Chapter 7: The human side of organizations
Since we’re moving from the perspective of organizing as factories and assembly lines towards a living evolving system (Laloux, 2014) it makes sense to start encouraging the human parts of an organization. As mentioned, startup life is hard, and as Collin states you’ve got to be able to be personal with your team because you’re in the weeds together. Joe agree that we need to bring in the human into the organization which makes people feel less like a cog in a machine. In the business landscape you need people who are able to collaborate which requires openness and trust, and for that to happen the workplace needs to be a safe space (Lisa Pertoso; Marianne Aerni; Sarah Juhl Gregersen). Wang, Shieh and Wang (2008) states that internal trust relations and interpersonal relationships within the organization are key components in organizational performance and suggests that an investment in human capital improves both the skills of members in the organization as well as the relationships between them. They also make the argument for strengthening the development of organizational culture because of this.
Most startups don’t focus on this human element in their organization, instead they get so focused on building their product that they lose themselves and the team in the process says Marianne. As Allison mentions, organizations are just groups of people and by taking that approach we can enable ourselves to think about our organizations differently.
Insight 12: Developing good relationships between the members of an organization will help the organization perform better
Creating a safe space
There is some recognition of creating a safe space and a desire to get to know the people they work with more from the people I’ve interviewed. Collin says he focuses on figuring out people’s fears and frustrations so he can design an enjoyable work experience. By learning about people’s strengths and weaknesses, especially in different situations, you can also get to know others and build a whole picture of what role they play in the organization says Sanjay. Deborah agrees that it’s about looking at the whole person, but adds that it’s about figuring out their needs so you can support them technically, tactically and emotionally. This support is crucial to make progress.
According to a study by Deloitte (Yoshino and Smith, 2013) 61% of people in organizations engage in covering up who they are, where 48% state that they perceive it to be because of expectations from the organizational culture. In her famous TED talk, Brené Brown (2010) talks about shame and that it can be understood as fear of disconnection and the thing that can make that connection happen is vulnerability. Because of this we could make the argument that people cover up because they want to feel connected and their perception of what the organization is doesn’t match their inner selfs. Laloux (2014) writes that our community will be the richest when we allow people to bring their unique whole self to work. It’s therefore crucial to start developing an inclusive and supportive culture in order to truly get to know your team members, without any covering up, and support them in what they need.
Creating a safe space could also help the founders. Collin, co-founder of PlayWell, asks himself how he can involve more people and not do everything himself since he sometimes struggle with trust. If he’s able to build that trust and delegate more to his team members he could possibly be less stressed and able to focus on his role as CEO. Sarah also mentions trust-building and how it creates more openness in an organization and among team members. By being more open there’s also possibility to support each other because problems and needs are out in the open so you’re able to have a constructive conversation about it, says Allison.
Safe spaces can be constructed internally by valuing and creating trust, having quality conversations, and being personal present through listening, understanding relationship building, which in turn enables the organizations capability to improve and grow (Morath and Leary, 2004). Shockley-Zalabak and Morreale (2011) argues that high organizational trust is the foundation for innovation, creativity and risk taking in a complex and rapidly changing environment. This is true for almost any organization in today’s landscape, but more so for the startup which most of the time is trying to disrupt an industry. By focusing on communication you can start to build trust through awareness and build relationships Denton (2012). It seems like fostering open and honest communication through conversations based on active listening is one of the keys to start creating trust which leads to more productive and creative organizations.
Creating safe spaces has also been on the agenda for the last couple of months due to Google releasing it’s study on successful teams (see Rozovsky, 2015).
In my interview with Dara Blumenthal, co-founder of Nature of Work, she puts a strong emphasis that psychological safety is important but it’s the most shallow part of a deeper model. The danger with this is that there’ll be an over focus on psychological safety without underpinning it with the self-awareness, vulnerability and empathy that is needed for it to take place and be of value to the organization.
The open environment that Sarah mentions earlier could lead to a context-building around a person. Shaun Johnson suggests that this leads to better empathy for your team members. By painting a picture based on real and authentic stories from the individual team members you can, as Deborah says, understand their needs and purpose which leads to building a stronger relationship. And as Dante Federici says, a big part of working together is to explore the other members and the relationship you have with each other. But this requires an awareness, both of the other party, but more importantly of yourself according to Marianne.
Pavlovich and Krahnke (2012) argues that in order for an organization to be whole, empathy can be used to transform people from independent beings to community contributors by enabling connectedness between the members of an organization. Empathy is about emptying our own minds and actively listen to the other party (Rosenberg, 2015) and a developed sense of empathy has also been shown to provide individuals with a better understanding of how to handle ambiguity and different personality types (Singh, 2014a). Empathy can therefore be used as a powerful tool to create stronger relationships and commitment to the organization, which is supported by Solares Menegazzo et al. (2015).
Insight 13: Creating a safe space through developing skills in active listening and communication as well as performing trust-building exercises
Insight 14: Fostering empathy will create stronger relationships between the members of the organization
Meeting people where they are
A pattern from the interviews is not applying a fixed solution to a problem. Lisa says that companies are asking for tailor-made solutions more and more, while Deborah states that they don’t have a curriculum at the BF+DA Design Accelerator since every entrepreneur comes in at different stages. Something that Allison agrees with when she says that everybody is going to be at different levels of readiness, so it’s about being able to navigate the clients current state of mind and adjust the approach as she goes along with her coaching.
Ossadnik, Kaspar and Schinke (2013) emphasize the importance of systems being tailor-made for every organization and that consideration needs to be taken to company-specific relationships so that future performance is optimized. It’s also stated that a transparent and visual assessment during the development process facilitates an objective view on the current organizational situation. There’s also been a trend the last couple of years towards tailoring curriculums to meet the needs of a type of organization where someone will be employed (Newman, 2009). This suggests that there is no “quick fix” on culture, instead every solution has to be tailor-made since every organization have different skills, mindsets and awareness of culture as a collective. This could also be connected to a macro-trend in society which is heavily focused on personalization and individualization and which informs decisions taken at work as well.
Insight 15: There is not one solution to culture-building, therefore each intervention needs to be tailor-made to each unique organization
The prospect of fun
Creating psychological safety and safe spaces for the team to open up can sound like very serious business, and it is since it touches us on a very deep psychological level as humans. But one thing that stands out in the interviews is that people love working in startups because it’s fun. Joe says that if he’s not having fun it’s a big red flag for him and Lisa addresses that laughing and being silly is important because you don’t get to do that as often as an adult. At the same time Collin states that if people stop having fun they stop growing, since the aspect of fun propels us to achieve things.
Generation Y values fun work environments higher than previous generations and has been shown to increase task performance and nurturing a willingness to help others (Choi, Kwon and Wansoo, 2013). Fun has also, as stated by Plester and Hutchison (2016), the effect of creating engagement at a team and organizational level and facilitating a safe and supportive environment through cultivating a culture that values and encourages fun. They also note that fun can’t be too packaged or enforced, which is seen as cheap or deceitful, or too spontaneous, as it causes disruptions in the workplace. Since all of the interviewees for this project are Generation Y:ers, it’s not strange that they want to see more fun in their work. By focusing on making fun part of the culture, but make it true to each unique company it may strike the balance between disruptive and enforced.
Insight 16: Fun facilitates a supportive environment and nurtures helpfulness
Insight 17: The meaning of fun needs to be designed for each unique organization
Purpose
At the beginning of this chapter we touched on the future of work. Throughout the interviews this has taken shape through a conversation about sharing a common purpose, something that aligns with one of the points in ResponsiveOrg’s manifesto. Sarah mentions that we need to become more value-based and transparent in our work and that there needs to be a strong match between the organization’s values and your own values as a team member/employee for work to be meaningful. At the same time she states that the organization needs to support people in the meaning-making process and help people find their meaning. As Joe and Collin states everyone has their own take on the overall purpose and their own motivations, which is somewhat connected to the macro-trend of personalization mentioned earlier in this chapter. This suggests there is a need for alignment for the organization to be able to work towards the same goals. Marianne mentions that working towards the same goals is a big part of working together, and therefore part of the culture.
As De Luca Picione and Freda (2016) states, meaning making is a discontinuous process where people organize their relationships with their environments and in organizations culture provides a system and devices for relationships between people. Since an organization always changes, whether it be due to a growing team, changes in the market, or contingencies, it could be argued that culture needs to be worked on continuously in order to meet new environments and to support its members to deal and cope with them. This is supported by Davis, Kee and Newcomer (2010) who puts an emphasis on the need for dialogue between stakeholders in an organization and facilitating conditions for an ongoing strategic conversation, which creates trust and greater commitment. This creates an alignment through feed-forward and feedback processes. Supportive organizational culture is also seen to be strongly tied to the commitment to an organization, which in turn enables the organization to reach its missions (Idrus et al., 2014). Enabling the organization to come together and build its culture and for the members to grow their relationships is therefore crucial in order for the organization to survive.
The Strategic Transformation Workshop
1. Pre-workshop meeting — bringing stakeholders together to create a dialogue and ownership for the process
2. The purpose/visioning session — a wide representation of stakeholders that constructs an organizational purpose that incorporates a vision
3. Strategic priorities session — refining the broad vision from the previous session into concrete priorities for action
4. The strategic action planning session — formulation of specific action plans tied to the priorities formulated during the previous session
(Davis, Kee and Newcomer, 2010)
To be able to dig deeper towards the more implicit parts of culture we need to be able to make them explicit, which is mainly done by some sort of communication and, as stated earlier, visual facilitation can be one solution to this issue. Allison says that the best communicators have a clear idea of their values and beliefs, in short what they stand for and why. She also mentions that when people are purpose-driven and committed to the purpose of the product that the startup is offering it’s easier to talk about culture since it’s out in the open and people are engaged. Deborah says it’s a matter of supporting the entrepreneurs to figure out how and what they care about, but making sure not to tell them how or what to do with them. It’s about challenging people to find their own solutions according to Marianne. This connects to the previous chapter, “Chapter 6: Reflection at work”, and being able to lead yourself.
Singh (2014a) states that using an empathic approach employees develop cooperative goals, foster collaboration and create a climate of trust. It’s also shown that in positive work environments people have a greater opportunity for self-discovery and development, which could lead to greater commitment (Pavlovixh and Krahnke, 2012). Making the organization a constructive and positive environment, perhaps through the fun aspect brought up earlier, can then be seen as an important factor in contributing to the purpose, since it enables people to open up and share their thinking, which is supported by Pritchard (2010). When it comes to exploring one’s own beliefs and purpose Cantor et al. (2002) states that participating in a group is crucial for defining one’s self since it enables personal exploration within a stable social context. A conclusion is therefore to facilitate an open and constructive environment that builds relationships and supports self-exploration.
Insight 18: Focusing on creating a common purpose and values through a discontinuous conversation about culture enables commitment towards the organization
Insight 19: Supporting the people in the organization to find their own purpose and values through self-discovery exercises leads to greater commitment
Next: Chapter 8: Growing and experimenting
Previous: Chapter 6: Reflection at work
If you’d like to get in touch, you can find me on Twitter.
Hyper Island — MA Digital Media Management
Industry Research Project
