A Toxic Work Culture Transformed: Finding the Innovator in You!
I was experiencing profound change at work back in the summer of 2015. It was a transitional time for me. I was training a younger man, who eventually was to become my full-time replacement. I was part of a passionate Television Newsroom team of over 60 people. The main daily focus: meeting deadlines! After all it was live TV which changed me forever.
Being part of a team requires a specific mindset. In order to create a productive and winning team environment patience and consistency are required. Most importantly, success is greatly increased when a clear approach is implemented to builds and establish functional workflows for the organization.
Up to that 2015 summer, my accountabilities in the newsroom included managing computer systems, and digital media storage frameworks. My responsibilities were changing, for I‘d been offered a new role within the organization. My career in the communication Industry spans for more than 20 years. I’ve had the pleasure of leading teams along the way; which made this new role a more comfortable challenge.
So, the real challenge is always how to coalesce a team, and create synergy between them, their environment, and the fast changing conditions of live-TV.
I was responsible for 3 separate teams, and the management of the department’s media, data, and storage frameworks supporting day-to-day functions. I was ready to go, so I did. My first day in this new role was exciting at best. Anyway, it’s live TV we’re talking about. I was establishing my tenure as a leader; but I was not content with this idea alone, I wanted more…I wanted to give more. The first hurdle I needed to overcome, was the established work culture forces within the organization. From my experience, when an organization’s culture is not conducive to support institutional change, resistance disrupts the implementation of new processes. I was all about practical, timely, and money saving innovations.
For a few weeks, I studied and reviewed the principles of leadership and management within the organization. I evaluated and moved to optimize the system’s functionality in order to support team performances. I believe that a single-minded focus approach within a team, strongly influences other levels of an organization. How? Together with consistency and time, an effective workflow, supported by open communication will expand the single-minded team goals, across other divisions in a company. Primarily, this allows other members of management to observe the effectiveness of new workflows, and its impact on team performance. Having multiple divisions assigned to me within the same department, allowed me to incentivize each team according to their needs, and accountabilities. This led to higher employee satisfaction and team productivity. Allowing us to consistently meet departmental goals, and exceed other goals in some cases.
An important key to remember, is that as procedural changes are introduced into the workplace, employee resistance or compliance depends greatly upon its correct management and open communication. Either response has its set of unique forces guiding them. As expected, when workflow changes were initially introduced, I was met with high resistance from both employees, and other department managers. As I dug deeper, I identified the hidden cause behind this resistance. This finding was congruent with the three aspects I’d been observing within the organization since I started: psychology, communication, and employee performance. These three dimensions supported the framework I was using to improve employee relations with the organizational and system workflow changes.
I continued to observe, interview, and collect more data to support my theoretical framework. As I progressed with my analysis, I observed that senior employees within my team (5 Plus years on the job), had a particular way of defining the work environment. Basically, their belief supported the idea that “work culture environment would not improve,” because, “this is how it’s always been here.” This was an important pattern to recognize, in order to drive employee support for changes to take place. I believe a happy employee is a productive and creative employee. At this point, a few months have passed. I had completed my internal reviews with all my team members, concluding that most employees saw their work environment as being toxic.
Members of the organization became accustomed to this work environment because they truly believed “this is how it’s always been.” I was amazed by how passionate some of the team members were about this perception. I believe personal mindsets is what makes change organizational change difficult. Regardless, I was not ready to give up. I knew the employee’s core reasons opposing new workflow implementations. Guiding my team towards resolution was my next step. It has always been easier to effect change when individuals willingly accept change. This is so, because it increases a person’s level of hope for the future. Rather than, forcing change which strongly diminishes hope and positive expectation for the future.
“What had happened to the members of my team, that drove them to feel and believe a work culture had to be endured in this way?” To answer this question, I had searched for patterns that were perpetuating the established work culture environment. I spent a few weeks meeting with each members of the management team. We evaluated all the workflow implementations that involved my three divisions. What we found through these meetings, was an interesting set of symptoms that were mounting pressure on a small group of employees. This was done by off-loading one team responsibilities onto other teams. I recognized the following behaviors perpetuating the work culture:
1) Lack of clear departmental workflow guidelines.
2) Clear definitions for all technical responsibilities and accountabilities for each division.
3) Management’s lack of communication and ‘open’ listening to employee based ideas, suggestions, and improvements.
I began immediately to draft and define my division’s responsibilities within the organization. Once I completed this task, I distributed my teams’ guidelines to other managers. This created a strong response from the managers and directors who now had to update their standard operational procedures as well. Interestingly, after weeks of implementation and training, it became clear to me that the “it’s always been this way” perception was shared by a large number of the senior decision making staff. Which helped uncover the biggest flaw in the news department’s workflow: indiscriminate ‘off-loading’ of process responsibilities onto other teams. Basically, for years, specific teams were pushing procedural responsibilities down the workflow funnel. This added more work to other divisions without the proper job description or financial compensation, this made morale low. This was a strong finding that effectively helped move the organization forward. Supported by accountability, transparency, and a strong set of constructive team principles the environment and culture dramatically improved. Productivity and employee satisfaction rose year-after-year until my tenure ended in late 2017.
In conclusion, work environments reflect the habits of the past, the strengths and weaknesses of the present, and the possibilities for the future. Always contribute with a constructive perspective that supports your organization’s growth. Also, openly engage your talents to help your team grow and achieve goals. You’ll be amazed how detailed observation, support, and a mindful approach to management will elevate your organizations work culture and performance.
