TPC Leadership develops leaders with a heart for leaders AND their organisations. They are engaged and passionate in what they do. They focus on the individual, but will always keep the vision and objectives of the organisation into account.Janna Kramer, Learning & Talent Development LeaderEY – NETHERLANDS
The HR department is central to change management of organisational culture – or at least it should be. It’s essential to first understand that culture change starts with leaders, but now that we have acknowledged this, we can explore how HR has the capacity to facilitate powerful culture change to elevate performance across the entire organisation.
Make consistent, clear communication your priority
“We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what’s really important to us.” – Peter Senge
Communication is crucial when it comes to change management. Too often during a culture change, what is communicated is confusing and conflicting, with a disconnect between what is said, what is rewarded and what is practised.
A Watson Wyatt survey of 1,000 organisations revealed that fewer than 33% of companies achieved their profit goals post-merger. A similar study conducted by KPMG discovered that 83% of mergers and acquisitions did not increase shareholder value. The reason behind it? The reports say poor communication is the first to blame.
Communication goes both ways. It’s not just what is being said (or frequently just written) top-down that matters. Throughout any process of change, HR needs to listen to what staff are saying about what is and isn’t working. Those on the shopfloor will have valuable insights into processes that executives may not have considered. And when people feel heard, understood and valued, they are much more likely to embrace culture change.
View your role as an agent of culture
“If you expect employees to embrace change, they must understand management’s vision and, more importantly, how change will benefit the organisation. Absent that, you will end up with unmotivated employees that resist change rather than embrace it.” – Carl H. Kleimann, President of Odyssey OneSource.
In That Will Never Work, Marc Randolph, co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, writes about how their HR department was transformed into a proactive agent for culture, by the efforts of a woman named Patty McCord:
“She dismantled all the systems we had in place that limited the amount of freedom we granted our employees, and designed systems that were almost totally on the side of employee freedom.”
Netflix’s Head of HR did not only view the role as a means of promoting culture top-down, but she “held everyone, including senior leadership, accountable” to the culture they were meant to be upholding. Summarising her work, Marc Randolph says, “She knew how to do something rare: scale up culture.”
HR can act as a curator for culture. This means evaluating processes, hiring those who carry and support the culture, working to retain those who uphold it. It means changing the way that employees are rewarded and how senior leaders, managers and even interns interact. HR needs to create structures that make clear to employees what is expected of them, while ensuring that executives don’t inadvertently undermine the process by introducing ways of working that don’t fit the culture.
Confront the uncomfortable barriers (mergers and acquisitions)
“For acquiring companies, the excitement is almost always about where they are going – that is, their strategy for gaining greater growth and productivity. But when mergers fail, it’s often because no one focused on who they are – that is, their culture, which is critical to successfully bringing different groups of people together.” – Punit Renjen, Deloitte Global CEO
HR’s role in change management comes to the fore during mergers and acquisitions. Christian Scholtes, the current Chairman of TPCL Global, consulted during two very different mergers, one which failed and one that succeeded.
The first occurred when two large multinationals in professional services merged. TPC’s recommendations on how to create a new culture were requested, but Christian witnessed how these recommendations were ignored. The companies instead tried to manage the merger by organising traditional get-togethers, celebration events and company parties. But even at the events, the employees from each company were split, socialising only with those from their own original organisation, forming two camps on different sides of the room. Not long after, the majority of the talent left the company, seeking a better culture elsewhere.
By contrast, Christian consulted on a program developed by a European company that brought the operations of two countries together – one from Northern Europe, one from Eastern Europe. They each operated within the cultural framework of very different nations.
After the initial consultancy – which involved interviews, focus groups, discussions with senior leaders – some potential hazards were identified. To tackle these, challenging meetings were held in which employees from both countries voiced their distrust and what they disliked about the other culture. They said these things in front of one another, with the help of skilled facilitators from TPCL.
It was a turning point for the organisation. They were able to identify what their new culture meant, what values they would continue to cherish and which they needed to let go of. They were able to plan new behavioural strategies, reinforced by training, mentoring and coaching. HR were then able to discern who would and who would not fit in the new culture.
It took between three and five years to implement these changes. But the company and its employees consider it successful.
Whether it’s a M&A or a different cross-cultural situation, HR managers play a vital role in ensuring that both cultures are properly respected while enabling a new culture to emerge. It requires sensitivity and conviction, clear communication and effective listening. Heads of HR can be facilitators of change, agents of culture, and creators of processes that will sustain a positive culture for years to come.
Culture change management is complicated. It requires incredible insight and experience to make a corporate culture successful. But mobilising a positive organisational culture is necessary for growth, if we want to future-proof our companies. We don’t have to do it alone, though.
If you would like support with changing your company culture, get in touch to speak with one of our experts.
Leaders as culture carriers
“As a leader, a lot of your job is to make people successful,” wrote Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet. Nowhere does this principle hold truer than in role-modelling organisational culture. Your team will imitate the values you communicate and reveal. They will work for the values you reward. They will pick up the culture you espouse. And all of this whether you are conscious of it happening or not…
The trouble is that as leaders, we are often unaware of how much we influence the culture around us. Reflecting on our behaviours is most often secondary to completing our daily “to do” list. Let alone thinking of the values and beliefs driving our behaviours… As Peter Senge wrote, “We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what’s really important to us.”
While leadership without much reflection may have been an acceptable norm for many years, a changing environment and differing stakeholder expectations now impose a different approach. Working in unpredictable environments requires that leadership be thoughtful and purposeful. Leadership that “gets things done the way they always have been done” is no longer a guarantee of financial success, let alone meeting the environmental, social, and governance expectations of today. Organisations that want to thrive into the future need to foster cultures that support innovation, agility, empathy and inclusivity. And for this to happen, leaders need to understand their own values. There is no other way forward.
Change management starts at our core
“…it is no great feat to write down a list of values. It’s far harder to live by them, especially when they are not self-evidently aligned.” – John Pepper, What Really Matters
Everybody is familiar with the iceberg analogy – only one tenth of the iceberg is visible above the waterline. A similar analogy can be applied to behavioural drivers in each of us. What we do, how we behave, how we express ourselves… these are all visible traits of who we are. And yet, impactful though they undoubtedly are on shaping organisational culture, they are simply symptoms of our values and beliefs. We need to look closely at these to be more purposeful in role-modelling the culture we wish to foster.
Core values and beliefs are mostly acquired in each person’s formative years as a child. They are learnt from figures of authority, including obviously each person’s parents, who will have acquired them in their own formative years. Understanding these values and beliefs, and perhaps even questioning whether they serve us well, requires a willingness to ask ourselves difficult questions. Asking difficult questions about why we behave in certain ways is the first step to cultural change. As Adam Grant writes in Originals, “The starting point is curiosity, pondering why the default exists in the first place.” Why do we react to conflict the way we do? Why do we want to appear in control? Why do we dislike feedback?
Vulnerability changes everything
A leader not being expected to show any vulnerability, the “superhero-model”, is considered a key trait in conventional leadership models. People often associate negative connotations to the word vulnerability, defining being vulnerable as exposing oneself to possible emotional harm. Indeed, the potential consequences of being vulnerable include rejection, ridicule, and various symptoms of undesirable public attention. And yet, as Dr Brene Brown’s writes, vulnerability is “not a weakness but rather our greatest measure of courage”.
The bottom line is that unless we accept some degree of vulnerability in our lives, we will neither be able to be ourselves nor connect closely with other people… both of which are key to effective leadership. Once we ask the uncomfortable questions and share the answers with those around us, we can start to take meaningful steps towards organisational change.
Compare vulnerability-taking to risk-taking… We all have a certain appetite for risk, usually driven by our cultural background, upbringing, and life experience. And most of us will have tried stretching the boundaries of risk at some stage. Now try to do the same with vulnerability… a few steps at a time, the occasional leap forward, the odd couple of steps back. And learning through both positive and challenging outcomes, we can gradually accept more vulnerability in our lives.
Storytelling shifts corporate culture
What stories does your company share to the public? What do you tell your peers? What do you share within your team? Are there any common themes? The stories you tell reveal more than you might think.
In Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins, Annette Simmons says all stories are “values in action”. When our success stories never feature elements of failure and learning, we suggest that we do not tolerate mistakes. When we tell stories of heroically working through the night, we risk alienating those who work flexibly or part-time. When we embellish our own achievements, we create a culture of individualism. Yet when we tell stories that reveal vulnerability, when we honour failed experiments, when we recognise risk-taking, we encourage those same qualities in our team. So think of the story you tell, rather than simply telling it.
Getting started
As leaders, corporate culture is on us. We cannot delegate creating the culture we want to others. We need to pause to take time to reflect… to evaluate our true values and whether they conflict with our habits. It’s not easy and we need to feel comfortable asking for help from someone who can hit the pause button and focus us on the wider picture. Get in touch to begin talking through the process. The inner work you do now will affect the culture you foster for years to come.
In our previous two blogs we tackled the importance of organisational culture and how it can be measured. We analysed why we cannot separate organisational culture from the hard statistics in our business. As Peggy Johnson, former Vice President of Business Development at Microsoft, said, “When a culture is broken, the cracks show – morale isweakened, but so is profit and performance.”
The key to cracking organisational culture is awareness. Someone once said, “Leadership comes from within” and that “self-awareness is the start of this journey.” The same is true of culture. We cannot begin to change the culture of our organisation until we understand what defines the culture we already have.
There are many perspectives on organisational culture. In this post, I will outline a general classification of cultural characteristics that tend to be found in successful organisations. Check your organisation against this classification. Become more aware of your own organisational culture, so you can begin shaping it. In a subsequent post, my colleague Andrea Cardillo will outline a more recent classification based on Frédéric Laloux’s book Reinventing Organisations.
Characteristics of an Inclusive culture
An inclusive culture is one that prioritises diversity and cross-culture unity. While this may be partially achieved through policies and programs, it is also driven by the language we use and the platforms we give to people to express themselves. The advantage of an inclusive culture is that it enhances all other types of culture. When a diverse team feels included, it creates opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas which in turn drives tangible outcomes for the organisation.
Characteristics of a Learning culture
A learning culture is one that prioritises the exchange of knowledge. It not only has a top-down mentoring program, it also values the informal sharing of information and experience across levels. This kind of culture can improve an organisation’s performance dramatically. A report by the Human Capital Institute revealed that “65% of employees are highly engaged in [these] culture organisations compared to only 52% of employees in other organisations. [These] organisations also report greater financial performance.”
Characteristics of anEmpowerment culture
An empowerment culture prioritises autonomy and ownership of work. It enables employees at every level of the organisation to enact change. The result of maintaining this cultural trait is pervasive: innovation increases, employee satisfaction and engagement explode, managers tend to perform better.
Characteristics of aWinning culture
A winning culture prioritises achievement. This cultural trait can unite teams around capability, generating a sense of common purpose based on inclusion in an elite group. And yet, as pointed out in the HBR Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture, over-emphasising a winning culture “may lead to communication and collaboration breakdowns and higher levels of stress and anxiety.”
Characteristics of a Feedback culture
A feedback culture prioritises direct communication so that improvements can be driven in a timely manner. While this can be achieved through formal performance reviews, the most successful feedback cultures encourage feedback at all levels. When employees and managers alike actively seek out feedback because they are determined to keep learning, high levels of performance will naturally follow. Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall write in HBR, “Learning happens when we see how we might do something better by adding some new nuance or expansion to our own understanding.” A culture of feedback gives everyone the chance to keep growing.
Characteristics of anInnovative culture
An innovative culture prioritises freedom of ideas. For an innovative culture to grow, failure should be celebrated. The MIT Sloan Management Review notes how W. L. Gore successfully create a climate of safety to experiment: “When a project is killed, staff celebrate its passing with beer and champagne. When a project fails, a post-mortem is conducted. Flawed concept or poor execution? Bad decisions? The goal of these post-mortems is not to punish, but to learn and improve.”
What about your organisational culture?
So where does your organisation stand? These cultural characteristics aren’t mutually exclusive, and it’s often the interplay of different characteristics that makes a specific organisation so successful. And as the goldfish bowl metaphor so visually depicts, the goldfish may find it difficult to understand it is immersed in water – its culture so to say. If you need some outside perspective to help understand your own organisational culture, check out our leadership consultancy services.
In this blog TPC Leadership’s Andrea Cardillo discusses how organisational culture CAN and needs to be measured.
There is a long-held assumption in some industries that corporate culture cannot be measured. After all, there is no number that can be attributed to it, in the same way that you can attach a number to a first quarter’s profit.
On the one hand, culture seems like an invisible quality. Elusive. Not-quite-real. It can seem sensible to delegate the whole matter to HR. Let the executives focus on strategy.
It’s a fallacy, however. Because while culture cannot be measured in a single statistic, culture affects every statistic that can be measured in a business. Culture affects everything. And we can see its impact everywhere.
Otherwise we’re stuck with assumption
“There appears to be a significant discrepancy between what these board directors believe and what happens in practice. It is a gulf that needs to be bridged if they are to maintain, or restore, public trust in their businesses.” – Board Leadership in Corporate Culture, Mazars Report
When we don’t measure something, we cannot understand its importance, nor can we change it to make a better impact.
It is true that not every element of a culture is quantitative, but very often businesses that don’t actively measure culture may misdiagnose problems or their magnitude. When projects don’t succeed, we will blame the managers in charge, the state of the market, the approach of our marketing team, the lack of skills in our sales team. And while there could be an issue with any number of these aspects of business, we can often overlook the role that culture plays.
The Mazars survey, conducted among chief executives, chief finance officers, chairmen, directors, company secretaries, risk officers and investment managers, revealed that 17% of board leaders did not believe culture was measured in their company.
The more troubling figures are that 43% said the culture of the board itself is seldom discussed at board meetings, and a further 15% claim that culture is not an important issue for board members.
As the report said, “there is a saying that if something isn’t measured, it doesn’t get done”. If this is the case, then it becomes difficult to establish whether business culture is aligned with strategy and purpose. And also, how invisible elements of culture influence the shape – good or bad – of a company’s processes, systems and managerial decisions.
Inevitably, when we don’t measure culture, or value it, we assume all is well with it. And then when all is not well, we blame individuals, or our strategy – without questioning whether our culture supports that strategy. We misdiagnose, we fix peripheral issues, we stumble on, we inevitably fail again. Metaphorically speaking, we try sowing different seeds, hiring different planters, but we don’t pay attention to the soil.
In the end, it is the intangible that provides the tangible meaning. Even to interpret a set of hard data, you need to start from a certain set of undisputed beliefs, assumptions, and values: all these are an integral part of your culture.
How to measure organisational culture
“Steve Jobs saw this future with great clarity… The two of us learned a lot about smart creatives from working with and observing Steve, about how much personal style can influence company culture and how that culture is directly tied to success.” – Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, How Google Works
When it comes to quantitatively measuring culture, you can take three different roads.
Culture traits
Culture performance
Culture development
Each one of these has specific advantages and downsides: understanding the questions you’re asking and their inherent logic will help you to make the most out of them.
Culture traits
The most common approach is measuring the main dimensions of organisational culture, similar to what we do when we assess individual personality traits.
Erin Meyer’s Culture Map or Geert Hofstede’s Multi-Focus Model are good examples of the application of this logic. While this approach provides an interesting description of the ‘cultural identity’ in relation to others in an organisation, by itself, it does not provide any insight about the gap between the ideal and the current culture; these are usually worked out through a consultative process. Nevertheless, this approach is extremely useful in mergers and acquisitions, or in assessing the similarities and differences of different regional cultures within the same business.
2. Culture performance
The second route consists of measuring the level of ‘effectiveness’ of a culture’s dynamics in relation to the dimensions that impact business performance the most.These models focus on presenting respondents with a set of statements that describe different aspects of an organisation’s culture and asking them to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with each of them.The underlying hypothesis is that, with this methodology, it is possible to identify directly the pain points of a culture’s effectiveness and promptly intervene with change and organisational development initiatives.While this approach is very effective in supporting business leaders in identifying areas for improvement, it does not tell you, by itself, anything about the different ‘qualities’ or traits that characterise the specific identity of a culture.
3. Culture development
The third kind of approach is what we would call the developmental one.
Developmental models aim to measure the values of your culture within an evolutionary spectrum, similar to what Maslow’s hierarchy of needs does with individual maturation: like a person is led by different needs and logics at different stages of their life – from pure survival and safety in our early stages, to esteem from others, self-actualization and transcendence in our latest stages -, similarly an organisation’s culture may be gravitating around some mainstage values that are most commonly held by people or driven by management.
This approach is extremely useful to provide you with a snapshot of the main cultural tensions in your organisation, mixing both qualitative and quantitative data that can help you identifying how your culture needs to evolve if you want to reduce cultural entropy and increase coherence between the underlying values and priorities your current systems reinforce and the ones your people hold most dear.
The assessment, by itself, does not tell you if your business culture is effectively positioned to deliver on your strategy, but it is easy to infer this if you engage senior management in meaningful conversations about the kind of competitive field you are playing within.
Changing the result
“The best leaders we have observed are fully aware of the multiple cultures within which they are embedded, can sense when change is required, and can deftly influence the process.” – Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, J. Yo-Jud Cheng, HBR, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
No matter what kind of route you take, once you begin to measure your culture, you can begin to compare it with the culture that you need. The one that enables you to fulfil your vision.
In How Google Works, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg explain, “It is important not to simply criticise the existing culture, which will just insult people, but rather to draw a connection between business failures and how the culture may have played a hand in those situations.”
We need to begin aligning our culture with our strategic vision. Otherwise, our plans will fail. And if we don’t measure our culture, we won’t have the full picture of why our plans failed.
Start taking questionnaires. Ask questions of your teams, your managers, your employees. Keep paying attention to hard data, but understand that culture is influencing every result. Open up conversations at board level. Study change management. Begin closing the gap between the culture you have and the culture you need.
If you’re looking to instigate large culture change within your organisation, or need some outside perspective to help diagnose your own culture, check out our leadership consultancy services. Or contact your local TPCL office to begin the conversation.
In the first blog of a series exploring Organisational Culture, TPC Leadership’s Global Chair Christian Scholtes, explores what organisational culture is and why you should care.
What is organisational culture – and why should you care?
In Culture Map, Erin Meyer shares the much-told story of two young fish who meet an older fish. He nods at them and says, ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ – which prompts one of the young fish to ask the other, ‘What the hell is water?’.
Similarly, organisational culture can be an easy thing to forget about, often because, being so very immersed in it, it’s difficult to notice in the first place. As it rarely becomes explicit in its manifestations and because we’re typically drowned in operational minutiae, we don’t think about it much, we don’t prioritise conversations about it, and we very rarely measure its impact.
The fact that we don’t think and talk about it, doesn’t mean that it does not affect us, in the way we build implicit assumptions about ‘what’s truly important and needs to be done’, and in the behavioural and decision-making patterns that derive from these assumptions.
Defining corporate culture
“Cultural patterns of behaviour and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do).” – Erin Meyer, Culture Map
Before we can begin to address the impact of culture, we need to differentiate between what it is and what we frequently believe it is.
We often imagine (there may be some degree of wishful thinking involved) that our company’s list of values is our company’s culture. But there can be a vast divide between our stated values and our day to day reality.
Professor Geert Hofstede conducted one of the first and most comprehensive studies of how culture affects the workplace. He defined culture as “the collective programming of the mind,” which distinguishes “the members of one group or category of people from others.” It is a subconscious set of values, a collective way of thinking, that directly affects how we act. It affects how the organisation’s teams respond in times of crisis, how we articulate executive strategies and how we interact with one another.
In other words, as Marc Randolph, the co-founder and former CEO of Netflix, says, “Culture isn’t what you say, it’s what you do.”
This being said, Mazars’ Board Leadership in Corporate Culture survey revealed that only 5% of company board members are able to say they are “very confident” that there is “clear alignment”’ between their desired and actual culture. It is a gap that needs to be addressed, if we want to succeed as leaders.
Organisational culture enables business success
“The bottom line was that while everyone was rowing the boat… there was no forward movement.” ― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.
The impact of culture on the success of a business is pervasive. Often we imagine that strategy – our business idea and our business plan – is what ensures success. But it is our company’s culture that affects our team’s capacity to rally around the strategic vision and to fulfil the strategic priorities.
In Creativity Inc. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, writes “There is nothing like a crisis, though, to bring what ails a company to the surface.” For it is then that our true culture, not the one we assumed we had, is revealed.
Inevitably, unexpected obstacles will hinder our progress, unforeseen problems will limit our initial vision, and sometimes, a business initiative will simply fail. Our culture affects our ability to recover, to adapt to the unexpected, to learn from our experiences. It is our culture that determines whether we will be sunk by hard times, or rise above forecasted results.
Culture attracts talent
“…it’s often something intangible – like a diverse, inclusive, values-driven culture – that determines where the best and brightest talent decide to work.”- Marc Benioff and Monica Langley, Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change
When it comes to attracting and retaining the most talented individuals, ‘cultural fit’ is probably the most important factor. Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg emphasise this in How Google Works, “Many people, when considering a job, are primarily concerned with their role and responsibilities, the company’s track record, the industry, and compensation. Smart creatives, though, place culture at the top of the list. To be effective, they need to care about the place they work.”
Culture determines to a high degree who stays and who leaves. Those that feel at home in a company’s culture will gladly remain while those that strain against it will either tire and leave, or compromise to tow the company line, for a while. But the best leaders, the smartest creatives, will never be content to stay in an organisation that is at odds with their ideas, their work ethic, their ideals. They’re not interested merely in career progression as much as career purpose, in the ‘feels right’ kind of an environment.
Implications for the next decade
“Leading with culture may be among the few sources of sustainable competitive advantage left to companies today. – Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, J. Yo-Jud Cheng, HBR, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture
As the current decade unfolds, the impact of corporate culture on businesses keeps increasing. It affects business reputation, employer branding and the subsequent appreciation among both existing and potential customers and employees. It affects investment – already some major funds only invest in companies that meet certain criteria in regard to gender balance, or approaches to their workforce. It affects the quality of the recruitment pool and the retention of high performers. It also affects the capability to navigate an increasingly unpredictable world. Margaret Heffernan explained at the 2019 TED Summit, “the unexpected is becoming the norm. It’s why experts and forecasters are reluctant to predict anything more than 400 days out.”
As leaders, we therefore need to truly explore our corporate culture, to have lively debates about what currently is part and what’s missing in our culture, and to begin shaping it with intention, so that we can fulfil our company vision. Yet to understand our own culture, we often need an outside-in perspective, the clear, detailed, truthful mirror provided by an external sparring partner. We invite you therefore to check out our leadership consultancy services to begin exploring how to align your company culture with your company vision. The sooner we undertake these steps will possibly determine the level of success we experience in these systemically turbulent times we’re living in.
Interested to learn more? Get in touch to talk with one of the team.
Business context and drivers
Our international client, with HQ in the USA, was experiencing cultural issues within the local country office. There were huge gaps between perceptions and expectations of some of the senior management team and the junior team leaders and staff. It was reported by junior leaders that some of the senior leadership was perceived as creating a toxic culture rather than allowing them space to grow and have a contributory voice. Recognising the different attitudes to leadership, the Manging Director wanted to discuss ways of keeping the junior teams motivated to prevent any further costs in replacing unhappy leavers.
Objectives
To reconnect as an organisation, reconnect as people and move forward in a more positive environment where everyone feels safe and valued, by:
Restoring the culture to be inclusive to all
Guiding the senior leadership through the steps to restore a positive culture
Ensuring the junior team felt validated and motivated to stay on
Preventing the division between staff levels from escalating further and bringing closer together, to reconnect as an organisation.
Our approach
We developed a diagnostic phase, including focus groups, while building psychological safety for all, as well as leaver interviews to understand the rationale behind their decisions to leave.
Following workshops to share the results of this phase and suggest recommendations, subsequent workshops were held to develop a feedback culture. Alongside this we created a framework to enable regular 360 peer feedback.
Having an external facilitator gave the HR team the bigger picture perspective. Both junior and senior leaders were further supported with 1:1 coaching when asked for.
Outcomes
All staff saw the tangible commitment from the organization to ensure measures were in place to foster a healthy company culture. The office created a charter, reflecting their local company values. Through TPCL run workshops, they gained the skills to translate values to behaviours, focussing on meaning and purpose.
Feedback
A lasting effect of the programme was that people dared to speak up more as trust was being restored, ensuring staff felt motivated to commit to their career at the organisation.
To learn more about this case or other interventions of relevance for your organisation don’t hesitate to get in touch
TPCL Copyright 2021
Business context & drivers for the organisation to do the project
The organisation was undergoing a reorganisation and restructuring impacting different teams. The strategic marketing team leader wanted her restructured team to be reenergized, to get in touch with the value they bring to the organisation, to understand the new scope and translate this into a new vision & mission. The team needed clarity on the roles they were going to play, their responsibilities and their positioning within the new structure as they had lost scope, resources, and people due to the restructuring and were left feeling marginalised. Roles they had previously had, were now with another team. To prevent complaints resulting from confusion, and to ensure a healthy new team structure kick-off, the organisation felt it important to partner with TPC Leadership sooner, than later, even though the timing was far from ideal.
Objectives / required outcomes for the client
Embracing the new beginning and setting the team up for success.
Understanding the new scope and translating it in a new vision & mission.
Become a stronger team, spending time together, getting to know each other better
Understand their purpose and what their roles & responsibilities are in the new structure and defining their new position in the organisation to share with the organisation.
Mutual appreciation and recognition of each role and contribution
Alignment on how to bring value to the rest of the organization and their purpose
Clarity on how to collaborate
Interventions
In four x 2hr virtual sessions with intermediate assignments, TPCL delivered a Team Development program to 14 participants on Building an Effective Team. The participants were able to reflect on the impact of the recent changes while exploring ambitions of the team. By setting the scope and establishing parameters they were able to align their scope, priorities & processes, establishing a new team vision & mission and most important were re-energised and proud of their team. TPCL was a thought partner, taking the team leader and team by the hand, helping them navigate this turbulent change being imposed and tackling the frustrations soon in the program. As TPCL had partnered with the organisation at higher levels in the past, TPCL were consultants and intermediaries in smoothing the path to a better relationship with another team, where healthier collaboration was required, by helping them with the new ways of working together. TPCL challenged the team to embrace change even if not fully convinced by it and how to relate to the change and to question what responsibilities it would provide. The team were encouraged to voice their defined roles by creating an elevator& pitch on the value, purpose and position they bring as a restructured team, as preparation to explain their team and their roles to the rest of the organisation.
Outcomes
Based on the participant polls on how much clarity they now had regarding their roles & responsibilities and the energy boost they felt they derived from the program, there was good evidence of success. Although the team initially needed convincing about the potential of virtual coaching, being a large team of 14, and initially the participants would meet together for a full day, now not an option due to lockdowns, all were in awe at the amount quality of output generated in the 4 sessions. The team demonstrated a strong mutual appreciation of each other & roles and much needed clarity on how to collaborate, with a renewed energy boost.
Client testimonial
“…exciting, fun, effective – we had never expected to achieve so much in virtual sessions and in such a short time!”
“what an amazing job you did with these sessions. I am totally bought into online facilitation after this. Everyone has the same air time and can express themselves, and doing it over several days helps reflect and keep momentum. I highly recommend it! ” Marketing director at client
To learn more about this case or other interventions of relevance for your organisation don’t hesitate to get in touch
Our client’s CEO was moving internally but the organisation had insufficient ‘leadership’ within the organisation to enable a successful transition and new CEO onboarding. TPC Leadership created an embedded leadership training programme to meet the outcomes of a more effective senior team to support the new CEO.
Context
The client wanted to replace a very successful CEO (and move him to the Corporate holding) but there was insufficient leadership ability in the organisation to enable the change. In addition, they aimed for creating sustainability around changes that had been made in the last 2 years and they needed a cohesive team to sustain the changes.
Objectives
A more effective senior team, supporting the new CEO
Strategic & leadership capability throughout the team
Clarity of strategic direction that the organisation wanted for the next 3 years
A method to cascade effective leadership
Interventions
An internal project team was created, and we worked with them to identify learning outcomes and organisational goals. We created an embedded leadership programme to meet the outcomes, with training of internal facilitators so that the leadership programme could be cascaded to the next level of management. TPCL had 2 management teams to bring together – Corporate and local, with approximately 15 people in the group
The programme comprised:
Assessments (using tools such as EQI and DISK) with pre-calls in which each person was given their feedback along with a discussion about the forthcoming programme
Leadership intervention (4 days, then a 3-month gap, then a further 4 days), in which the team took part in real-life scenarios and worked on team building
Strategy development for the major production facility
‘Action learning’
1-2-1 coaching between modules
Training the internal project team to enable them to cascade the programme
Outcomes
At first, they were unable to look beyond current success to see what was possible, and with our help the team is now recognised to be more resilient and much more cohesive
The team dynamics became more open and collaborative
The organisation was restructured on the back of the training and the strategic goals are now the pillar of future focus.
The new CEO feels he’s been more able to step into a leadership role, and it has been a successful transition from the old to the new CEO
As a result of this programme TPCL has been invited back to work with Corporate division
To learn more about this case or other interventions of relevance for your organisation don’t hesitate to get in touch
The Country Leadership Team, together with the CEO of a large professional services organisation and operating in a very competitive landscape, felt they needed to better equip their Directors newly promoted to Partner, with the leadership skills required in the transition to their new level of responsibility. Although they were provided with information around roles, targets, rules, regulations, etc., they were underequipped in leadership skills as there was still a dominant culture of ‘command and control’ with expertise being recognised, rewarded and promoted, not necessarily ‘leadership’.
Objectives
To foster peer solidarity & strong bonds in a cohort of Partners in order to inspire, grow and learn from each other throughout their careers
To infuse the new Partners with a mindset of being change agents, to be the ‘new blood’ in the organisation, as explicitly required by the Country CEO
To equip all Directors, newly promoted to Partner, with the required leadership toolbox
Interventions
The programme is managed by two TPC Leadership facilitators and a number of coaches. TPCL work closely with the client’s HR and partner relations teams, who supply input and the set objectives for the programme. The continuous redesign was entrusted to TPCL. Each programme is tailored to the current client needs and is key to the programme’s success.
To date, TPCL has successfully guided and coached a large number of Partners during multiple (annual) cohorts, starting in 2018. Cohorts are purposefully kept intimate to ensure a personalised journey for the entire 12-month cycle. The cycle is launched with a kick-off and encompasses three individual coaching sessions and three times two-day (off-site) training camps.
Each training camp dives deeper into key leadership development topics, namely:
Training Camp 1: Personal Leadership,
Camp 2: Team Leadership and leading change
Camp 3: System Leadership
TPCL regularly touch base with the client throughout the cycle during feedback/feedforward sessions.
The organisation saw the value in TPCL’s unique approach to facilitating, with human-to-human interaction and sharing personal experience being central. They also accepted and understood the reason for three coaches, none being facilitators, to guide the Partners in private coaching sessions, the intimacy allowing an even more open relationship in a psychologically safer space. The Partners could comfortably discuss moments they were triggered during the facilitation sessions and in day to day situations.
Working with such a dynamic, incredibly busy group of new Partners has its challenges. Managing their mental and physical presence to ensure they could all be together in the same room for more than 15 minutes, was only overcome by mutual commitment and trust in the process. Partners were eager to continue the programme remotely, following the long interruption created by Covid-19, highlighting the value the Partners had felt being together, despite the hurdles. In the session on Team Leadership, TPCL facilitators act as team coaches, observing the cohort, assessing the Partners working on a real project driven by the country leadership team. The facilitators are able to share their observations at the end of the real play session. The session on Systemic Leadership takes place directly after their annual meeting with all Partners. They had received pre-work observation questions to encourage them to observe and analyse their own system within the bigger organisation which serves as valued real-life input for their training.
Outcomes
The annual programmes, each spanning over 12 months, allows TPCL to form close relationships with the Partners. They are transformed individually, their perceptions of the new roles changed in positive ways. It became transparent to each of them in mind-shifting ‘A-ha’ moments that a Partner is not just a super director but leads teams and has to inspire and engage people. The confidence in and success of the leadership programme has allowed TPCL to return to the client year after year, offering training which is in fact an accompanied walk – the metaphor used by our client is one of mountaineering: base camp is the kick-off, training camps are the three modules – TPC Leadership were the Sherpa.
“The sessions were a great experience and have definitely delivered a lot of food for thought. I definitely think we should maintain this format for future cohorts.” feedback from a participant and Partner.
To learn more about this case or other interventions of relevance for your organisation don’t hesitate to get in touch.
TPCL Leadership has just turned 20 years old! It has been a long journey since our early training courses and our first clients. We’ve grown into a leading consultancy with a coaching and leadership academy, offices and partners across the globe.
But from a certain angle, it’s not the growth that we’re happy about. It’s that TPCL is still, at its heart, what it was 20 years ago – a culture worth celebrating.
To mark the occasion, Charles Brook, founder of TPCL, and our chairperson, Annelieke Jense, reminisced about the highlights and setbacks of the last two decades – and why the TPCL culture has remained special.
Why people joined TPCL
“Whenever we found that someone wasn’t the right fit,” says Charles, “it’s nearly always been because the values alignment wasn’t quite there. It has been amazing to see how everyone has ultimately been attracted by the culture.”
Annelieke recalls the moment she decided to join TPCL in 2011. She was working for an Amsterdam university at the time and had plenty of reasons not to leave. But having trained as a coach through one of the first TPCL programs, she knew the quality of the professionals who were offering her a partnership role.
“And they weren’t just fantastic professionals but fantastic human beings,” says Annelieke, “I wanted to work with these people I felt such connection with. People who went for impact rather than quick fixes – and whose clients invested in people. And as a result, I’ve always believed I’m in the right profession.”
The challenges of being a TPCL partner
The full tale of how Annelieke became a partner seems like a chapter from a storybook. But finding the right partners for TPCL has sometimes been a much trickier process.
Becoming a TPCL partner is about more than being a leadership coach, or even a consultant. You need to be a business developer who can manage a regional office while taking ownership of the global development of the company too.
“It’s not hard to find good professional coaches,” says Annelieke, “but to find someone who can take a real stake in the organisation and have real equity… it’s like you’re searching for this entrepreneurial sheep with five legs.”
What we can and can’t control
TPCL now has partners and offices all over the world. But like any success story, it comes at a price of setbacks and disappointments. Some international offices simply didn’t work out.
Charles found it easier to bounce back by using a reflection model called the Three Circles, produced by Steven Covey, which asks what’s in your sphere of control, what’s in your sphere of influence and what’s only in your sphere of concerns. The logic goes that if you don’t have any control or any influence over a problem, there’s not much benefit in worrying about it.
“If I walk into my living room and accidentally smash the best bit of cut glass,” says Charles, “I might think, ‘Damn it, that was beautiful. I’m so annoyed that I did it’ but then that’s it. There’s nothing I can do now that it’s broken. And although this mindset means I probably don’t fully learn all the lessons of a bereavement process, overall it’s been helpful to move on.”
The enduring sense of team
The reward of facing such challenges and overcoming disappointments is that TPCL is what it is. Even though the team has been working virtually since long before COVID-19, they have always felt connected to one another and the work each partner is doing.
“Only our Italian and Netherlands branches actually have an office,” says Charles, “And still there’s an amount of affiliation which I don’t think other organizations have got yet, even though we’re a virtual team. So I’m super proud of that.”
There’s also a real desire in all the TPCL partners to leave a legacy, whether it is about climate change or reducing poverty or supporting global SDGs.
“It’s about wanting to make a difference,” says Charles. “And finding other people who want to make a difference with you. This is what happens when you attract people to the cause through your values. You end up with a team that wants to do projects for the third sector, for the United Nations and for women leaders in Ethiopia.”
Playing the long game
When reflecting on what has made TPCL work so well over the years, Charles believes that they have opted to grow only as quickly as their values allow. And one of these values is to relentlessly do what is best for the client, even if it means losing business.
“I remember turning down a huge global project,” says Charles, “and the company was beside themselves. They wanted to change their company culture to make it a coaching culture and they wanted to do it by running two-day workshops around the world.”
Charles had said to them, “What is it you really want? Do you want to help people have some coaching skills?” But they said, “No, we want a coaching culture.” So Charles laid down the facts: “You’re not going to do it by running two-day workshops around the world. That’s not going to change your culture.”
And even though this company said they were committed and had set a budget of over a million pounds to achieve it, Charles told them it simply would not work. And so TPCL never saw their business.
But other companies saw TPCL’s restraint as a sign of trustworthiness. Annelieke recalls that when she asked several of our clients, “Why did you choose us?” They said, “You were not pitching. You were just asking the right questions.”
The future of TPCL
As we look back on 20 years, there is a lot to celebrate. And there is also a lot to look forward to. But while TPCL is readying to grow globally and become more sustainable in each local office, Charles’ hopes for the company he founded are primarily to do with its culture.
“More than anything else I want it to be a home for people with like-minded values, where they can live and be the person they want to be,” says Charles.
“Because in many organizations you have to conform to fit in. And you don’t feel you can be who you are, live the life you want, make the difference you want. So I would love for us not to lose that in the next five or 10 years. For people to still come because they can find a place where they can express themselves and live their potential.”
So here’s to the next five, 10 and even 20 years of TPCL. And if you want to learn more about creating or sustaining a company culture, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
@ TPCL (2021)
In our 3rd blog in the series, ‘Diversity is given, Inclusion is a choice’, Annelieke Jense and Frouke Horstmann provide practical ways based on their experience working with clients on how organisations can create a true inclusive culture by installing processes that mitigate unconscious biases.
A hundred years ago, women fought for the right to vote, needing to justify why they voice also counted. Today the USA has a black Asian woman as vice president.We have indeed come a long way! But now is the time to drive home hard that we still have a long way to go to having a fully inclusively diverse culture as the norm, not the exception.
Inside office jokes, not understanding your colleagues when they chat in a language you do not understand, team meetings held on days when you do not work or not in your time zone, starting meetings without all colleagues present, consistently recruiting similar types, made to feel silly for not knowing the cultural norms, not being able to enter a building or attend an event due to disabilities not been taking into account, not starting from an assumption of competence due to race, gender or culture – if you have observed or experienced any of the above, you have encountered unconscious bias in the workplace. And more than likely none of these scenarios were not done with any ill intent, just like the last time you discussed your weekend with a colleague and didn’t involve the foreigner in the canteen.
So how can an organisation ensure true diversity and inclusivity?
When working with clients on how to mitigate unconscious bias, we like to use the word ‘nudge’ – moving people in the direction of inclusive behaviour without convincing them. We help them set their mechanism default in such a way that they choose the right inclusive behaviour because mechanisms, by default, usually invite in-group favouritism.
Throughout your career, the decisions to attract, develop and retain people are underpinned by HR processes and mental decisions often, without bad intent, built on unconscious biases and therefore excluding many people from the beginning.
An example is the Organ Donor drive in The Netherlands.At first people were asked to opt-in, stating they would be donors.But the system was based on the hardwiring of exclusion, discussion in our first blog, and did not generate participation no matter how hard the marketing efforts.But last year the government changed the law and by default you are a donor, unless you opt-out.
This shift can also be made on an organisational level when developing people, for example assessing promotions. The default question asked of managers is usually, Who is promotable? By changing the default to everyone is promotable, the argument is then who is not promotable and by doing this, more women are promoted.
Another example of how changes in the HR process can nudge others to inclusivity is instead of convincing leadership that you must have a D&I policy, ask the managers to argue why not!
‘Blind’ recruiting, i.e. removing personal information such as age, sex, nationality and even the applicant’s name from candidate applications during the assessment process is also apositive nudge in removing bias from the hiring process. This would also include the question “are you internationally mobile”, which often excludes people with young children.By changing this question to “would you consider an international assignment sometime in the future?”, you are automatically more inclusive.
If organisations are in favor of quota, rather work with for example maximum 70% homogeneity target.
What is considered an inclusive practice in your organisation?In our next and final blog in the series, Annelieke and Frouke will discuss what we believe is inclusive, such as the office socials, and how we can assess our personal behaviors and the practical ways to mitigate and our unconscious bias.
We invite you to follow us on LinkedIn, check out our blog page for original content and actionable insights or contact the authors (Annelieke Jense & Frouke Horstmann) to continue the discussion.
Copyright by TPCL (2021)
In our first blog in the series on Diversity & Inclusion, we got a better understanding of how we form our unconscious biases and the various dimensions, often not visible, of diversity. In part 2 from ‘Diversity to Inclusion’, Annelieke Jense & Frouke Horstmann focus through the lens of the organisation and shares how to create an inclusive organisational culture.
How our mindset towards diversity has changed
Over the decades our attitude towards diversity and inclusion has changed, much like our mindset about the right leadership style has changed. We have moved from a top-down command-control style versus virtual, empowerment and/or network leadership styles as in our current situation.
Humankind started with a monoculture mindset, evolving through significant changes, maturing to our current intercultural drive for greater diversity and inclusion.
During our monocultural mindset ‘episode’, we were in denial and unaware of cultural differences, not with bad Intent but with limited exposure to different experiences we had a limited view. People were just simply not aware of all the factors involved in an open diverse inclusive culture. The initial stage of realisation was actually one of polarisation in line with what Frouke mentioned in our first blog; the ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Defences of our own personal practices start to play out, certain cultures started taking on a superior role above other cultures as we judged the perceived differences.
This moved to minimisation which was a big improvement as it highlighted commonalities as we started to de-emphasise differences. But it still lacked the real understanding and appreciation of differences. The real intercultural mindset came with acceptance and adaptation. Acceptance, where we recognise and deeply comprehend cultural differences, showing an eagerness to learn and self-reflect and adaptation where we bridge across differences and shift our mindset and behaviour accordingly. This has resulted in today’s ambition for an intercultural mindset, in which we fully embrace cultural differences.
The best is that it implies that our mindset around diversity AND inclusion can change. Hurray! We have come a long way but we are not there yet.
The business rationale for Inclusive Leadership
A topic often linked to diversity & Inclusion is the business rationale for an inclusive organisational culture. In a recent McKinsey study, research clearly showed a marked increase in performance in diverse workforce companies; gender-diverse companies outperforming by 15% and ethnically diverse companies outperforming by as much as 35%. However, the studies show there is still an under-representation of women (23% white women), significantly so for women of colour (only 6%) and men of colour (only 13%) in senior ranking positions.
It is fair to say these results are disappointing and not a true reflection in representing our diversity. These important issues have been on the agenda for years, but we seem to be stuck.
What it seems to show is the business case is not enough
There is an implication that there must be economic grounds to justify investing in people from underrepresented groups. But why should anyone need an economic rationale for affirming the agency and dignity of any group of human beings? New studies show that making the economic business case with the focus on financial benefits, diminishes the sense and the strive towards equality.
It will be the voice and core values and purpose of the business leader that will need to be heard as we, as individuals, stand behind this. In our final chapter in this series, we will discuss the personal dimension to diversity; how to embrace diversity and inclusivity on a deeper level as individuals and leaders.
We invite you to follow us on LinkedIn, check out our blog page for original content and actionable insights or contact the authors (Annelieke Jense &Frouke Horstmann) to continue the discussion.
Copyright by TPCL (2021)
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