The CEO Cultural Agenda for 2018
Five priorities CEOs are exploring with SYPartners
For many leaders, 2017 has been one long Halloween horror show, but without the sugar rush. Now, CEOs in business and philanthropy are turning to SYPartners for fresh ideas about how to reset their organizations in 2018.
If you don’t yet have your cultural agenda clear, then you might want to get moving — December is the new January when it comes to CEOs engaging their leadership teams to start the year well. We’re already working deeply on a number of start-the-year initiatives that will launch before 2017 has even ended. It seems corporate leaders especially can’t wait for 2017 to be over.
Based on our CEO conversations, we’re seeing five key themes for 2018:
1. Trust
How do leaders rebuild trust in a three-generation workforce?
It’s been a year since the Presidential election — a year which has brought greater disruption and volatility for citizens, employees, and business leaders than in any other year in recent history. Particularly for leaders who took a traditional stance of engaging with the administration (against the views of their workforce who often favored not engaging at all), there’s a real concern about repairing the damage done to the relationship between different generations of leadership.
2. Belonging
How do leaders build cultures of belonging where everyone can thrive?
America is more diverse than ever before, and yet business is not. Thus, it seems that CEOs are really putting a magnifying glass on issues relating to diversity, as employees are expressing that they’re impatient for change. Traditional HR-led initiatives to build more diverse workforces are moving too slowly, so leaders are seeking advice on creative approaches that position diversity at the heart of executing business strategy, not as a side project. More specifically, we’re working alongside leaders to shift from just hiring diverse candidates which takes years to lead to change; to building inclusive cultures, where those diverse individuals have a voice in leadership; and further, to building a sense of belonging, where individuals not only feel their voice matters but also that the structures and processes of the organization have been fundamentally redesigned for everyone to succeed.
3. Speed
How do leaders help their organizations move faster?
Taking a page out of software development, many leaders have introduced into their cultures agile working methods and tools as a way to keep pace. But injecting agile thinking has often led to a realization that many internal processes and human behaviors within organizations are way too slow. It’s great that organizations can build apps faster on the cloud, but if the rest of the bureaucracy hasn’t been redesigned, then the organization can’t capitalize and learn from the data it’s capturing. So now, we find leaders facing an agile backlash and looking for ways to reimagine every aspect of the workforce experience — from feedback to team structures to workplace environment — to facilitate more collective speed.
4. Resilience
How do leaders build cultures that can constantly transform?
2017 was the year that “change management” died. In today’s unrelenting markets, transformation is a team sport and an ongoing pursuit. All organizations (not just technology platform companies) have to be continuously changing — which we are finding takes a particular toll on middle managers, who serve as the link between the strategy set at the top and the daily needs and challenges of their teams on the ground. Thus, leaders aren’t just looking at how to cultivate the grit to endure, but how to develop the unique capabilities (such as optimism, creativity, and humanity) and the mental well-being practices that will enable their management cadres to cope with change by bolstering their health and wellness not just their managerial skill.
5. Movements
How do leaders spark and spread change in their organizations?
Scaling change has traditionally taken years and been effected through the implementation of policies and gradual evolution of the culture. So, while the challenge of scaling change might not seem unique to this moment in time, how leaders harness the collective wisdom and power of everyone in the organization is. Increasingly, business leaders are looking at movement building in the social sector, the power of peer-to-peer sharing, and behavioral science for inspiration and ideas on how to scale change across a large organization. “Movement building” doesn’t translate 100% from the social sector to the corporate world, but as a metaphor and invitation to move from top-down models of change to grassroots-led, it’s gaining currency.
In a few weeks, we’ll be convening a group of leaders to discuss these themes further at SYPartners in New York. If you’re interested in participating, reach out to me at rsteele@sypartners.com
Richard (Dickie) Steele has more than two decades of experience in corporate strategy and organizational consulting, advising leaders in consumer goods, media, financial services, and social sectors. At SYPartners, he’s led work across IBM globally, partnering with senior leaders to establish new strategies and tools to transform the way they work. Dickie has written extensively on strategic management for publications including Harvard Business Review.
