I advice offer to those I coach. Rather than chasing plans (which sometimes adds rigidity, blinds us to other opportunities, and doesn’t always go our way) I’m aiming for aspirational outcomes: meaningfulness in work, a positive impact, a well-balanced life. If design thinking has taught me anything, it’s that one can always iterate and allow the possibilities to reveal themselves. I have a lot of different projects on the plate, potential partnerships with others, and am always seeking to learn new things. I look forward to discovering where all this leads me. 

  

Organizational expert Karen Jaw-Madson enjoyed success as a corporate executive before pursuing a ‘portfolio career’ comprised of research, writing, consulting, teaching/speaking, and creative pursuits. As a versatile leader across multiple industries, Karen developed, led, and implemented numerous organizational initiatives around the globe. Today, this East Coast transplant to Silicon Valley (via Ireland and the Midwest) is principal of Co.-Design of Work Experience, where she enables organizations with innovative approaches and customized solutions for intimidating challenges. Focus areas include culture, organizational change, and people strategies. Her book, Culture Your Culture: Innovating Experiences @Work (Emerald Group Publishing) was released in June, 2018. She has a BA in Ethnic and Cultural Studies from Bryn Mawr College and a MA in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. Visit her website at www.designofworkexperience.com.

Website: www.designofworkexperience.com

Twitter: @karenjaw

Facebook: /designofworkexperience

Instagram:co.designofworkexp

LinkedIn: /company/co--/

Diversity's the Secret Sauce of a Great Culture

My first boss Herman was a 2^nd generation Mexican American.  He ran a tight Jewish bakery counter and his brother Alex managed the kosher deli across the way.

My best boss ever – and I’ve only had a few over a long career I consider truly great – was French and female.  

(My worst boss was also female so please don’t take this as a general endorsement for female leadership, let’s just get better leaders, OK?)

I’ve had bosses from the US, France, India, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and Germany.  They all had very different management styles.

One boss called me a ‘penetrante Kuh’ - which means annoying cow - but he was German, so I didn’t take it personally.  In fact, I considered printing it on my business card.

I’ve hired and managed people from Canada, South Africa, Japan, Poland, Singapore, Russia, Finland, Spain, Mexico, Ireland, France, and the US.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with Russians, Finns, Japanese, Italians, Canadians, Dutch, French, Irish, British, Spanish, Australians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Belgians, Indians, Romanians, Swiss, Scandinavians, and 2^nd generation Americans from pretty much every part of the world.

Some were younger, some were older, some were male, some were female, some were fantastic to work with while others were difficult, but they all offered something unique to the mix.

It was the best part about working, to be honest. 

I didn’t like everybody, nor did everyone like me.  That’s not the point.  The point is that they all added colour and flavour to my work experience, as I hope working with me did for them.

Interacting with so many cultures and personalities upped my game and having such a rich mix of colleagues and experiences kept me longer in each role than I might have stayed otherwise.

Diversity matters in ways we can’t measure.  It makes us more resilient, curious, compassionate, and open to new cultures, ideas and experiences.  It tests us and forces us to adapt, compromise and question our assumptions.

If your customer base is diverse, it stands to reason your workforce – in particular, the people who design your solutions or interact with your customers - should be, too.  Also, just to be clear, hiring locals in your non-HQ subsideriaries isn't true diversity.

I don’t think too many people reading this are likely to disagree, since diversity is now accepted as part of a successful business strategy, but I leave you with this food for thought:

A few years back I blogged about a Cornell University study that found once diversity reaches a critical mass of 20-25% at the leadership level the company realizes higher performance.  However, below that level diversity has a negative impact, possibly because everyone regards it as a necessary evil rather than a driver of innovation and business performance.

With that in mind, maybe diversity should be part of your company DNA, rather than an isolated and/or HR-led initiative.  

Just sayin.

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*Picture courtesy of Managing Your Elders.

Get Off the Couch: Agility, Innovation and Failure

After a three-year hiatus spent living and breathing supply chain finance and building a truly exceptional global marketing team, I am re-launching Working Girl.  This is slightly ironic as I am not currently working per se, nor looking for a job.  However, after some reflection I realized Working Girl is my brand when writing about all things talent management, organizational development or human motivation. My latest blog post is about innovation.

Fail fast, learn, try again.  Catchy, huh? 

According to experts, embracing failure makes you more agile because – amongst other things - those who fear failure hesitate to act, and it’s rare to be hesitant and agile.  It’s like you can’t be an Olympic gold medalist and a couch potato, although you can sit on your couch and watch the Olympics.  Similarly, some organizations try to implement agility without getting up off the couch.

Although the ‘agile organization’ promises a long-awaited alternative to heavy processes that erode motivation and stifle innovation, it also gets used as a rationale to introduce uncoordinated workstreams; to cherry pick projects (and avoid all that boring stuff like planning and execution); or to spin underwhelming results as success.

It seems I’m not the only one on the fence about agility because while some experts sing the praises of failure in the innovative organization, others ask why innovation rarely occurs even at companies that embrace the whole 'fail fast' thing.

In a rapidly changing and competitive world, it makes sense to strive for holocracy instead of hierarchy; collaborative networks instead of siloes; rapid experimentation instead of fear of failure; participation instead of central decision making; bottom up brainstorming instead of top down directives; and innovation instead of stagnation. 

It’s easy to get buy in, too, because no one’s going to say, ‘Let’s not try new things.  Let’s not collaborate.  Let’s not innovate.’ 

It sounds great but…

I worked for ten years at a very disruptive and successful start-up where no one ever talked about failing, let alone failing fast.  I mean, sure, if you had to fail better do it quickly but the goal was to succeed with careful planning followed by rapid, coordinated execution.  Failure was acknowledged and usually forgiven but it wasn’t in any way romanticized. 

OK, there was this one senior exec who’d get up at each all hands meeting with a self-deprecating grin and say, ‘Yeah, we should have seen that coming,’ which we all found hilarious.  Good times.

I absolutely believe huge success can happen by trying lots of things – the lucky punch - but I also believe greater success is possible with ruthless prioritization and proper planning.  You may miss the lucky punch but trying out lots of free floating ideas without a cohesive strategy has a high opportunity cost and adds complexity to a shaky foundation. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in cross-team collaboration, iterative learning and letting people make mistakes.  Simply put, since top down decision-making and fear of failure are innovation killers, if you want to innovate and move fast you need to break down siloes, decentralize decision-making and make it OK to fail.  However…

My point is that how you do it matters.  Good execution and alignment can make all the difference between spectacular and underwhelming results.  Here are a few pointers from the trenches:

• Have a cohesive strategy: A strategy is not a vision or a statement of intent, it’s an execution plan to achieve your goals.  If there isn’t a coordinated execution plan, people will come up with their own, which is how you end up with siloes and competing priorities.
• Find the right balance: You can’t just innovate, unless you’re Thomas Jefferson working alone with independent finances.  You still need to do the business as usual stuff to be successfully innovative.  Some innovative companies tackle this by creating dedicated teams focused on new frontiers, others by dedicating a certain amount of time to pure innovation each week. 
• Don’t just pile more stuff on: A common mistake companies make when introducing agile processes is to introduce them on top of everything else rather than ruthlessly re-prioritizing to allow people to focus on innovation.  A good rule of thumb is that if people are too busy to think, they’re probably too busy to innovate. 
• Make it OK to say no: When companies decentralize decision making to empower people to say yes, they sometimes forget to empower them to say no.  In lean organizations iterative experimentation tends to put the highest burden on a subset of folks – in marketing this may be the creative team, for example.  Every great idea has an opportunity cost.
• Don’t diss the boring stuff: I’ve seen failure being celebrated as ‘learning’ while solid successes were ignored, and it wasn’t pretty.  Good people felt overlooked and upset.  The folks who keep the lights on while the innovators are off innovating also deserve to be celebrated.
• Keep your powder dry: I remember discussing a high-ticket dinner event for decision makers in an industry we weren't even targeting.  It turned out the organizer wanted to try that venue and proposed the event as an innovative experiment.  The key takeaway here is that self-optimization isn't innovation and steals resources needed for real innovation.
• Manage the process: I haven't yet seen an organizational model that eliminates the need for good leadership.  Someone needs to support teams, curate ideas, communicate the strategy, balance the workload, manage the budget, coordinate execution to eliminate duplication of effort, hold people accountable and ensure everyone has an opportunity to contribute.  
• Measure things that matter: Your website traffic increased 12%.  Your industry event attracted 150 people.  Your new white paper was downloaded 800 times.  You met your 3x coverage for lead targets. Great but so what?  Will it help you provide better service and – ultimately - sell more? 
• Listen to the naysayers:  Some naysayers are a real drag and seem to be against anything new.  Ignore them, but don’t ignore the input of people who have valid concerns about proposed changes.  Addressing these concerns – or at least considering them with an open mind – may help you avoid serious challenges down the road. 

At the end of the day, innovation has more to do with culture and mindset more than strategy or process.  If your culture isn't innovative, your outcome won't be either.

Picture courtesy of Innovation Labs.