Since I have suffered too much from toxic cultures and very traditional or conservative management mindsets that generally use the “command and control” approach, seeing something a little more human and progressive is refreshing, and I am ready to rejoice for any step we take forward.

That being said, there is a rather unfortunate phenomenon that accompanies the rise in popularity of a healthy and pleasant organizational culture. A phenomenon called “culture-washing”.

When appearing is easier than being

When a concept becomes a trend, such as the going green and environmental awareness, the “washing” phenomenon generally follows very closely. In the case of the environment, many companies will display their products and / or services as “green” in a misleading way since they have not done anything extra to make them green. Even though some of these products or practices are absolutely dangerous for the environment, these companies still want to take advantage of the green trend. They are accused of doing “green-washing”.

In the same way, there are companies displaying the pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness, and whose products contain carcinogens. This is called “pink-washing”: a corporation taking advantage of a trend to sell more products and hypocritically polish its image.

The phrase “culture-washing” comes from there. Organizations are accused of culture-washing when they pretend having a strong and vibrant culture, while the culture that actually thrives within their walls is completely different from the one that is put forward. Generally, it’s way more traditional than advertised, sometimes even toxic.

Many trends unfortunately have this effect. I come from the world of Agile in software development, and of course, 100% of IT companies say and pretend they are agile. No company wants to be perceived as “non-agile”. Everyone wants to be agile, but many organizations do not give themselves the means to take the slightest step forward in this direction. But that’s another debate.

The gap between these statements and reality is usually measured in light years. It’s sad, but it’s the truth: it is easier to pretend to be agile than to become agile, just as it is easier to claim to have a beautiful, pleasant and fun organizational culture, than to actually have one. We must pay attention to this kind of subterfuge.

The marketable culture

For several months now, we have been talking about this “labor shortage” in Quebec. The expression is not mine, hence the quotation marks, you know what I think of the terms “resources”, “human capital”, “labor”… Anyway, you know what I mean…

To overcome this shortage, many companies invest a lot of energy (not to mention budgets) in their organizational culture. And it’s a good idea: the organizations that will suffer in the future will be those with a poor culture, where people can’t flourish, and where political games, micromanagement and the “command and control” approach are part of the daily routine.

However, I still have a problem with the idea of building an interesting culture if the only goal is to promote this new culture. For whom, for what do organizations improve their culture? For future employees? To improve the KPIs of their recruiters and salespeople? To impress their customers? Or for the people who will live in this culture for 40 hours a week?

Don’t get me wrong, I will always be in favor of a strong and human-centric culture. But I think it’s a strategic mistake to develop it for the sole purpose of increasing sales or hiring.

I am a fan of Tony Hsieh, president of Zappos, who has built a culture so strong and vibrant that he can afford to make statements such as “Your culture IS your brand”. And I also like this statement, by Robert Stephens: “Marketing is a tax that you pay for having an unremarkable culture.”

Essentially, your culture must first and foremost be optimized and designed for your employees. A strong culture leaves no one indifferent, and people will naturally talk about it and become its ambassadors. A culture designed for the sole purpose of selling your brand more easily represents, at best, a misguided decision, at worst, a waste of money and time.

The carrot VS the cherry

Since having a strong organizational culture is trendy, it makes many companies want to have one as soon as possible. It is tempting to take shortcuts to “beat the competition”. It is usually at this stage that we start talking about the infamous ping-pong tables, foosball tables, video game consoles, thematic conference rooms and all that stuff.

These things are not bad per se. But having a table top hockey game does not ensure the presence of a strong culture. In fact, I’ve heard about a lot of companies that do have such games, but forbid their employees from using them on business hours. And with fairly severe penalties if one dares to do so. In this case, the message is quite clear: pleasure has no place during work hours. In the meantime, go back to your place, and work, you slacker. One might as well look for another job.

This type of approach, I call it “the carrot approach”. We offer a carrot (which, let’s face it, does not cost much and is easy to put in place) to attract people, while there is no strong foundation to support this initiative; there is only the stick. It certainly attracts a lot of people, who may be there just for the sake of coolness, but we do not know if these people are there because they like their job. And when things go wrong, however, it’s not uncommon to see the game console or the ping-pong table disappear, as if it was stolen by ninjas. And things quickly return to their usual nature: the stick. Those who were there solely for the carrot do not stay long after that.

I advocate for an environment where the basic culture is already very strong, and where these amusing things and games are only the cherry on the sundae. People will not leave if these playthings disappear: they are not there for them in the first place. They show up because they like to work there, are well treated, and can thrive. Video games and themed conference rooms are just extra fun.

The phony values

One of the most glaring symptoms of a poor corporate culture is when an organization has a list of values printed on a wall, and that generates cynicism on the part of employees, simply because they do not live these values every day.

An old joke says that if you ask a person from the reception desk to enumerate the organizational values that are printed on the wall right behind them without looking, they will only be able to list one or two. And it is to be expected when you have values that are ignored by everyone from the janitor to the CEO.

Corporate values have little value if they are only to have a “Our Values” page of a website, to bewilder clients, to impress vendors, or catch the eye of candidates. In this context, values are nothing more than a smokescreen made of fumes of cynicism that spreads throughout the entire office. Also, let’s be clear: to promise transparency, respect, and innovation when you do not intend to deliver, in the end, becomes an old cruel joke for employees. A kind of slow torture that lasts until they decide to stop hoping and go elsewhere.

By definition, a value is a principle we live by. If no one in a company lives by its values, we can not expect anything but cynicism. “Transparency, yeah right”. This kind of cynicism. When corporate values are trampled at any time of the day, it is not unreasonable to believe that employees will have difficulty trusting management or supporting its initiatives. Because we have already marvelously shown how something as crucial as values does not matter at all.

Integrity and consistency with your values

To have a vibrant culture, a company must treat its values for what they are: principles to live by. That means, if it a company has strong values, these should guide all decisions. 

Imagine a situation where an organization faces a dilemma with 3 possible solutions. Values, which should be the most important principles, let’s not forget, should be able to point to the solution that is best for the company. If the best solution does not fit at all with the values of the organization, how can it be the best solution? Or maybe it’s a good time to revise values if the decisions that are made always go against them.

Integrity and consistency mean, among other things, to do what we say we do.

Bosses who say something and constantly do the opposite sometimes find themselves wondering why their employees are not very loyal. It’s a bit normal. Corporate values must be treated in the same way. An organization that systematically follows the values it has put in place creates an environment of integrity and predictability. Employees should not be surprised when companies demonstrate that the decisions made are in line with the values of the organization. And THAT is a very effective way to strengthen a culture: when decisions become predictable because they are always aligned with values. For leaders of organizations using this approach, it is only a matter of time before they won’t even have to make the majority of decisions: employees, guided by values, will do it for them. Can you imagine what that implies? That’s the potential of a very strong culture.

Interpreting values

A very important trap in which one should not fall, however, is to have values that are too vague, and can be interpreted in many ways. Transparency, innovation, respect and communication, these are nice, but difficult act upon. These are vague concepts. “I talked with people today, so I communicated.” Meh. This is not exactly what the leaders had in mind, I believe, when choosing “communication” as a value.

Simon Sinek, known to many for his lectures and writings on leadership, and the importance of finding our “why”, offers a slightly more interesting approach than just a list of words. Instead, he proposes to change your values into actions.

For example, instead of having the value “innovation”, which means everything and nothing, he suggests “Approach problems from a new angle”. Ah, suddenly, it becomes a little easier to understand, and can be acted upon easily. Rather than “Communication”, it could be “Make sure information does not get lost,” for example. It is difficult to show that we innovated, it’s not very easy to measure. However, we can count the times when we have approached a problem from a whole new angle. This is an effective way to measure how much a culture sticks with the employees. And how much they own it.

In conclusion

Investing in your culture is an enlightened choice, as long as your goal is really to see this culture live and develop on a daily basis. Also, finding the desired culture is not just an exercise that concerns only the leadership of the organization. All of your employees will live between 35 and 40 hours a week in this culture, and the only way to make sure they support this culture is if it’s defined for them, with them. As Howard Behard, former CEO of Starbucks said, “Those who clean the floor should choose the broom.”

Those who will live in your culture have a good idea of what culture they want to live in. Do not hesitate to delegate to them this superb task of creating a vision for your culture, a strategy for putting it in place and strengthening it, and finding the reflexes and dynamics necessary so it can bloom. Give the desired goal, and let your experts amaze you.

In short, take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

I recently spoke in a private event. A company created an internal initiative called The Innovation Week, and they wanted to ensure that the mindset of innovation kept going for the rest of the year. They hired us to give a speech on the matter. Here is a summary of our conference.

Soft skills at the service of innovation

Innovation is not an goal. It’s difficult to measure. “Our level of innovation has increased by 39% this quarter”, that does not exist. While teams can be dedicated to innovation, such as teams of intrapreneurs, for instance, it is also not an expertise you can find on a resume. There is no certificate in innovation, as far as I know.

Innovation is a mindset. It’s a set of reflexes that can be leveraged, using our hard skills, which is common practice, and our soft skills, which is a little less common. What I mean is that we often have the technical expertise to innovate, but not always the mental reflexes to stimulate innovation. There are technological tools for tangible innovations, we use them every day. There are also other tools – both practical and conceptual – to foster an innovation mindset.

Knowing this, we can say that innovation is a culture, or at least requires a certain culture to happen. We have identified 4 key points that are necessary to foster of an innovation mindset that will last over time: agency, intention-based leadership, our power of influence, and the ability to change intangible ideas into tangible projects by experimenting.

A culture that favors agency

Agency is one’s ability to deliberately affect their environment. Basically, it’s our power to act, to voluntary influence our surroundings. When people decide to wash the dishes because there are too many dirty dishes in their sink, they are being agentive. They take a deliberate action to improve their environment. It’s an innate behavior in humans. However, the workplace is one of the only places where this natural parameter is programmed to be disabled by default. At work, we ask permission to take action.

Agency is not the same as empowerment. Empowerment has its limits, and shows several differences with agency.

• Empowerment is a permission given by another person of higher hierarchical rank. Agency is innate, it is a mindset everybody is capable of, and it is deliberate.
• Empowerment can be withdrawn by your superior, by senior management, and anyone in between. Agency being a mindset, is permanent and can not be removed.
• Empowerment perpetuates the status of followers. Agency allows the creation of new leaders.
• Empowerment works as long as we respect the structure in place. Agency works as long as there is a will.

For more information on the subject, I wrote an article entitled Empowerment Is Not Enough, Go For Agency Instead.

A culture of intention-based leadership and leader-leader relationships

People behave according to the way they are treated. Have you ever heard a manager yell “This is a real kindergarten here!”? I guarantee you that this guy treats his peers like preschool kids.

David Marquet, from the US Navy, has tried the opposite. He had just received his rank of captain for the submarine USS Sante Fe. He had to deal with the worst crew of the US Navy. He stopped giving orders, and began telling his crew what he intended to do, and then let them decide how best to get there. This is called intentional leadership. In doing so, not only did he stop treating his peers as soldiers or executants, but he began to consider their expertise, their collective intelligence and their better judgment. He stopped treating them like followers, and began treating them like leaders.

In the end, his crew has collected the highest score of all armies combined in history. On average, in a submarine with a crew of 30, about 1 or 2 sailors eventually become captain. In the crew of Captain Marquet, 9 people became captains. Other captains began visiting her submarine to learn how to achieve such an accomplishment. This guy has managed to create a factory of leaders in a nuclear submarine, nothing less. This is the story I prefer to tell the most, having tried it myself in business, with very impressive results. I also wrote an article on the subject, titled The Colossal Impact of Leader-Leader Relationships.

Note that leader-leader relationships do not only go top down but also buttom up and horizontally. We can treat our boss the way we would like him to behave, and the same goes for co-workers.

A culture that leads people to develop their influence

Not everyone knows how to ask for something in a proper manner. In 16 years, my son will probably ask me for permission to use my car this way “Hey pops, give me the keys to your car”, and it will be with great pleasure that I will refuse him as a matter of principle because that is not a way to ask for something.

So my colleagues and I have devised a process in 3 simple steps that we like to call “How to convince anyone of anything“. This is often scary to managers, and in the end, they end up thanking us because it will save them 1 to 2 days of busy work a week.

If one has to innovate, one must be able to explain why he would do it. A company will not fund all the ideas that come to people’s mind. In fact, most companies will not be interested in people’s ideas until they can attach a dollar sign to it. So let’s see how we can improve that. It’s good for both managers and employees. There are 3 steps

1. Make sure your idea fits into their agenda

Everyone has an agenda, especially high-ranking people in businesses. They have goals to achieve, aspirations, and KPIs. They also have a gun to their head (figuratively speaking) that is brandished by someone higher than them. If you want to convince them of something, you will need to empathize and try to understand what THEY need to succeed. If you offer them something diametrically opposed to where they are going, it is almost guaranteed that you will have a no. So, basically, you have to see how the idea you are trying to sell helps your manager succeed.

2. Do the work for them

I know I know. It means having to work to get what you want. What we mean here is: give them all the information they need to make the right decision. If they do not have the information, they can not make that decision. They have things to do, they are busy, and have a gun to their head. Finding information to support your request is at the bottom of their to-do list.

There is plenty of information you can provide: costs, return on investment (tangible, like money or time saved, or less tangible, like other benefits such as increased retention, engagement, etc.), comparisons with what the competition does, etc.

A quick and efficient way to get this information is to fill out a Business Model Canvas. Here is a simplified version that we have created to gather important data when it comes to selling ideas. It takes 30 minutes to complete, you can do it with your colleagues, and it allows you to ask yourself the right questions, especially those we often forget.

Problem: What problem are you trying to fix?
Why? : Why does this problem need to be fixed?
Customer segment: For whom do you solve the problem? Who will this solution affect? (Customers, other departments, other teams, users)
Distribution channels: By what means will you set up your solution, communicate its value?
Solution: A summary of the solution you propose
Cost Structure: What will be the costs? What will cost what?
Key indicators: What should be measured to determine if the idea is successful? (Ex: Number of visits, number of users, traffic, customer satisfaction)
Return on Investment: A projection of the benefits you expect your idea to generate. (Ex: Increased customer satisfaction, increased sales, increased revenue by 3% to 6%, reduced workload, save 1 hour per day for employees).

Basically, when trying to convince someone of your idea, make sure that the only thing they have to do is accept and sign. Do not give them the burden of having to do the work for you. And even if your manager needs approval from above, you’ll have given him all the arguments he needs to convince his own boss.

3. Make it so that saying YES is easier than saying NO

Or, the alternative to this title: make it so that it becomes a bad idea, or completely stupid to say no. The goal is to put forward what it would cost NOT to say yes. Take every conceivable risk of not implementing your idea, make them visible, and known to everyone. You can even create a risk chart with your team or department. And when you make your request, with all your ROI information, give them all the risks it would represent not to go ahead with your idea. Risks that are known to all.

At this point, if the risks are higher than the costs, it is very likely that you will have a green light to move forward with your innovation or change. It is always possible for the answer to be no. But if one of the risks raised becomes reality, you can always tell your boss “We told you so”.

Encourage small controlled experiments

Most companies are allergic to chaos and uncertainty. They want to be CERTAIN, before making a decision, that it is the right decision. The problem is that no exhaustive analysis or study provides as much data as trying something out.

So, if you have almost convinced your boss to go with your idea, but that he’s is still hesitant, because it could be risky and we aren’t sure of anything (and also, gun to their head), offer him to do a small controlled experiment.

The two main advantages of these experiments are that they validate your hypotheses, and they test your riskiest assumptions.

SMALL: On a small scale. An experiment can be done on a small group of users, or by a small team. In technology, you can create a prototype on a local server with a partial database, for example.

CONTROLLED: An experiment is controlled when it has a time limit, success criteria, and a list of things you want to verify. You can even have a budget (in dollars or allotted time).

When the experiment is over and you have collected enough data, there are 3 possible paths:

1. Stop everything, we were wrong. It’s a good thing we did not continue, and we did not lose a ton of money on this idea.
2. Stop everything, and we move to the overall implementation because we were right and our assumptions were validated.
3. Another controlled experiment is required to collect additional data and or verify other or new assumptions.

Conclusion

A company that can gain and own these 4 mindsets has no excuse not to change, improve and innovate. A team mastering these 4 mindsets naturally has the necessary qualities to be a team of intrapreneurs. It could help you innovate where your competition does not. But hurry up. Your competition definitely is already innovating.

At GoPyrate!, we offer workshops to help teams acquire these reflexes and mindsets, and we offer practical tools to support them. Feel free to contact me if you want a conference on this topic in your organization!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

Employee empowerment has the wind in its sails, but it also has certain limitations. Agency, however, goes much further in the development of your employees.

Empowerment

Definition of “Empowerment“
In the sphere of management and organizational theory, “empowerment” often refers loosely to processes for giving subordinates (or workers generally) greater discretion and resources: distributing control in order to better serve both customers and the interests of employing organizations.

Empowerment, according to Wikipedia

The concept of empowerment is not new, but I have mainly heard about it in the last 5 years. Companies, seeing that the command and control approach is equivalent to accompanying each employee towards the door one performance review at the time, changed their mind and began to think that giving more room for decisions and responsibilities to their employees could have a positive impact on their motivation and therefore their performance.

None of this is false. If we trust Daniel H. Pink’s works, intrinsic motivation is composed of three aspects: mastery, meaning, autonomy. It is this autonomy that is aimed at when a company or a manager take initiatives towards the empowerment of their employees.

The problem with empowerment

The great problem with empowerment is that this increase in discretion and decision-making power is granted to employees by a hierarchically superior force. A manager can choose to move forward with the empowerment of his employees, usually with the goal of increasing motivation, growth, and performance. Corporate empowerment is often an initiative of management, which is spread across various departments via a management and training structure.

That being said, what happens if a manager who is a big fan of empowerment leaves and is replaced by someone who is quite less benevolent? No more empowerment. The organization decides that it does not work? No more empowerment. The organization is bought by a multinational corporation that “does not believe in these things”? No more empowerment. And the fallout from these change of minds will be dangerous. One does not take back the freedom of motivated people without suffering the consequences.

In short, empowerment exists in a relationship of power. And the name says it. “I elect to give you more power.” I empower you. Captain David Marquet explains this problem very well in his book “Turn the Ship Around”, but through leader-follower relationships.

He argues that many leaders have the reflex of empowering their collaborators, but the consequence is that this further strengthens their own leader status, as well as the follower’s status. If the leader must be there, and must voluntarily and consciously confer more power to his followers, their empowerment is directly dependent on the will of the leader.

So, basically, empowerment consolidates, strengthens and maintains the status of followers of your peers, because they can not give themselves these powers. It will never turn them into natural leaders. Here lies the limit of the concept of empowerment in businesses.

Agency

Definition of “Agency”
In the social sciences and philosophy, agency is the faculty of action of a being; his ability to act on the world, things, beings, to transform or influence them. In sociology, agency is the capacity to act, as opposed to what the structure imposes.

Structure and Agency
In social sciences, there is an ongoing debate about the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Structures are sets of devices that influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the ability of individuals to act independently of social structures and to freely make their own choice.

Agency and Structure and Agency, translated from French on Wikipedia

Agency is the ability of a person to make decisions and act on their free will, and to influence their immediate environment. It is more natural in some people, less in others, but it is something that one can work on and develop.

We can’t remove the agency of a person, unlike empowerment. You can certainly prevent someone from exercising agency, however, at our own peril, it would be like depriving a plant of air, water and sun. A person who takes a lot of initiatives and innovates shows agency. Limiting this person’s agency basically means turning him into a pawn, an executant.

Hierarchical and corporate structures are not always tolerant of people’s agency. As defined above, agency is the ability to act as opposed to a structure. But employees with a strong sense of agency will be those who stir good trouble. Those who question for the common good. Those who will go around or bend a few rules to create new ones, or bring value in a way no one would have ever imagined. Those who will take over part of the structure that does not work for them to improve or adapt it to their reality, resulting in the optimization of their team’s work and its efficiency. And all of this without asking permission.

Now, imagine an entire team that demonstrates an increased sense of agency, and that receives the research and development mandate in a company. The potential of such a team will be dangerous for the competition.

The advantages of agency according to GoPyrate

In our workshops, we like to tell the participants that we are there to help them develop their super powers. Because our goal is always to increase the agency of a team. The techniques taught are all meant to involve more the team in their own work as well as in business processes. 

This is also the reason why we push to use real cases that the team is (or has been) involved with. It helps ground the teachings their own realities. Every company is slightly different and, as trainers, we can’t cover every variant. But your own realities can. We don’t even adapt our teachings to your realities, but we help the team do it. That way they own what they learn a lot more, and their agency develops as their confidence with the material grows and as they can directly sees how all theses ideas relate to them in a very concrete fashion.

It’s all about growing their agency.

By capitalizing on agency development, teams become more autonomous, more engaged and more innovation-driven. They also learn to communicate more with management and become more involved with business goals instead of just executing orders.

You pay your experts quite a lot, better make sure that they can contribute to the best of their abilities.

Our training is very freeform. The first thing we’ll do will be a small retrospective: We look at what they tried so far and how did it go, what are the things that they’d like to improve at work, what are the greatest challenges. From that short session, we’ll have all the priorities of your team, and all the material we need to improve on what they learned as well as what new ideas to introduce.

That’s the key with our workshops : It’s all about you, your team, your company, your needs. 

It works well with engineers, but also with managers, salespeople, HR people, etc… Most of our clients are teams of managers.

Training a team takes time. In fact, it takes quite a lot of time outside the time we’re there. We’re just the tip of the iceberg. We aim to teach principles rather than hard techniques. We want people to understand how this work and what is the value for them, and then we let them experiment over weeks. That’s good for any company.

You need people that are curious, stimulated, and bent on improving. When the employees stop being alive, the company itself is moribund. Good training is stimulating and give them a jolt. 

If you’d like to know more about GoPyrate services, visit www.gopyrate.com

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

When I was asked (with a little too much enthusiasm) to make a speech, I started by saying “My departure is not bad news”. And it’s true for several reasons:

• I felt that I had done what I had to do for my department.
• I felt that I was bringing less and less value, having pushed the autonomy of my teams to its peak.
• The projects I had that were parallel to my work contributed more to my motivation and my fulfillment. I just decided to focus on what was bringing me the most value.
• This job helped to establish my Purpose and Meaning in life. It would have been absolutely counterproductive not to go all the way.

Having to explain this made me think a lot…

My problems with the turnover rate

As a manager, I was boasting that our department had an excellent turnover rate. And my departure was going to increase it. Yet my departure, as I said before my colleagues, was good news.

That’s when my thinking started and I discovered several problems with the age-old concept of turnover rate.

The turnover rate is reactive

It’s a bit of the same problem that I’ve already denounced with exit interviews. Although the turnover rate may be an interesting metric for many, it has little meaning over a short period of time, and requires people to leave their job for this metric to “work”.

But this metric provides no context. It is only an observation after the fact.

The turnover rate suggests that change is not welcome

It’s well known that you get what you measure. In this case, we measure the whether or not people stay in the company. It seems, at first glance, to be the right thing.

That being said, is the company moving forward? Are people progressing in their work? Have people had promotions? We do not know. But we know how many people have stayed.

We want people to stay in office. It is the objective. And that brings me to my biggest problem.

The turnover rate does not ensure that people are thriving

If the goal is for people to stay in office, what do we do with people who are miserable but still stay? And for whose who do not like their work? Who have aspirations? We tie them to their chair and cross our fingers?

Too often, I’ve seen companies keep people in a role they did not like, because they “didn’t want to lose them”, and guess what happened? They lost them much earlier then they thought.

For me, stagnation means death. The death of motivation, the death of self-fulfillment, and personal development. I’m the kind of person whose role is changing extremely fast. I need it. Can a company that optimizes for a good turnover rate help me in my journey?

Or, will the company try to keep me in a role I do not like, hoping that I bring as much value?

The turnover rate will soon be irrelevant

I have once stayed 8 years in the same company. Twenty years ago it was commonplace, nowadays, especially in IT, it’s almost unthinkable. And the trend will continue, and spread to other business domains.

People are increasingly looking for meaning in their work, and are now willing to make many sacrifices to fulfill their daily lives. Labor relations are expected to be shorter, or in another format. Companies that are very good (I will not even talk about companies of dubious morality) may have turnover rates of 60% in a few years, and it will be commonplace.

The question to ask is: are people leaving because of us businesses? Or do they leave because they no longer need us, to do things bigger than they could do with us?

When we’ll get there, I think the turnover rate will become irrelevant. People will grow, find meaning and achieve their dreams. The questions that companies will have to ask themselves will be:

• People who leave to do greater things, are they doing it in spite of us, or with us?
• How did we contribute to the emancipation of these people?
• Will these people be willing to refer people, or even find those who could replace them? Or have we broken this relationship by holding them back or preventing them from fulfulling their dreams?

In summary: Have we created an ambassador?

So I propose the emancipation rate

If I want to pretend to cultivate the awesomeness of people, I can not just keep people in office. I absolutely do not think this is beneficial. People with career aspirations will not all be able to develop in their role forever.

Isn’t it our job, we, the companies and their representatives, to make sure that our valued employees grow and thrive? Even if it’s in spite of us and our needs?

I know a ton and a half of companies that would rather have miserable employees in their jobs rather than help them grow, even if it could mean they might find work elsewhere. But I refuse their reality.

I sincerely believe that a happy person elsewhere is better than a miserable person who stays in office.

I sincerely believe that it is the duty of every manager and every company to raise people beyond their potential and their motivation to the risk of seeing them leave.

Will my recent departure bring a shadow on the company as it increases the turnover rate? I am one of those people who used his role as a stepping stone to accomplish important things for myself, for others, and for the world of work. I’m still talking about Marine Press saying “We”. I am still an ambassador for this company, I still refer candidates. It’s still my baby. I have elected myself as an ambassador for them. 

If I count myself among those who were under my responsibility, my emancipation rate is 75%. 75% of the people on my team who voluntarily left did it to flourish in other projects, and no longer needed the company for this to happen.

It’s a much more interesting metric for me. It proves that the company has done its part for happiness and fulfillment at work.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

“Do you have a minute?”

Who did not experience this situation? A boss or an HR representative wants to talk to us, and asks, “Do you have a minute?” as he heads towards a conference room or an office.

Aren’t these the worst 30 seconds of our life? “What have I done wrong, what will he tell me, I will have to update my resumé“. There’s a lot going on in someone’s mind between this question and the moment they sit on the chair.

And in the end, he just wanted to know how you were doing.

The reflexes of the world of work

The reflexes of the world of work have corrupted the manager-employee relationships. So many people are met by their boss only to receive bad news or “constructive criticism”. It’s now a reflex. My boss wants to talk to me, it can only be bad.

Except that…

Not all work environments are like that. Where I work, managers care about their people. It’s my job to care for them. My title (which I myself chose) is People Manager. My role is to create an environment where everyone can be at their best. And by that, I don’t mean “making the most out of them”. I mean them being at their natural best.

In short, I make sure that everyone:

• Are satisfied with their work
• Are motivated by their work
• Feel in control of their work
• Are going in the direction they wish to go 

To this end, I asked everyone what they need to be at their best. I know their criteria of success on topics such as culture, the work itself, the physical work environment, and working conditions. In short, what they need is known to me, and it’s my job to make sure they have what they need, or that they can get it themselves. It is a common understanding that we have.

And despite that…

Guilty of caring for people

A few days later, our Human Resources Director meets with the same colleague. 

“HR. Oh oh! What’s happening?”

Our HR Director wanted to make sure he was doing well, after a month with us. She wanted to ask him how the onboarding process was, and how it was going to the colleagues.

It was the first time in her life he was asked something like that after a month of work. It was the first time someone from HR was doing a follow-up with him.

But how did this happen?

We are at the point where we have to announce our intentions in advance when we want to talk to someone we care about.

We are at the point where a gesture of good will and caring for someone causes a reaction of fear and anxiety.

“Do you have a minute” is now the trigger of a Pavlovian reflex of fear at work. A corporative and organizational post-traumatic stress disorder.

I’m not trying to find who’s guilty. I’m looking for solutions. It’s our job, your job, benevolent managers, to break this.

What are you ready to do to fix this?

Managers of this world, it is your job to destroy this anti-pattern.

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

A good part of my career’s antifragility resides, amongst other things, in the strength of my network. Mostly thanks to LinkedIn.

There are at least a few thousand articles on the topic of online networking. The good thing about this is that it allows readers to try multiple things and do short and controlled experiments, which is something one must master in order to become antifragile. The bad thing is, well, there are so many tips and hints everywhere, and some of them contradict one another.

So I’m not speaking as a LinkedIn expert. I’m speaking as someone who had no network a few years back, and who now has a very strong network, and all of this without being an expert. I experimented, I kept what worked, and discarded what didn’t.

How do I know it worked? Not necessarily because of the number of people in my network, but because the number of random people who would reach for me and say things such as “Your profile is so inspiring! How would anyone not want to work with someone like you?“

So, here is what worked for me.

1. Surround yourself with people who believe what you believe

While adding recruiters will definitely help you in case of a catastrophe, it isn’t enough to become some kind of influencer. Unless you are in the recruitment field, that is. You must find people who connect with your values. My first tip is to join some LinkedIn groups that are dedicated to the topics that relate to what you do (or what you want to do), and start discussions.

When someone replies, send them an invitation to join your network, with a nice presentation message. That’s a good way to do it. After you added someone, LinkedIn will also suggest other similar profiles that you can choose to add. 

Maintaining your network is a lot like leadership, hygiene and working out. It’s not something you do once or twice a year. Take a few minutes every day to do this. You will see a great difference after a few months.

2. Impressing people is not enough – inspire them!

Something that you need to remember is that your LinkedIn profile isn’t your résumé.

A while ago, most of my LinkedIn profile was a listing of my past experiences, and for sure, it was impressing people. It was somewhat efficient, but I thought it was missing something. A human touch. It was too cold, too strategic, too “this is what they want to hear”.

I then deleted everything and started over, and used my profile to tell people not about where I’m from, but where I’m going. I stopped talking mostly about my past experiences. I still kept the job history of course but I focused on what I learned from them rather than the responsibilities I had. I rewrote my whole profile by keeping my objectives, my why, in mind. My passion, my vocation, my why. And you’ll see that my summary contains a very nice Golden Circle (Why, How, What), inspired by Simon Sinek‘s work.

It was a game changer. Not only did people start writing to let me know of how inspiring my profile was, but they started asking for help and tips to improve their own profile. Sometimes they write just to let me know they wish we’d work together one day. I was impressed at how much a human touch could make a difference.

If you want more insights on how to improve your LinkedIn summary, I highly recommend downloading Jena Viviano‘s Ultimate LinkedIn Summary Template. It’s free, and as a bonus, you’ll see my face in it, as Jena displayed my own summary as one of her multiple examples.

3. Find content that supports what you believe, and share it

Nowadays, I’m really into organizational culture, humanization of workplaces, modern leadership and such. This is my niche, and everything I share supports my beliefs in these fields. People who are also interested in these topics, and believe what I believe, love it and share my content as well.

There are many ways to gather relevant content on a given topic. Medium.com is an incredible source of articles. You can also create Google alerts on any kind of combination of words and it will notify you when related content is indexed. And just as I stated above, LinkedIn Groups will also come very handy to discover new content.

For sharing the content you found and like, I suggest using a tool such as Social Pilot or Buffer to organize the content you want to share on social media. These tools can automatically post for you at any day and time you deem the best. Very handy for when you’re busy working!

You like what you’re reading?
Book us for a conference on this topic!

4. Become an everyman’s leader on LinkedIn

An everyman’s leader is someone who helps as soon as there is an opportunity to help. You’ll find plenty of those on LinkedIn. I try to be this guy. In my case, half the time, it’s just people who reach for me and want to have a cup of coffee with me to get to know me. I’m always happy to oblige! It also creates more opportunities to help.

One very easy way to help someone it to introduce them to someone else who might help them more efficiently than you could. Both these people will remember how they met, and they’ll remember you.

It’s important to never ask for anything in return. If you do something for someone else only to ask something back, you’re doing this for the wrong reasons, and you’re certainly not being a leader. And by helping others for the sake of helping others, know that in the eventuality that you might desperately need something, your network will be there to pay it back to you.

For more information on everyman’s leaders, and other leadership roles, read this article by my friend Maurice Lefebvre: Of the 3 Leader Roles, Which One Are You Perfect For?

5. Engage with people

Recently, I figured that asking questions on LinkedIn was bringing me a lot of likes, comments and views. Not that I care really for those: comments, likes and views are less important than helping people or generating discussions, but it’s a good metric of success.

I simply figured that by asking questions, I was creating new opportunities to help people. And it does.

Also, observe what’s happening in your network. Read the comments on other people’s posts. There are tons of people there that could benefit from knowing something (or someone) you know. Don’t wait for people to ask. Reach for them directly!

In conclusion

This quote is one of the most important about networking, and there’s a very good leadership dimension to it that I really like:

The true value of networking doesn’t come from how many people we can meet but rather how many people we can introduce to others.

– Simon Sinek

Help others, and do it because it’s the right thing to do. This habit is not a networking habit, but a leadership habit, so it’s a pretty good one to adopt! People will eventually reach directly for you. That will be the first indication that your network is getting pretty strong!

Olivier Fortier

Owner of Primos Populi, partner and coach at Moabi. As a former manager, I prefer to use a “people first, the rest will follow” kind of approach. My favorite topics are organizational culture, safe work environments, and lowering the center of gravity of the decision making process. I cultivate people’s awesomeness.

www.primospopuli.com

What I notice is that what differentiate these models is often far less interesting than what they have in common. We can see these commonality in their approaches to evolution and in their application in real companies.

A portrait of the new face of 21st century organizations is slowly emerging through the fog of competing models. At its core are the elements shared across several models, often completed by individual elements taken from different models to better customize the approach to a particular business context.

Characteristics of the 21st century organization

People-driven

Human beings come to the forefront of modern organizations. Employees now emerge as assets to leverage rather than resources to manipulate. This is made possible by energizing employee development and fostering leadership across the organization.

Employee development has moved from being an afterthought to being a core business strategy. Direct mentoring and coaching (two different things) are replacing the occasional two-days training seminar. Employees are exposed to a variety of situations and tasks, often across several domains, so they can learn from practice and increase their awareness of all facets of the organization. The more versatile M-shaped generalists and T-shaped specialists are replacing the I-shaped super specialists.

Such employees, with a better understanding of the organization’s realities and goals, need far less supervision to work toward the organization’s vision and are better suited to self-organize. The tendency is to start seeing them as adults rather than children, and to entrust them with the power to make their own decisions for the greater good of the organization.

It is the duty of every leader to foster the development of new leaders across the organization. With increased accountability (different from increased responsibilities, i.e. more tasks), motivation and talent comes into better focus, and emerging leaders can be mentored properly.

These new leaders are not necessarily moved to management positions. There is a tremendous advantage of having an organization strewn with leaders in every type of positions. It creates a more independent organization, better able to manage itself and react to change without the need for heavy rules and bureaucratic supervision.

User-centric

All work, regardless of its nature, is done for the benefit of another party. That party is called the user, a term coming from software development. Delivering value to users now becomes the focal point of our endeavours.

Users also becomes the driving force behind innovation: users have pain points and innovation efforts are meant to address them through user-centred design. Most approaches calls for a closer relationship with users to better understand their needs and some, such as Design Thinking and Lean Startup, advocate sending people to follow users on-site to better empathize with their experience.

The net benefit from going user-centric is to limit waste by avoiding doing work nobody needs (and different from doing what they want).

Evolving organisms

The metaphor of the company as a machine is done. People are not replaceable cogs and machines do not evolve and adapt: they become obsolete.

Companies are now seen as evolving ecosystems. Rather than fixed five-years plans, growth and direction are set much more organically. Growth occurs to follow markets and opportunities, and unproductive areas shrink naturally. That evolution is not necessarily the result of top-driven initiatives, but usually is the product of a multitude of micro-decisions taken at the local level to respond to market changes. The result is a constant adaptation and evolution, less traumatic to an organization.

Same goes for jobs and positions. The idea of flexible, transitory roles rather than fixed jobs is slowly emerging. These roles are like hats, worn by the best person for it at the moment. They are meant to move to another person as the context changes. People are hired for cultural compatibility and talent, and then developed for them to fit a variety of roles. Traditional management positions are absorbed by those roles, and managerial roles adopt a servant-leadership approach and focus on removing obstacles and managing systems rather micro-managing people or work.

Network of communities with distributed leadership

People organize in interconnected networks, not into neat hierarchies. Even in bureaucratic organizations, the most powerful relationships are not hierarchical: they are your connexions to the right people.

Modern organizations recognize that fact and organize themselves in small networked communities (teams, workgroups, friends), who interconnect with other groups along organic lines. Individuals can be members of several communities at once and act as natural bridges between them.

In such a model, leadership and decision-making is distributed across the organization. It does not mean that there is not a place for the people traditionally known as upper management. Their role however has a more outward focus, guiding the organization across far-ranging decisions in the face of market realities. While the final decision on important issues still lies with them, voices from the whole organization can be heard.

Self-management through platforms

Self-organization of individuals and small groups has been championed by agile approaches since the very beginning. As teams move from 3–7 people squads to semi-autonomous 10–15 people communities, both self-organization and self-management become a necessity. Communities are free (and accountable) to manage their own finances, personnel, and day-to-day activities. This allows for much faster response to emerging situations.

To give governance to those self-managed communities, a model similar to franchising is slowly appearing. A controlling entity (headquarters, board of director, or head of division) creates a platform consisting of boundaries, constraints, shared information and tools. Dependent communities “plug in” into this platform, adopting its rules, and are otherwise free to self-manage. Platforms can be stacked: an organization can create a platform for its communities, and some of those communities can create their own to regulate what liberties individual members can take.

The beauty of this system is its adaptability: scale can range from small teams to large companies, the level of control can range from broad strokes to very precise, and staked platforms can easily respect the boundaries of parent platforms. However, the platforms are not set in stone: the system works if the groups using those platforms can influence its evolution through a feedback loop.

Small scale experiments for innovation and risk management

Innovation and creativity are the lifeblood of business success. In our volatile, rapidly changing world, innovation is not a luxury but rather the path to continuous relevance and growth. However, innovation is traditionally seen as risky and many organizations either limit it in a debilitating way or avoid it altogether. An alternative approach? Think small.

The era of large tasks is definitively gone, and while large-scale endeavours are still being undertaken, they are conceived as small mostly independent pieces that each bring tangible value.

Little or no dependancies remove the risk of catastrophic, cascading failure. Reduced size reduces risks associated with costs. These factors allow for a greater resilience to the occasional failure, a faster recovery speed and thus a better tolerance for innovation-driving experiments.

Degrees of change

While all of these characteristics can be seen as desirable, not all organizations have the willingness or tolerance to adopt them all, especially at once.

Many of the approaches named in the introduction call for a complete adoption of all of their characteristics. This creates a severe trauma on even the best prepared organizations. The reaction seen all too often is the lip service adoption of these new precepts as an additional layer over the old structure.

Leaving models aside, it is possible for an organization to gauge its interest and capacity to adopt the six characteristics above. Sometimes only a handful of small changes can bring a lot of value to an organization and prepare it better for further changes down the line.

One thing to keep in mind is that organizational change works much better by subtraction than addition: removing bureaucratic hurdles, red tape, and unnecessary processes and regulations is far easier and less traumatic on the organization than adding layers of new processes. It also has the advantage of better preparing the space for new ideas and approaches.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

But it does not have to be that way. Very large companies such as Google, Apple, GE, Lockheed-Martin and so many others make good use of intrapreneurs to innovate in a manner similar to startups, without as many risks.

Intrapreneurs share the thirst for exploration and strange waters that their entrepreneur cousins have, while also enjoying breaking the rules of the calcified organizations they work for. Back in the early ’80s, Apple’s Macintosh team took up the pirate imagery and followed the maxim “Better to be a pirate than join the Navy”. That same renegade spirit inhabit intrapreneur teams everywhere to this day.

What are intrapreneurs and why should you care?

Intrapreneurs are people inside an organization who act with the creative freedom and low red tape environment of startups. Intrapreneurs are most often used as R&D teams, but the mindset can be powerful even elsewhere in a company.

Any kind of companies can use intrapreneur groups. The idea is to create a semi-autonomous cell unaffected by the processes, politics and scrutiny of the rest of the organization. In essence, intrapreneurs give any company the best aspects of a startup. It is no wonder Lockheed-Martin maintains its Skunkworks experimental group since the ’60s despite following a very traditional manufacturing model for the rest of the company or for GE to swear by their FastWork teams to drive innovation while the rest of the company still follow rigid Six Sigma principles.

Find the right people

Not everyone can make a good intrapreneur. Most people who function well within a large company will have trouble operating as an intrapreneur, even if they believe otherwise.

The characteristics of a good intrapreneur are similar to those of a good pirate:

They crave freedom and brotherhood. Some people need to make their own way. Independence is a defining trait of an intrapreneur, but lone wolves will be a problem. You need to identify creative troublemakers with a knack for gathering like-minded people. They are your pirates.

They enjoy chaos. Good intrapreneurs focus on results, experiments and thrive on changes of plans. Routine bores them.

They’re not afraid to fight. Intrapreneurs will constantly have to justify their existence, fight for budget and even debate approaches within their group. Sparks will fly. That’s good. They need that energy.

They sail into storms laughing. Intrapreneurs will constantly face challenges, sometimes insurmountable ones. It is not enough for them to be unafraid of these challenge. They need to actually enjoy rough waters.

They deliver. For all their freedom and chaos, a pirate who does not follow the rules or does not deliver will end up marooned somewhere. Same goes for their captain: a captain who does not deliver on riches will face an abrupt change in management.

For many a manager, putting together a team of intrapreneurs will feel like gathering all the nightmare employees. Whoever will be their point of contact with the rest of the company needs to share at least some of the characteristics of intrapreneurs.

In all cases, avoid imposing the entrepreneur lifestyle to someone who doesn’t want it. Many workers today are creature of habit, order and comfort.

Give them what they need

Above all, pirates need freedom and the open sea. Your intrapreneurs are no different. You cannot force your intrapreneurs to deal with the typical processes and hierarchy of your company. They need freedom and space to operate.

Funding the team is an issue. As long as the team can deliver for the budget they are granted, they should be left alone. However funding the team in the traditional way will draw the attention of finance people. Finance requires order, has a low tolerance for the necessary chaos of the innovation process. If the intrapreneur team is in itself an experiment, then I recommend funding it off discretionary budgets.

It can be a good idea to set up the team in a different building so they are cut-off from unwanted attention and to make it very clear that the team exists in a pocket universe of sorts. It helps them focus and detach themselves from corporate habits that kill innovation. It also removes them from the scrutiny of envious co-workers, scheming executives and overzealous auditors. You do not want to attract the corporate immune response. The natural enemies of intrapreneurs are jealous people and bean-counters.

Finally they need to understand the best approaches for this kind of work. Agile thinking is highly recommended as it gives the right mindset to thrive in such an environment. Lean Startup is a lightweight exploratory process framework that fits perfectly intrapreneur teams as it mixes the chaos of exploration with just enough structure and discipline to produce valuable data and tangible results. Training in either, or better in both, does not take much time or budget. However, while these theoretical frameworks can be learned quickly, the real learning will be done in practice. Coaches are a good way to help new teams adjust to these radically different ways of working and can be a good investment to help a team pick up steam quickly.

Make them suffer a little

While it is important to give the team what they need, there can be a big difference between want and need. Intrapreneur teams do not need a nice office, brand new equipment or infinite budgets. Do not be soft on milestones either: People work better when some constraints are in play. They need to be creative to deal with these constraints and still produce what you ask of them. For having lived it a few time, I believe that the ambiance provided by squeaky chairs, second-hand tools and leaky pipes help feed the roguish adventurer vibe you will find in many startups. Think of it that way: If your people want to play pirates, they need to learn to live like pirates, scurvy and all.

It should not come as a surprise: the theory of constraints tells us that a reduced number of small limiting factors help us focus and achieve more. The key is to be able to identify constraints who will act as propulsors for the team and those who will be useless inhibitors.

Don’t pamper your intrapreneurs, but don’t torture them for no reason either. After all, you want them to succeed. Setting ridiculous deadlines and goals designed to be beyond the team’s reach, constantly shuffling the team’s composition, micromanaging the team or forcing them to multitask are not helping them in any way. These constraints only help an insecure incompetent boss feeling self-important.

Making them suffer a bit has the additional effect of deflecting attention from your intrapreneurs. Their position, even if they benefit from special treatment, will not seem enviable. Of course, your pirates won’t have it any other way.

Manage the system, not their work

It is extremely important that you do not try to manage either your intrapreneurs or their work. Let them self-organize. If needed, a training on agile thinking will teach them how.

What you need to do is create boundaries. Set some rules. Grant them a fixed budget and some milestones. Schedule regular presentations so they can show their progress. Beyond that, cut the red tape and get out of their way. Remain available in case you are needed.

These boundaries and rules create a platform to support their work. Change the platform if needed, but don’t bend those rules. Projects are expected to go over budget or to require more time. Innovation teams are usually under far more scrutiny than others and have to defend their very existence. While other groups can afford to be late or go over budget, your intrapreneur team cannot.

Again, the analogy with pirates can be useful here. Privateers for examples were pirates sanctioned by governments through letter of marque, legitimizing their activities as long as they restricted themselves to attack only enemy ships. The Republic of Pirates that thrived in Nassau in the 18th century is another example of how simple boundaries can allow highly individualistic teams to work for a common goal.

It is possible that at first your team will miss a milestone simply because they are not used to self-organizing efficiently and respect constraints. The team needs to understand that those light constraints are the price to pay for their level of freedom.

Give them clear milestones

An intrapreneurially team is not an out-of-view playground where people and money disappear to, hopefully, come out with something useful. Make sure intrapreneur are accountable for their work. “Success” in a team who’s devoted to experimentation is not necessary a functional product. Sometimes the only result will be learning quickly that an idea should be discarded.

Intrapreneur are accountable to answer three simple questions, who act as milestones. Those answers are “yes/no”, backed with explanation. A “no” to any of those questions means that this particular endeavour needs to stop right away.

It is important for the intrapreneurs to focus on one of these questions at a time, and in the right order.

Is it feasible? is the very first question to answer. The timeframe to get that answer must be kept relatively small, from two to eight weeks. “Yes” requires the team to have some sort of working proof-of-concept prototype. If after two months there is no prototype, it’s time to look elsewhere. That constrain can be adjusted but I advise to keep it tight.

Is it viable? Making a product commercially viable is the goal of a business. A process that creates diamonds from seawater in “only” 5000 years, a 3000$ disposable camera, an environmentally-friendly cleaning product using a manufacturing process with the carbon-footprint of a small country or super-silent break pads made of material that can only be mined on a asteroid can be valuable from an academic point of view, but are not viable from a business standpoint. This second questions should arrive quickly after the first.

Is it scalable? or can we turn a profit with it? Unit viability does not mean that it can be produced in enough quantity to be profitable at the business level. Scalable means different things for different businesses: an artisan bread-maker and a disposable plastic cup manufacturer will have wildly different interpretations of the word. But in both cases the question remains valid. If the business is not able to produce enough at a reasonable cost to turn a profit, then even the best of ideas is nothing but dead weight. Again, keep the time between the second and the third milestone question short.

It might sound counter-productive, but as a business you want your intrapreneurs to answer “no” to these questions. Each “no” is potentially millions of dollars saved on a product that will not be profitable. Every time they cannot answer “no” to any of those questions, then you have good potential product.

Once you get a “Yes” to each of these milestone questions, then it is time for them to build a complete prototype, so the kinks can be identified and smoothed, and potential risks clearly identified and remedied before actual production starts. The time required for this milestone will vary greatly depending of what you are building.

The time to sail is now

Intrapreneur teams are cheap and easy to set up, as they should. This means that there are very few risks in experimenting with them. Intrapreneur teams do not start perfect, and aside from Agile thinking and the Lean Startup process, there is little formal training that can teach them to run efficiently. Most of their processes will be learned by doing, so the sooner they start the better. There is no better time than the present.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

From toxic start to soured safety

Toxic safety usually stems from a misunderstanding of what safety is. People coming from organizations that were run by fear often overcompensate when they come in contact with the idea of a safe environment. Their focus is on trying to make themselves safe rather than creating a safe environment for all. At other times, herd anonymity or aligning to a shared “party line” is confounded with safety.

A well-meant but clumsy implementation and overcompensation are responsible for a large number of toxic starts. It is also common to see in “reformed” organizations the original culture of fear being covered with a fresh coat of paint. The same (or worse) practices are still used “for your own safety”.

In other cases, a safety culture can become toxic over time. I call that souring. It is a rarer event, but it can happen if there is a large change of people coupled with poor understanding or poor adhesion to the culture. Souring can also be done deliberately by a strong manipulator.

The four types of toxic safety

I have encountered my fair share of toxic safety in my career. Over the years I started to lump them into four categories I named the Möbius Ring, the Untouchables, the Dead Flame and the Kumbaya Effect.

The Möbius Ring

Whether they are run by committee or whether decision-making requires consensus, some organizations seems to talk in circle forever with accountability to move anything forward. I call this type of safety The Möbius Ring since no matter where you try to go, you always end up in the same place.

The toxic safety in the Möbius Ring resides in the large number of “decision-makers”. Meetings filled with scores of people, committees within committees, large number of people with veto, and the comfort of anonymity that comes from being hidden in a large group of people.

Meetings are all-important in Möbius Ring organizations. These meetings gobble up most, if not all, time that should be spent of doing things. To the end of my days I’ll get hives attacks every time I hear “This is a meeting. It’s neither the time nor the place to decide anything”.

Open organizations (like Red Hat or closer to home, Quantum Monkeys) rely on debates of ideas to function well, but open themselves to the dangers of spiraling arguments that never get resolved. This is a form of Möbius Ring. These organizations need people who keep an eye on these arguments and who can break them when they stop being productive.

Luckily, the Möbius Ring is not very damaging to people. It’s worst problem is terrible inefficiency which can, however, be fatal to organizations. Arguing oneself to death is the sad fate of many well-meaning socially-conscious groups who adopt egalitarian or blameless management systems.

The Untouchables

A little over 2000 years ago, in the Roman republic, the tribune of the pleb was a political office open to commoners. The pleb had the power to convene and preside over people’s assembly, intervene on the behalf of the people on legal matters and to veto the consuls and other magistrates (who were nobles) when the interests of the common people were endangered. As progressive as it was for the era, the tribune of the plebs was not a very popular man with noble politicians. To make sure the tribune would live for more than five minutes after being nominated, he was made sacrosanct, meaning that anyone harming him or preventing him from moving freely (most of his powers required him to be physically present at the scene) could be put to death. Now that’s power!

Untouchables-style toxic safety grants almost similar powers to people. Under this type of culture, people are not only never blamed but also never held accountable for anything. It can quickly become seen as a right rather than a privilege, turning any discussion following a problem into debates about the necessity to protect people from the consequences of their actions.

The right to fail is crucial in a a culture of safety. But accountability is also crucial. Without it, the organization will stop being inviting for people who want to accomplish things and become a haven for those who wishes to hide behind a shield.

This type of culture is not truly safe. It almost always leads to heavy micromanagement since if you cannot hold people accountable, at least make sure they never do anything wrong. It often creates tensions between upper management and the rest of the company, sometimes degenerating into an open war and the annihilation of any sense of safety for anyone.

The Dead Flame

Sometimes safety is confused with an aversion to risk. Experiments are forbidden, best practices are imposed, countless studies are required before any changes are green-lighted, review committees roams the land and mediocrity becomes the enforced norm.

Mediocrity can be defined as something “just above unacceptable”. Mediocre is the worst anyone can be before getting in trouble. It might not sound that bad, but most people do not want to dedicate their lives to being “just above unacceptable” in something they love to do. Those who will settle for mediocrity are likely not the kind of people you want to hire.

A risk-aversion culture also kills innovation. It is not anti-innovation, but sees innovation as something done by someone else (dumb enough to take risks) and that you copy after it has proven itself.

The Dead Flame takes its name because it will inexorably grind to oblivion any passion, creativity, interest and will. You end up with office zombies so dead inside they won’t even bother looking for brains.

The Kumbaya Effect

Ever met an organization where the culture looks so safe, understanding, warm and fuzzy that it is almost too good to be true? Sorry: it is probably the case.

I named the Kumbaya Effect after a well-known gospel-turned-campfire song, popular in scout circles. It is nice and soothing and helps create that feeling of oneness within the group. It draws people in by playing on their desire to be included and appreciated, and keeps them there by fear of exclusion from this safe cocoon. It is so seductive that I believe it to be the most dangerous of all toxic safety cultures.

Environments under the Kumbaya Effect can be quite nice: lots of very helpful people, lots of love and understanding, lots on bonding and lots of harmony. It is very nurturing. Unfortunately, it also has absolutely no tolerance for dissension.

In groups under the Kumbaya Effect, every member is free to have his own opinions, as long as those opinions follow the group-think. Dissension is viewed as something bad, and reactions can range from pity to incomprehension. Still, the group will react with love and support. There will be displays of patience for this bad behavior, accompanied with offers of counselling and coaching to cure those heretical ideas and rejoin the group-think.

In the most benign of groups under the Kymbaya Effects, all members are genuinely well-meaning. They truly believe in the good of their high level of harmony and reinforce those ideas with peer pressure. With a bit of luck they will simply be ineffective and stifle personal growth.

In other groups, the Kumbaya Effect takes a darker side. All it needs is a manipulative individual who will use the Kumbaya Effect to control the group and squash any dissension with love and peer pressure rather brute force. That’s the modus operandi of cult leaders.

The Kumbaya Effect creates a toxic safety by railroading your thought and by-eroding your individuality and critical sense. It accomplishes that by giving you that sense of group acceptance, appreciation, love and harmony we are all looking for. The Kumbaya Effect kills you, and you thank it for the opportunity. It is that seductive. It is that dangerous.

Reacting to toxic culture

Caught early, toxic safety can be redeemed, especially when it is the result or clumsiness or misunderstanding. It is important that people in a safety culture stay vigilant for signs of problems.

Swift reaction is necessary. Keep in mind that while the best reaction is bringing the issue to the group, a toxic safety culture is never really safe. Being a whistleblower can expose you to the same kind of dangerous attention that will get you in trouble in a culture of fear.

If you notice a problem, chances are you are not the only one. Find allies first, then try to rectify the situation. Since most of the time the toxicity is a matter of misunderstanding or clumsiness, change does not have to be belligerent. Improving education and awareness can go a long way.

Living in a toxic culture?

I outlined four types of toxic cultures, but you might have encountered different ones. I am always interested in discovering new types of cultures as well as how they are handled by organizations.

Feel free to use the comment below to make us discover different types of toxic cultures, or discuss your experiences with these types of cultures.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

Still, we see many of our corporate clients dismiss the idea of creating a safe culture, lest their employees would have free reign and would avoid accountability for their actions. Employers would lose control! Chaos and pandemonium would ensue!

The problem is that safety is often confused with immunity or absolution. In an unsafe environment, where failure leads to witch hunts and retributions, it can be easy to make that jump.

In this post I will go into what safety is and how it differs from immunity and absolution. The idea of safety is not … ahem… “a hippy concept not fit for a real business”. It is, in fact, a powerful tool that can be leveraged to spur innovation, excellence, engagement and ownership.

To create a good work culture, safety is not an option. That’s why Joshua Kerievsky lists make safety as a prerequisite as one of Modern Agile’s guiding principles. That’s also why Jurgen Appelo makes it a central argument in his books Management 3.0 and Managing for Happiness, and why writers such as Daniel Pink, Dave Grey, Frederic Laloux, Lisa Laskow Lahey and Robert Kegan spend a large portion of their arguments on it. And yet, not one of them argue for a culture of immunity to consequences or absolution.

A culture of safety

Let’s start by defining what is a culture of safety.

In a nutshell, a culture of safety is a culture where members of the team do not have to hide for fear of retribution because of who they are, what they think or what they do.

In a safe culture you will see people readily admitting to failures or mistakes. As a result, remedy to problems happens much faster and are much more efficient since no ones tries to save himself. Education about those issues can be shared across the company, raising awareness and reducing the risk that the same mistake will happen again.

In a safe culture, people will speak their mind and ideas will be debated, leading to better solutions. “Sparks must fly”, says James M. Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, in his book The Open Organization. A bit of friction while debating ideas is a good sign that people care about the subject and want the best outcome. But stay vigilant that those debates do not degenerate in spiralling arguments. Still, an occasional spiralling argument is much better than no argument at all.

In a safe organization, people feel safe to be transparent about their strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to get help working on weaknesses and raising one’s overall usefulness to the organization.

As desirable as safety might be, no organization will reach that state naturally. It requires the right conditions, time and a concerted effort. The very first step is actually the hardest one to take: get rid of the blame.

Stop the blame

When something goes wrong, it is important to react to it. React. Note that I haven’t said either how to react nor who should react. What is important is that there is a reaction to something going badly.

In a blaming culture, the first reaction is either finding out who is to blame or making sure someone else will be blamed. Neither reaction addresses the problem, nor do they lower the chances of the failure happening again. The goal in this scenario is for individuals to protect themselves.

In a blameless culture, there is little need to react with self-preservation. The reactions tend to be swifter, as no one is trying to cover their tracks. The reaction is first focused on fixing the issue, then making sure it does not happen again.

Etsy has such blameless culture, where it is common for employees to receive a communication along the lines of “I messed up. Here’s what happened. Here’s how we reacted. Here’s what to watch out for”. They even have a good-natured annual three-armed sweater award given to the most surprising failure of the year, awarded in a ceremony and accompanied with the testimonies of the people involved on how they handled it and what has been learned. The goal here is not to humiliate them, but to spread lessons learned and raise awareness.

The only purpose of blame is to bring fear of consequences, from share to loss of employment.. It is no wonder then that in a blame-based environment, many employees opt to never try anything, to do the strict minimum, and often waiting until they get direct orders from a manager so their tracks are covered and they can divert the blame toward the manager when the results end up being unsatisfactory.

React appropriately

There are three types of failures: Smart failures, accidental failures and negligence failures. Each comes with their own type of reactions. These reactions are consequences of sorts, but with the aim of making things better.

Smart failures are, as far as failures go, the type you should aim for. If you are careful with your actions, including your experiments, you should plan to limit the impact of a possible failure, discuss it beforehand with people who might be impacted, act carefully and react swiftly when the worse happens. If you approach experiments in this way, then failure can be turned into a valuable learning experience for the whole organization. Someone who is able to experiment, fail and handle the recovery properly is an asset that should be celebrated. Blaming people for a smart failure would be absolutely counter-productive.

Someone who fails accidentally, through an oversight, a lack or knowledge or sheer bad luck should own it, and act swiftly to help with the recovery. Accidental failures happen all the time and should be seen as part of doing business. When an accidental failure happens, review what happened, derive some action points to help reduce the chances it will happen again, and move on. Again, blaming would not improve anything.

In either case, if you are responsible for the failure, own your mess and be part of the effort to clean it up. If your are not, avoid assigning blame as it does not bring any value except perpetuating an unwillingness to try for fear of failure and blame.

Failures caused by sheer negligence, pig-headedness or straight malevolence should be dealt with seriously. There should be consequences for these kinds of failure, but again they are not about blame. Often, having a talk with the person in a safe space will reveal some issues that can be addressed so this does not happen again. At other times, especially for a repeated offense, the best course of action might be getting rid of the bad apple.

Or not: Some deliberately developmental organizations such as Next Jump have a no fire policy and will salvage you no matter what. Still, we are not arguing for either immunity or absolution: follow-up actions, or consequences, are part of the deal.

Working with self-organized groups makes this system easier to use. Teams share success and failure and even more, they share effort. When an organization wonders how it should react to a situation, the best course of action is to ask the team involved. Disaster recovery, lessons learned and recommendations as well as how to react to the person at the core of the problem can all be dictated by the team.

Safety isn’t just about you

When Joshua Kerievsky developed Anzeneering in 2014 — his approach to a culture of safety — he described this work culture as something your are responsible for upholding rather than something that should be owed to you.

It should be every individual’s responsibility to ensure that coworkers are safe from a bad environment, that your organization is safe from your actions, that users are safe to use the work you produce, and so on. Nothing about that mindset is about making yousafe, it’s all about making others safe. You become protected too when the mindset spreads across the organization.

That is an amazing approach: look at safety as a gift you freely give to others.

Towards a culture of responsibility and ownership

A culture of safety is not meant to exist by itself. It goes hand in hand with a culture of responsibility and ownership.

Modern Agile puts make safety as a prerequisite to remove the fear of failure and blame we so often see in organizations. As we’ve seen, fear leads to an understandable lack of desire for ownership and responsibilities. Without this fear, we are better able to reach our potential.

The other three principles of Modern Agile are the key to unlocking that potential.

Deliver value continuously forces us to revise how we approach work. To be able to deliver any kind of work in a continuous fashion, we need to divide it in smaller, independent chunks. That approach is very important. Smaller chunks means that if we fail or miss the mark with a chunk, the damage remains small and the issue can be resolved quickly. By making these chunks independent, we make sure a failure will not spread or contaminate other chunks (ours or somebody else’s), thus limiting the impact of the failure. Small, self-contained chunks drastically reduce overall risks by making each failure insignificant. Without fear, and with insignificant risks, experiment and learn rapidly becomes a very powerful tool. It allows us to figure out solutions empirically, work out kinks to provide better quality and stimulate innovation. New discoveries are far more often the result of failed experimentation than of planned design.

With safety from reprisal and blame, with work habits that reduce the risk and the impact of failure and with constant learning from practical experimentation, we make people awesome by giving the environment they need to be stimulated by what they do, to take ownership of their work and to become the assets everyone, deep inside, wish to be. In turn, they can see it as their responsibility to spread that culture and help newcomers feel safe enough to participate and grow.

The Modern Agile logo is a wheel. I believe that to be very deliberate: each aspect builds into the next one and keeps the whole wheel turning.

Too rosy a picture?

In this blog, we saw what is intended with a culture of safety. Put in place properly, it can propel any organization and its members to new heights.

However, it is possible for the ideals of such a culture to be corrupted. Toxic safety is a very real danger, and one we should watch for. We will explore its forms in my next blog post: When safety turns toxic.

See you then!

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca