Organizational culture in the new reality
The pandemic has changed our game, destroyed many business plans, locked-down employees, and has everyone around under great stress, it is fair to ask: what will become of our company?
I want to share with you a very recent case that I had the opportunity to facilitate with a client in these complex times and that exemplifies how Organizational Development can be applied in spite of the pandemic, the confinement and whatever comes next, in this new organizational reality.
What was going on?
In a medium-sized organization that, by the nature of its activities, was able to lock-down almost completely, sending all its employees to work from home. In the second half of 2020 and once the state of emergency began to give room to the new reality we began to assume that life had changed permanently. We were facing downsizing processes, an economic situation far away from the company's objectives, overloaded and burned-out teams, leaders with a scrambled strategy and full of doubts.
In short, we were facing a transition between what the organization was, what it had to become to face the emergency and unable to return to what it had been in the past. Using Kurt Lewin's classic concept, it could be said that the organization was in a change process phase (unfrozen staus quo); it had left behind many customs and beliefs, changing to adapt but still without clarity of direction.
Leaders were asking themselves, what are we going to be in the future? It was a time when OD techniques were of great help.
What did we do?
1. Define the problem.
The company's top management identified the most serious problems it was facing: the lack of financial results, the health and commitment of its employees, and the burnout of its leaders. We came to this conclusion after a few interviews and together we established the best way to address the problem.
We broke the problem down into causes and effects and decided to address first:
- Lack of direction
- Uncertainty
- The attrition of leaders
2. Define what changed, what should change and what we´ll keep
To begin we assembled the leadership group into a change team. To broaden the aware of the present moment, we applied a questionnaire with the main leaders of the organization to reflect on:
- The good and bad that confinement had brought to their lives
- The impacts it has had on their teams
- What will change when they can return to the office
I asked them to grade it and elaborated a force-field analysis with the results.
The data obtained was very interesting because although most of them longed for personal contact and to be able to accelerate business transformation, they recognized that returning would confront them again with an imbalance between their personal and work time (largely influenced by commuting time) and the loss of family time. The teams are subjected to many pressures at home that depended on their context and living conditions, the role they had in the organization and the team they belonged to.
With this data, we convened a virtual workshop to talk about the post-confinement culture with one main question: If this situation remains the same (or almost the same) two or more years, what should we continue to do and what should be changed in the future, regarding:
- Business strategy
- Team organization and talent
- Working methods and communication
It was a workshop full of illustrative discussions where we took advantage of online participation tools both in small groups and in plenary.
An example of the results can be seen in the following WordCloud:
How would a well-implemented strategy impact our talent?
3. Regenerate a shared vision of the future and determine the desired target culture
As a result of this workshop, we established some lines of improvement to address issues of organization, strategy and collaboration. In this stage, not only the previous leaders participated, but also managers and informal leaders identified in the talent program.
An example of the output is the following diagram that corresponds to Organization:
Organizational Team Output
These outlines were converted into action plans with clear indicators of success to be executed in the following months.
4. Communicate and involve
With all these results we prepared a communication plan, integrated teams by line of improvement with the best talents of the company and turned managers into sponsors.
By involving more leaders in the change process, the new approach to the vision began to take on greater meaning and relevance. Each participant clarified his or her doubts and left convinced that the ship's rudder remained stable despite the storm.
Of course, this process was accompanied by natural resistance to change, which we managed and resolved through the sponsors. Resistance is always energy that can be redirected towards the organization's goals, if it is well recognized and harnessed.
Conclusion
The process did not end there, but the actions, complications and results will have to be the subject of other case studies. What we achieved with this project was to lower anxiety levels in the face of uncertainty because, as Viktor Frankl rightly said, whoever has a "why" to live will almost always find the "how".
This organization reaffirmed its commitment to the vision of the future, recognized the gains and losses that the pandemic and confinement had brought and decided that, despite all the risks and threats, it remained firmly committed to its development and that of its employees. This does not guarantee the outcome, but it does give them the chance to be the captains of their own change and opens up the landscape for them as owners of their future.
Sounds familiar to what has happened in your company or in your teams? If you want to share, write to me at fmonterrubio@icloud.com
Francisco Monterrubio, February 2021.
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