Our
Process

  • Often leaders want to do the right thing but existing policies and incentives drive all the wrong behavior. After all, if bonuses are calculated by maximizing quarterly profit, cutting costs by laying people off is the fastest way to that bonus. Short-term thinking, what Simon Sinek would call finite game thinking, is much easier when people are "resources", "headcount", or "capital." Because of this, alignment also includes examining incentives and policies looking for any that are at cross-purposes with the improved culture.

    Alignment about a new way of running an organization may actually be the hardest, most time-consuming part of the process. Sometimes, resistant senior leaders must exit the company for change to occur. After all, if the captain wants to steer the ship North and a few of the lieutenants want to go South, there's only one ship. Something has to give.

    Take a look at the 21st century leadership manifesto. Can your organization's leaders align on those five tenets? Do the policies and incentives at your company encourage leaders to honor these tenets? Only when you have a senior leadership team aligned (in agreement and fully supportive) of this way of thinking, are you ready for step two.

  • 1. Leadership Mindset.

    Mindsets are made up of beliefs, values, and principles. We each have mindsets about the things we do every day. They strongly influence our behavior as we only do what makes sense to us and what makes sense to us is what aligns with our beliefs, values, and principles. A vital part of shifting behavior is shifting mindsets. During this assessment, we take leaders of all levels of the company through exercises to determine their mindsets around people and work. We reveal and then challenge beliefs that may be unintentionally driving the wrong outcomes.

    2. Credibility

    Credibility is a multiplier. When leaders have it, they spend much less time convincing and more time looking forward. Through anonymous surveys, we assess the amount of credibility leaders have with employees. Do employees willingly follow their leaders or are they just doing what they're told because of their authority? Have there been broken promises? How much damage exists in the relationship between leaders and employees? We also assess how employees feel about HR. Do they trust HR or do they see it as an extension of the company's legal department? We won't be able to change culture without first acknowledging and addressing any credibility/trust issues.

    3. Engagement

    How disconnected are the employees from the mission of the company? Do they show up inspired by a just cause or are they clock-punching to get a check? Do they really believe that their feedback matters or have they become silent while they look for job opportunities.

    4. Structural Influences

    We assess the company’s HR policies, benefits, and pay structure as well as career growth opportunities. We collect turnover and resist the urge to classify it as "non-regrettable" or "regrettable". We examine the exit interview process and how the company handles findings and patterns. We look at existing bonus incentives and finance processes (i.e. budgeting) and how they impact HR practices and company agility.

  • Interview most front line managers and they'll tell you that Finance is asking them to predict a year out in a market that changes daily. They'll tell you that HR policies make it impossible to give existing employees more money or a promotion but possible to hire a new employee with less experience into that higher position for more money - thereby causing talent to resign. Yet when you ask these same managers if they have any contact with HR or Finance to explain the impact of these policies they almost universally say no.

    This is unsustainable. Step 3 is about taking a fresh look at these two organizations, their purposes, the behaviors that their policies incentivize, and the distrust they instill in employees. It's not about disbanding them, it's about re-imagining how HR could work with company leaders to recruit, cultivate, and retain talent without sending cross loyalty messages to employees. It's about how Finance could set up policies and budgeting requirements that honor the volatility that most leaders are living in rather than demanding leaders make fictional projections.

  • It's important that we involve employees in the cultural change. We heard them tell us what's not working in the assess phase, but now we want them to be part of the solution.

    The influencers in your organization will be the ones who really make the change happen. It won't be a memo from the CEO or a commandment from one of the leaders at the company. If we truly want change that sticks, we must involve those influencers in the strategies to fix what's broken. This is everything from budgeting to HR policies. It must include a constant feedback loop as changes are implemented to ensure that they meet the intended objectives.

    The days of designing a policy in a vacuum and tossing it over the wall are over. We must tear that wall down and realize that these organizations ultimately all have the same goal: Help the company flourish.

  • In the workshops we:

    — Assess mindsets (values, beliefs, and principles) about leadership

    — Challenge (perhaps deeply held) beliefs that don't serve modern leadership

    — Self-analyze how our mindsets drive our behaviors

    — Examine biases that prevent us from seeing what we need to see

    — Study the kinds of work teams do and how leadership can support those doing it

    — Learn the way individual human psychology contributes to team behavior

    — Learn to read a room to spot what isn't being said

    And much, much more…

  • — It's not frequent enough (the one and done method)

    — It's delivered with no credibility. No one believes a word of it.

    — It's a monologue instead of a dialog.

    — It's full of business jargon that makes everyone's eyes roll back into their heads

    — It's focused on money/profits/share price. Those are fine outcomes, but they aren't what usually motivates most of the people in the room.

    — It's empty. It isn't followed by action that is continually tied back to the words.

    — It's hypocritical. Sacrifices are made by employees, but not leaders. "Rules for thee, not for me."

  • The most powerful measurement in this regard is employee engagement. If a given leader is discovered to be a drop of poison, immediate action is taken to try to correct the situation - regardless of how good other metrics in the group look. A common trap companies fall into is being lulled by the value that a toxic leader's group appears to be producing. If the employees in that group are miserable, that’s a turnover time bomb.

    Your best employees leave first. They are also often the most outspoken for a brief moment before they disengage. You often have only one or two chances to hear them and do something about their feedback before they flame out and leave. In this phase, we regularly check in and take action that matters. By this time, you've spent a lot of time, money, and effort to get things right. You must remain vigilant to ensure that things don't slip back to the old way of doing things.