The "Working" Culture and the Struggles of Social Business

Tim Kastelle recently shared his excellent post about flat management efforts at Zappos and how they paid about 210 people to leave if they didn't like the direction of the organization. He went on to point out that in the past 12 days over 15,000 people were laid off in various industries (which can be seen on a site that tracks daily layoffs) as an exclamation point about the ridiculous attention Zappos is receiving. What happens next is anyone's guess. Hopefully the 15,000 land quickly on their feet, hopefully they left on good terms. But I doubt it. Many may had been blindsided, many will struggle, many will be bitter. And when they do return to the world of work they will carry this memory with them. It will taint their perspective, attitudes and sense of trust.

Today much of the Future of Work conversation refers to organizational culture, the idea that in the confines of a single business people behave a certain way. Although this is true, I do think it overlooks a significantly larger culture, the Working Culture - a culture of workers ironically created by cumulative actions of all business.

Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge. - Harold Jarche

Each worker's experience contributes to the present Working Culture's understanding, beliefs and practices. The Working Culture permeates organizations but isn't easily diffused by an individual organization's culture. So no matter what an organization's efforts at "engagement" are, most employees are skeptical and will remain so.

This skepticism has developed over the past 25 years or so due to factors such as globalization, a focus on short-term results, systematic turnover (as noted in Tim's post), contractual and temporary work, the demise of unions, automation, and outsourcing, etc.  Due to these factors loyalty is non-existent on both sides; employer and employees have disconnected from that part of the working relationship. A good lagging indicator of today's Working Culture can be seen in the less than stellar adoption rates of enterprise social network platforms (ESN) and their failed promise of corporate-wide collaboration and cooperation. In an interview style post, Sahana Chattopadhyay elaborated on the nature of collaboration in work environments saying:

"In many instances, [collaboration] takes place only at the team and project levels and does not radiate or percolate to other divisions." 

I agree but would argue that this lack of adoption is found in MOST instances not just many.

When the work doesn't "percolate", it's less about the tools that make the invisible visible and more about people just not caring enough about the work happening outside of their own areas. Care and trust are very intertwined and is happening at the point of work and not easily advancing beyond. Lack of leadership involvement and leadership style can be a barrier for sure, but so too is a workforce with an expectation of intentionally short tenures. Grow and go attitudes seem to dominate the Working Culture resulting in employees staying a mere 18-24 months (a far cry from the 20+ in generations past). Can that really be enough time to build trust and a level of community beyond the point of the work? The trust issue therefore is bigger than within an individual organizations, this is about trust of business as a whole and it is our social tools helping us to see this condition more clearly, not necessarily improving it.

Change happens one conversation at at time and those conversations can change organizations. But until a critical mass of organizations changes, the Working Culture will generally remain one that is jaded, suspicious and distant. "Change the practices and a new culture will emerge..."

Changing Words. Changing Practices. Changing Cultures

"Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge."   - Harold Jarche

I always thought Harold nailed it with this quote, showing equally how obvious yet how difficult organizational culture change can be.

But where, when and how does change start? Is it through a huge strategy and subsequent tactics or is it smaller, more individualized, gradual. Practices are the actions we undertake and the behaviors we exhibit. Everything from how we conduct meetings, organize project teams, or decide how long to stand with a colleague talking over a cup of coffee. All are practices that make up our culture. Words to are practices as they are deliberate actions; thoughts transmitted. In the organizational learning subculture the words course and training are unfortunately defaulted to when people who don't understand them toss them around as THE solution to work performance problem. So if the words change does the related practice follow and then the culture shifts? Are words then the spark to ignite the potential change to come?

For me, each and every opportunity where the cry of "we need training" or a "we should have a course on xyz..." is raised I swoop into performance consultant mode and probe to determine the nature and significance of the issue and remind them for example that a PowerPoint deck is NOT in and of itself Training.  I'm relentless to the point where my staff asked me if I have a template of my responses. I'm also confident that on the other end of the call or email, eyes have rolled. 

Recently though a key leader responded in an email to my typical inquiries with the words "training" and "course"...

The words were in quotes. 

I sensed some subtraction by addition with these quotes bracketing the terms. Maybe it was an element of uncertainty, a glimpse into his internal questioning. However possibly he only wrote it that way to stave off my railing against training first, training always. Regardless, he was singling out the terms as being different than the definition. He was unsure what the solution was but used the only terms he knew with a subtle punctuational caveat. 

Maybe this then is the trigger, the first practice to change in an organizational culture - Words shared, one conversation at a time. 

Stand and Deliver

A social network conjures an image of people connecting and sharing from personal to professional and driven by ones own interests. Although it can be large in terms of connections, the conversations can be small in nature which in my opinion builds stronger bonds between the participants.  When Enterprise is added to the title, as in Enterprise Social Network, the nature of it all seems to change and the expectations tend to increase. The organization becomes the center point and work and profit are more the focus. 

When these tools are open, enabling people to share their stories without expectation, however large or small, great opportunities to transformation individuals arise. And organizations ultimately are individuals. Some of these transformative moments are so small that their impact is hardly felt at all. But over time they can accumulate, they gain momentum, they infect and spread.

"Culture is an emergent property of the many practices that happen every day. Change the practices and a new culture will emerge."

                                                                            - Harold Jarche

A few weeks ago we launched our ESN. And as we monitor, model and encourage, I take more stock of the small things; the many minor "shares" becoming the big things for that is what I believe are the seeds of a community.

For example I've watched (and participated some) the conversation about the purchase and use of a standing desk. Certainly not a direct impact on the bottom line. One employee posted that they had one, shared a photo and briefly wrote of it's health benefits.  As I passed through our office a few days later I did a double take as one of our Project Managers was standing and typing! Coincidence? I didn't engage him but instead went back to review the series of posts and comments and noticed he hadn't contributed to the conversation at all. 

I proceeded to casually asked him about the desk and how it was working out. He explained that he was getting used to it and was working it in throughout the day.  When I inquired as to how he heard of it he mentioned the colleague who originally shared as well as another in the thread of about seven different people.  I openly wondered if it was because of them that he purchased it?  He confirmed it was, as he knew both well.

Another two days passed and we got to talking again in passing.  When I asked about the benefits of the desk he spoke about his increased energy. He shared that usually he fades around 4pm but yesterday had no such feeling. I expressed my surprise as I only thought about back discomfort being alleviated. When I asked him to share his experience in our network he laughed and said "I don't Jive."  To which I smiled and replied, "apparently you do and owe it to the network to share your experience."

At 8:00am the next morning he posted about the positive impact of the desk.

A new idea shared by a trusted colleague leads to an experiment with surprisingly productive results... and all openly shared. 

Overcoming the Learning Professional's Lizard Brain

Executive: We need a course on blah, blah, blah.

Learning Professional: ...Right. OK, who is the audience? What is the objective?

Really? Back up. What the heck just happened? 

There's a good chance their Lizard Brain kicked in, that's what happened.  If you're not familiar with the Lizard Brain, also known as Reptilian Brains, Primitive Brain, Old Brain and a slew of others, you can read up on the details here. However if I just remind you of these little words - "fight or flight",  you probably know I'm talking about the Amygdala and this scenario makes some sense.

Simply put this inner area of our brain activates In stressful situations, when our survival instinct kicks in and we take on the stress or retreat to fight another day.

For millions of years we had fight or flight encoded in our brains. Our gut reaction to survive today is not that different than it was 150,000 years ago on the Savanna. However today, rather than flee a tiger to survive, we can take retreat from our knowledge about how most problems don't require training to resolve. In the face of an authority's demand, the corporate tiger, our encoded lizard brain can take over to better ensure we can pay the mortgage. 

Couple this with our years of schooling and systematic indoctrination and we have a deeply encoded brain telling us learning really happens in formal settings. I wrote similarly about this in the post: Cognitive Dissonance and the Denial of Social and Informal Learning and again as I compared our conflicts to the theory of Learned Helplessness. Both of these however focus on the issue from the point of view of leaders, executives and stakeholders; those outside of L&D. But the Lizard Brain is something we need to contend with as learning professionals. Just like the growth of the logical mind countered instinct and help advance humanity, this action must happen for learning professionals to truly help their organizations.

How can we detach then from the reptilian response system and succeed in using logic when faced with the requests?  Here are a few of my approaches.

Before the request arrives: (as you know it inevitably will)

Most of the work happens here!

1. Support - The shift away from Lizard brain responses takes some augmentation. We can't remember everything especially in the heat of the moment! Quick reference materials and prompts help you better articulate your message. I have tapped the grid in Is it a Training Problem? from Jane Bozarth's and the Expertise by Learning Mode graphic by Clark Quinn of The Internet Time Alliance more times than I can count. These simple tools are great to reference or re-purpose on a napkin to help people really see the issue. They also aid in helping you be clear and not get caught up in jargon. 

I also find Evernote indispensable. When in the conversation I have my own tips and notes handy to reference and level set with. Plus, demonstrating your own ability to quickly find information at that very moment is a powerful statement in demonstrating management of your own knowledge and the power of performance support.

2. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) - Now is the reason why you have been doing all this work! Your ability to tap into that of which you have collected, created and curated is a key ally to fend off the training first, training always request. Learn more about it through Harold Jarche and his work and writing on the topic

3. Networks - turn towards the others you (hopefully) have nurtured as your community. This is often called a Personal Learning Network (PLN). This trusted community is there to help you surface information or validate your thinking.

When the request arrives:

Pause - Most important, make a commitment not to immediately commit. A pause to invite reflection is your greatest opportunity to let the logical brain kick in and get warmed up. This is the time to engage your network, PKM, and tools

The Lizard is not your friend. What are you doing to keep it at bay?

Check out this solid read on the impact of the Lizard Brain from Seth Godin- Seth's Blog: Quieting the Lizard Brain