19
Lost in Translation

‘Culture' can easily remain an ethereal and nebulous thing, and this is not helped by the way many corporate leaders talk about it. The usual cultural pillars are commonly plastered in corporate taglines and on the back of business cards — excellence, integrity, collaboration, innovation, safety, value, sustainability and so on — and then everyone calls it a day. But the real question is, what do these things actually mean, really?

This lack of clarity happens with disturbing frequency. A leader says to their team, ‘Folks, we need to communicate with each other better.' Everyone nods — for who can argue with a statement like that?^[1] But then, what proceeds may be very different from the intention the leader had in mind.

The leader may think that the team isn't sharing important updates — or that they are, but they're buried away in long email chains. She'd like her team to make more decisions together, in person, or at least through a medium other than email. But some of her team may believe ‘communicating better' means, ‘I need to send more emails' or ‘I need to include more information about what I'm working on' or ‘I need to talk with more people in the team before I make a decision.' And then, later, the leader finds herself frustrated as to why her team ‘isn't listening' to her. She starts forwarding articles to the team about email etiquette. Members of her team think, Oh, what a good idea to share articles via email ! and then proceed to send even more emails with links to interesting articles. Then come the lol kittehs. And then the team's technology Luddite starts forwarding internet memes we all saw years ago. Brimstone, fire and chaos ensue.

FROM CONCEPTUAL TO CONCRETE

Culture becomes clarified when we shift our focus from conceptual notions to concrete examples.

One of the most useful definitions of ‘culture' is that it is simply a set of behaviours replicated within a context.

Naturally, many behaviours occur within any given day or period of time — from checking emails to re-tucking your shirt into your pants to chatting with colleagues. But, out of the many things we repeatedly do, some are pivotal. These behaviours help to define a culture.^[2]

Getting lost in pretty words is easy. I remember coming in to assist a client and their senior leadership team with the final stages of a new strategic vision. Because I was brought in late in the piece, a lot of groundwork had been completed — to which I could only respectfully nod and listen. But one of the key elements of their strategy ‘going forward' was this line: ‘We want all staff to feel empowered to improve the business without permission'. The team were quite proud of this.

And I said, ‘Great! So, what does this mean?'

To which they replied, ‘Well, it means that if our staff see an opportunity to improve the business, they don't need to wait for permission — they can make the changes and improve it!'

When people explain things with repeated phraseology, I know we are in trouble.^[3] So I asked for an example of how this might play out. Their eyes darted to each other, some brows were furrowed, and one person suggested an example. ‘Say one of our frontline staff hears a complaint from a customer — maybe the customer didn't understand the application process for one of our products. Well, we'd want our staff to feel empowered to take action and improve it — they don't need to wait for our permission.' I could see other folks didn't quite agree with this example. Someone suggested that they already had a procedure for reviewing insight like this — the feedback gets passed on and reviewed. Another suggested the strategy was more about empowering staff to have ideas that could improve the business — not just reacting to complaints, but also coming up with ideas on how they can proactively improve the business. But when I probed them on this, I discovered the company had no structures or rituals to support this. The leaders had no congruent understanding about how their people could feel empowered in this context.

If left unchecked, this statement could have become another one of those cute lines developed at a leadership off-site event that translates into zero difference to workplace culture.

This is not an uncommon experience. Strategy is angsty work, and because of the Curse of Efficiency, our time is often tight. We can declare victory prematurely,^[4]

and feel as though we've ‘nailed it' with an elegant set of words. But, as is often the case, the devil is in the detail.

What then followed in my discussions with this team was work in translating this strategic intent into the leadership behaviours that will make it happen. The first step in this process is empathy.

STORYBOARDING STRATEGY TO CULTURE

If we return to the previous example — the desire to have all staff ‘feel empowered to improve the business without permission' — we find we need to ask ourselves a few questions.^[5] To address an example like this, you can storyboard the intersection of new strategy and culture to clarify strategic intent and identify opportunities for leadership. The following sections outline how it works.

Develop personas

Firstly, think about the key folks who will be affected by this change, or whose behaviours you want to shift. They might be the frontline staff of a particular business unit, your leaders' own direct reports, or folks from a range of different functions. Create three to five ‘avatars' to represent these different personas (simple stick figures can do). Don't worry so much about their personalities, but instead emphasise the ‘role' each of these personas undertakes. For example, you might have ‘Jill, who works as team leader of our call centre', ‘Mohammed, who oversees IT support', ‘Moira, who is on the frontline' and so on (as appropriate). For each of these personas, ask: what are their priorities? What is the purpose of their role? What does progress look like in their world? What factors currently influence their behaviour?

Explore scenarios

Having identified relevant personas, the next step is to identify scenarios in which pioneering leadership is required. In the case of our current example, we could explore scenarios in which our various personas might have the opportunity to improve the business ‘without permission'. And, having identified the opportunity, we then ask: what might trigger them to act to improve the business without permission? How would they know? What indicates that we value this behaviour, and what can serve to reinforce it?

Map pathways

We then explore the various pathways each of the personas might undertake to achieve the desired strategic intent. They have plenty of pathways to choose — for now, just focus on the obvious ones. Chances are, you'll come across friction.

Identify friction

Friction exists between our best intentions and the outcomes we desire. When exploring the pathways various personas may undertake to improve the business, we must be attuned to friction — the stuff that gets in the way, or makes it harder for folks to engage in business improvement. These points are where we have the greatest opportunity to demonstrate leadership and clarify strategic intent.

Find opportunities for leadership

One of the greatest things a leader can do is remove friction. Using our example, imagine a scenario where someone identifies a clear opportunity to improve the business. What pathway do they take? How do leaders ensure that they feel empowered to improve the business, without permission? What does leadership behaviour look like in each of these scenarios, with each persona and at each friction point?

What does it look like if frontline staff come to you with an idea? Do you deflect it to their manager? Or do you thank them and say you'll raise it at the next meeting? And do you? And, either way, how is the person kept updated? What's the feedback loop for them? Do they learn that such initiative is valued, or do they realise its encouragement is just empty corporate-speak? What other ways might your leadership team model the new strategic intent in their own behaviours?

Through this exploration of how new strategic intent manifests in everyday work culture, we start to make it real. Such conversations will likely trigger some debate among your leadership team — this is good, because the process will clarify understanding among your team, enhancing the likelihood that strategy will translate into workplace culture.^[6]

Here be Dragons.

Leaders must be very careful not to become too prescriptive in how they translate strategy. Yes! Another paradox. You see, if we become too prescriptive, people stop thinking for themselves. We end up with a new set of policies and procedures, and people simply follow the rules (which is ironic, given our example). We can't just leave the intersection between strategy and culture as a vague yet pithy statement. But we also can't afford to map out every single possible scenario and friction point in which our strategic intent will need to manifest.

Hence, we turn to keystone behaviours.

KEYSTONE BEHAVIOURS

Out of myriad possible behaviours you might demonstrate to shift and shape a culture, some are pivotal. We focus on these.

In masonry, a keystone is the stone placed at the summit of an arc, and it has the effect of locking everything in place. Keystone behaviours have a similar effect — they serve to lock everything in place. They are the clear manifestations of enterprise values and strategic intent.

I remember working with a large bank in Australia, and being surprised at how quickly they paid the confirmation invoice for an event that was more than nine months away. In my experience, the larger the organisation, the slower the payment (and the more hoops we need to jump through). I expressed this to one of the organisation's senior leaders, and they informed me that this is very deliberate. ‘We value the role small business plays in Australia, and we know what other organisations are like. We make an effort to support small business wherever we can — this is just one example.'^[7]

In another example, I remember chatting with the CFO of a large enterprise after running a workshop at their annual event. I had delivered a keynote to their staff the previous day, and had seen the CFO present in the morning. What surprised me was that he not only attended the workshop I facilitated (a mere ‘breakout session'), but also actually sat up front, taking notes and asking very considered questions. He was displaying all of the behaviours associated with an avid learner. It's something I don't usually see.

I said as much to him after the workshop, and he explained this hadn't always been the case. His enterprise valued learning — they rightly knew it is what gives them a competitive edge, and the one thing that ensures they stay relevant. But the senior leadership team had noticed their own staff didn't seem to value learning. At similar workshops, staff would often simply check emails, or leave the room to take phone calls. When the CFO and his colleagues reflected on this, they realised that they were modelling the very same behaviour.

And so, they decided, if learning was truly important to their enterprise — if it was something they valued, and a key element of their strategic intent — then they needed to model it. And so they did, focusing on key behaviours like sitting at the front, taking notes and asking questions at workshops like this. Similar keystone behaviours extended through the enterprise. Leaders would use internal social media platforms to share articles they found that challenged their thinking, or questions they found themselves pondering.

Through a combination of specific keystone behaviours demonstrated over time, they began to notice a discernible shift in how the rest of the enterprise approached learning. This is something you can affect too.

A good discussion for your leaders might lead with the following questions: how might our enterprise values and our strategic intent be represented in our behaviours? And what, specifically, are the keystone behaviours we can rally around?

In the next chapter, we'll explore three elements of culture: structures, artefacts and rituals.