An esteemed professional colleague of mine once said: “Diversity is the mix; inclusion is what you do with the mix.”
When The Clarion Group built The Secret 7 culture framework, we wanted to address three main aspects of global communications: 1) direct vs. indirect styles; 2) comfort (or not) with conflict and confrontation, and 3) the level of information sharing from senior leadership to all employees.
We’ve seen many organizations shifting their command and control, autocratic and authoritative leadership style to one that fosters collaboration, often through taking risks, empowering their people and their teams, and welcoming the dissonance that comes from breaking down silos and allowing for horizontal, cross-functional teams to form.
In the context of organizational culture, “time” is defined as the priority people place on time vs. relationships, and in our experience, organizations that “get it right” more often than not enjoy greater success. Many clients over the years have challenged us as to whether they need to choose between the two ends of this dimension. “No, you don’t.” But you do need to know when to play each end of the culture dimension of time to get the best results.
Imagine a culture where all ideas are welcome, even the crazy and “out of the box” ones, where employees feel safe to ask the question, “Have we ever thought about X before?” A work environment in which senior leaders create a “no idea is a dumb idea” environment such that teams come together, brainstorm new ways of looking at organization-wide problems, and create breakthrough ideas together?
“Naval-gazing” and “myopic” are two phrases often used to describe insular, internally focused, and inward-looking organizations. Of course, leaders must take care of their people, be empathic to the employee experience, and focus on improving and strengthening internal processes. These are all critical steps in building a high-performance organization. However, leaders also need to constantly look out ahead, anticipating customer needs, trends in the industry, and market forces that can have an impact on not only their customers, but also their relevance as a provider of certain products and services.
One of the most important dimensions of culture anywhere in the world is the concept of power.
For almost 70 years, organizational culture has been described by scholars, executives and corporate anthropologists along continuums that are intended to represent polarities of behavior. For example, authoritarian vs. consensus, team-based vs. individual-driven.
In response to the human emotions around coping with COVID-19, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) recently published an interview* with David Kessler, a globally respected expert on the stages of emotional response when confronting negatively perceived change (ultimately, death) initially formulated by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. (Clarion founder and my partner, Bill McKendree, published a good piece last week on this: Times of Crisis Call for Leadership Heart ). With Kubler-Ross’ family’s agreement, Kessler postulated the presence of a sixth and final stage beyond acceptance – finding meaning. I think that finding meaning in the face of such loss of human life and economic devastation crosses over into a profoundly human spiritual dimension. That HBR would have the courage to enter that dimension is somewhat astonishing. But it is also an accurate and insightful acknowledgement that COVID-19 has erased any artificial boundaries between business and humanity. It is a door opened that I now walk through cautiously. It seems obvious that in past times we would have looked to spiritual leaders for the kind of guidance sought in the face of grief, death and dying. Here, now, in the face of a global pandemic, the stage for spiritual leadership feels very, very empty. Sadly, the divisiveness that rips across a complicated mixture of ethnic groups and religious sects, clinging to seemingly irrelevant historical and political conflicts, undermines the ability of any one religiously affiliated person to represent us all, to speak to us individually, to touch our hearts directly. How then do we find even the slightest thread of meaning that is in fact by its very nature fundamentally spiritual, but does not say so in a way that alienates any one of our fellow employees? Or our customers? Our neighbors? Our friends? Perhaps it is just me, but there is something about the nature of COVID-19 that I cannot help but feel is speaking to us all, collectively, in a single, unifying voice. We are all human. We are all vulnerable. We are all able to help. We are all in this together. Right now , that alone is meaningful. If a virus can view us this way, why can we not view ourselves this way? Our survival may depend upon it, and yet we remain stuck in our separateness. We are our own worst enemies. If it helps, then see this “meaning” as coming from a purely scientific view, not a religious view. At one level it is more important that we just see it. But truth be told, it is not one or the other. As seen by a scientist, it is both:
Leaders today are being asked to step up to a challenge few ever imagined. There simply is no playbook for leading through COVID-19. Carefully crafted strategic plans have suddenly become irrelevant, and leadership teams across the globe have moved into aggressive downsizing in anticipation of an unprecedented economic slowdown. We’ve talked to a lot of our clients over the past week. The block and tackle of re-forecasting is well underway, but most are privately feeling alone and simply unsure of how to approach the “soft side of business” – keeping employees settled and engaged. Times of crisis call for heart. And heart starts with understanding how employees’ needs have changed; for many, needs have changed dramatically. With the “silent enemy” now among us, the cadence of life has been significantly altered: work-from-home, children out of school, elderly parents to care for, and illnesses to manage, often while we are trying to come to terms with the real financial impact many are experiencing. Leaders, consider this: in a crisis, humans revert down Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, focusing on the basics: safety, security and health. Project deliverables, reports, and even the economic viability of the organization will for most take a backseat to individual concern for personal and family well-being and financial security.
