I’m delighted to let you know that I’m gifting the first module of my #newnorm - leading through change and uncertainty programme. Next week (w/c 11 May 2020) , you'll have the option of three sessions to attend to help support you during this challenging time.
This first module - #newnorm - leading yourself with focused intent - has been designed to personally help individuals to power through this uncertain time with purposeful action and focused intent. To find out more about this particular opportunity and to book, click here.
You'll come away from the first module armed with knowledge about how we tick during times of great ambiguity. You'll then carry out some energising exercises, the output of which you can use to keep you grounded, balanced, focused and motivated on a daily basis. You'll also be able to ‘pay it forward’ to those around you using your toolkit.
Feedback from participants has already been fantastic:
“Joss’s insightful and well-constructed course really helped me in understanding what was in front of my eyes without me even seeing it. She has helped me to navigate through challenging times, both personally and within my business.” Trevor Steel, Publisher, London
“I recently completed the first module of Joss’s #newnorm - leading through change and uncertainty course. I found it extremely helpful and insightful - the psychology and practical content was very well-balanced. I came away feeling energised and positive plus I feel I now have a toolkit with which to tackle the coming months of uncertainty. Thank you Joss, it was indeed a morning well spent!” Heather Cooper, Owner, Sash & Veil
This gifted #newnorm first module is part of the #newnorm - leading through change and uncertainty programme which has been designed for people leaders and managers.
If you have friends or colleagues whom you think would also benefit, feel free to share the information with them too – this module is suitable for everyone.
Wishing you well.
Joss
LAUNCH OF MY NEW PROGRAMME - #NEWNORM, LEADING THROUGH CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY
I’m delighted to let you know that today I’ve launched my new programme called #newnorm – leading through change and uncertainty, to help leaders in particular, navigate a life and work environment that’s changed immeasurably - the #newnorm - in which nothing really looks or feels the same.
I’ve already carried out module one – leading yourself with focused intent, with two cohorts on Zoom and the feedback has been fantastic – this module in particular can be used by anyone, and is to help set yourself up to be at your best to navigate this #newnorm.
For leaders in the workplace, it’s particularly hard, as they’re having to not only manage and lead themselves, but also manage and lead their teams and those around them. It’s a time for them to dig deep and find the stamina and bravery to keep going.
I believe this time should also be seen as an opportunity. It’s a time for leaders to seriously step up and not only remain at the top of their game, but to grow and show the people around them what they’re made of and who they really are.
The question is, rather than just surviving, can leaders use the #newnorm to thrive rather than just survive?
Tough times call for smart action. Whilst we don’t know what’s coming, this four-week, four-module programme can give leaders understanding about how people and their brains react to ambiguity, whilst helping them build a tool kit and approach that not only works for them, but also those around them.
The digital programme can help leaders set themselves up and lead with intent. It can also help them to pace themselves and focus on what’s in their control and what matters, so they use their energy sparingly.
The agile and concise programme kicks off with:
Module one - leading yourself with focused intent.
Module two - creating a team culture that works remotely and in times of great Uncertainty.
Module three - what ‘best in class’ communication looks like during this #newnorm.
Module four - keeping you on track, focused on tackling what’s relevant in the new world.
Here’s a testimonial from someone who’s been on the programme to whom and for which I’m hugely grateful:
“Joss’s insightful and well-constructed course really helped me in understanding what was in front of my eyes without me even seeing it. She has helped me to navigate through challenging times, both personally and within my business.” Trevor Steel, Publisher, London. https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-steel-415b7119.
I hope you enjoyed the introductory video and blog. Please click here to find out more.
I’d love to hear from you and I’m here to help, so please get in touch.
#newnorm setup 101.2: Control and Rituals
Inpulse’s recent survey results found that nearly two-thirds of employees said their most common feelings amidst the coronavirus pandemic are anxiety, stress or distraction.
Operating in a world we barely recognise, with the hum of constant anxiety reverberating through and around us, has suddenly become our #newnorm. Navigating this journey, and staying strong and resilient, are key if we’re to stay grounded and on top of our game. Never has it been so important for leaders to put their oxygen masks on first and intentionally set themselves up to be at their best.
Last week’s #newnorm article looked at how the brain responds in times of uncertainty, the importance of managing our mental state and creating a vision of how you want to lead during this time of great ambiguity.
This week, we’re focusing on #newnorm control and daily rituals.
We’re currently not in control of much but there are many things we can master. That’s where our focus should be if we are to avoid overwhelm, elevated anxiety and a dip in our energy levels.
Let’s talk control first. We have a choice about how we react to everything that comes our way. We have a choice on what to focus and expend our energy. Viktor Emil Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist and survivor of four concentration camps, summed this up beautifully after his experience during the war “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The bottom line is we only have a finite amount of energy so prioritising what we can control, influence and change, enables us to be at our most effective and energised.
The Sphere of Control/Influence is a great model to use to help you identify and take responsibility for your feelings and choices, in order to move into a position of power. It helps to identify the areas of which you have total, part and no control. You can even use it to consider the overlap of what you can control and what really matters. Pondering the answers to this, in line with your ‘Best Self’ work last week, will help you identify your ‘sweet spot’ areas and enable you to focus your energy on what matters and what you can influence.
Moving onto your daily ritual, I love the saying “How you start your day, is how your day will go!” With this in mind, how we start our day is key to managing ourselves through Covid-19’s lockdown. This has been a game changer for me and can be for you too.
Firstly, our brains have limited capacity and cannot work at their best continuously throughout the day. Shorter bursts of intense, focused work help to make us most effective. Bear this in mind as you start to plot out your day, asking yourself:
· When am I at my most productive?
· When do my energy levels tend to dip?
· What tasks tire my mind?
Armed with this knowledge, you can plot the times of the day during which you’ll carry out your more intense, focused work. For me the best times are the morning and early to mid-afternoon, as I know I’m an early bird rather than a nocturnal owl.
Next, identify the standard daily actions you have to carry out that come relatively easy to you and insert those into your calendar. These might be answering emails and carrying out your admin.
It’s important to keep energy levels up and remain in a positive mindset. Therefore, you should intermingle your focused bursts of work, with elements that boost your mental energy - helping you de-stress and move from a negative to positive state.
Think about:
· What keeps me focused?
· What energises me?
· What inspires me?
· What changes my negative mood swing to a positive?
Some of my answers to these questions included dog walks, yoga, 7-minute intense workout and TedTalks. Others clients have included, creating and playing their ‘winning’ music compilation, reading blogs or listening to inspiring podcasts Whatever your preference, don’t forget to pop them into your daily/weekly planner around the times you estimate your energy levels will dip.
The last thing to mention when it comes to your ritual of planning your day is to remain realistic. The reward network in our brain gets triggered, which leads us feeling good and encouraging us to continue to perform well. As you get to the end of your day/week, you want to be able to pat yourself on the back and reward yourself for a job well done. What you don’t want is to feel that you’ve failed for only completing 20% of your tasks, potentially leading to negativity. It’s therefore important you insert approximately 10-20% contingency time into your planner to take into account the unexpected calls, emails and urgent actions that may emerge throughout your day.
Let me know how you get on if you’d like, and you can also download my Capitaliser Weekly Worksheet from the website which may help with your daily and weekly planning.
I’d like to end on highlighting that emotions are contagious, just like Covid-19. We’re in control of our emotions, we can stem our negativity and make our positive emotions more infectious. I touched on the importance of being intentional and about controlling the areas of our lives that we can and that matter during this time. Keeping in control and influencing your emotions positively is in your gift. If you do this, the impact will be for the greater good and you’ll be able to stem the negative, fear-filled emotions that can go viral. Remember as a leader you’re an important role-model, you can inspire and influence and it’s up to you to lead the way.
Next week, we will consider how to create the right team culture in the #newnorm.
If you’re a leader and would like to find out more about the #newnorm - leading through change and uncertainty programme, click here.
(Inpulse survey results HRWeek article can be found here.)
#newnorm setup 101: leading yourself TO BE YOUR BEST SELF
Never before have we experienced anything like this. We face a terrifying, global virus that has no boundaries and connects at speed. We know that the worst is still most likely yet to come. Most of us are experiencing enforced measures to limit our social interactions and movements and we can all feel the heightened sense of urgency to control and contain Covid-19’s grip. As human beings, many of us feel anxiety and stress, to which we respond in different ways.
These may be fear-based behaviours, as we grapple to deal with this unknown. Human brains work in a specific way when dealing with and then interpreting what we deem a threat.
A state of constant uncertainty or change or both, leads us to being in a state of constant high alert, which sets off different emotions and behaviours from within, such as distraction, fear and anxiety. I’ve experienced these behaviours myself, and when I’ve worked on company transformations, I’ve witnessed a lot of these behaviours play out too.
These emotions and behaviours, if not managed, lead to less effective decision-making, poorer memory, less patience and being much more triggered by people’s behaviours. Depending on how we manage ourselves, our behaviours and emotions, can impact either positively or negatively on our relationships and our performance.
As a leader, your impact on people is huge. This is a good time to understand the neurological pattern, so you can be at your most understanding, supportive and effective when dealing with others and yourself. Dealing with crisis and the long-term unknown shouldn’t be approached as a sprint, but rather like training for a marathon. What are the stepping stones you can put in place to help you stay strong, resilient, focused and supportive?
It’s important to be able to have a well thought out, purposeful strategy so you can make it to the half-way point and push on to the finish line. Crossing the finish line as the credible, well-respected leader you’ve intentionally designed from the get go, will help anchor, ground and motivate you, and keep you strong when the going seems particularly tough. Your clear vision of you during this time of crisis, will also give you something to reflect and self-correct against to keep you on track as the best leader you want to be.
Some questions to ask yourself to kick start your #newnorm leader setup 101:
During and at the end of this crisis, what do you want to stand for, and be known for as a leader?
What do you want your boss and peers to be feeling and saying about you?
What do you want your team members to be feeling and saying about you?
What are the key values and behaviours that are core to you, (and your company), and that you want to consistently demonstrate throughout this time?
What are the top 3-5 values and behaviours you’ve chosen that will bring about your desired outcomes to questions 1, 2 and 3, and which you want to consistently role model?
What are your 3-5 #newnorm leader commitments that you’ll now put into play on a daily/weekly basis?
Now ask yourself ‘how’ you are going to consistently deliver these commitments.
Write down these goals and commitments and place them on the wall in front of your desk, so you can reflect at the start and end of each day and reset if needs be.
This outcome of this short exercise will help you define who you want to be at this time, to keep you anchored and balanced, and support you to be at your best when dealing with others.
We aren’t in control of a lot of things currently, but there are many things we can control and which will benefit us and those around us. Step one on this #newnorm leadership journey is setting yourself up to manage your ‘state’ for the long-term, and to be the intentional, purposeful and values-led leader you aspire to be during this time of uncertainty.
Next step on the #newnorm setup is creating the healthy daily ritual that works for you. I’ll be talking about this in my next blog and helping to give you ideas and inspiration to help you design yours, so do look out for it.
Conveying workplace culture when there is no workplace
A blog from my white paper partner in crime Neil Harrison, who continues to write with great insight and in a wonderfully compelling way. Click here to download the Culture & EVP - transformational soulmates driving transformational change white paper.
We’ve all seen tweets and texts that haven’t aged well. Their sentiment and message quickly overtaken by events and rendered, at best, obsolete.
There’s a section in the white paper that Joss Sargent and I have very recently put together that has similarly been overtaken by events – positively, or so we’d like to think. The section of our white paper, ‘Culture and EVP – transformational soul mates driving organisational change’, touches on ensuring that culture extends beyond the confines of the immediate workplace.
All of a Covid-19 sudden, with the heroic exception of key workers, we’re all working from home and everyone’s workplace extends as far as their dining room table, a telephone and a laptop.
These are truly unique times through which we are all navigating via science, trust and crossed digits. One of the issues we can be confident about today is the need for an organisation’s culture and employee value proposition to have reach and relevance outside the office, the shop, the factory.
For employees to continue to feel as if they belong, employers need to ensure that culture and their organisational ‘why’ is just as relevant, just as tangible at 34 Acacia Avenue as it is in a city centre open plan.
Our white paper, in the quaint pre-coronavirus days of maybe a month ago, suggests that with more and more people wanting to work increasingly from home, organisations have to think more clearly about ensuring such people feel part of their organisation, rather than apart from it.
And if this was a challenge before house confinement, then it is even more pressing now we are all waiting behind closed doors for what might lie ahead.
People are increasingly attracted to a job because of the time they are not working, rather than the time they are working there. We are spending less and less physical time at and with our employer. We potentially have a more distant and diluted cultural relationship with our employer. We have less and less line of sight of cultural role models and exemplars. And there are more and more people who have an increasingly transactional relationship with not one employer, but any number of organisations, contacts, side hustles and networks.
Whilst the advantages of landing a robust and inspiring culture and EVP have never been greater, the challenges are not getting any easier. Workforces are less and less homogenous, in terms of gender, ethnicity, age and education, and we can increasingly add location and geography to such a list.
For those old enough to remember, a digital camera evolved soon enough into, well, a camera; the mobile phone became the phone; and electric cars will, perhaps sooner than we think, be simply cars. The virus means that WFH will lose its meaning – we work where we work.
One of the other key points to emerge from our research touched on being much more nimble and intuitive when we gauge and measure the continued effectiveness of our culture and EVP. Markets, competitors, products evolve constantly, nothing stays the same.
It’s likely that we are living through perhaps the greatest change to our living and working parameters ever.
The notion of where we work has very quickly been knocked on its head. To reach out to workforces, employers have to go far beyond the workplace, in order to convey a sense of culture and the ‘why’ to people who suddenly have little obvious daily reminder of it.
If you have a spare moment, have a look at our white paper for more thoughts around this and other subjects.
Putting people and metrics at the heart of a united culture and Employee Value Proposition
Following the launch of the Culture & EVP – Transformational Soul Mates Driving Organisational Change White Paper earlier this week, (please download here if you missed it), we’re creating some shorter blogs, that touch on some of the key topics that have emerged from our research.
Who knows what the next few months will bring, but we’d make the point that culture and Employee Value Proposition will perhaps be even more important in creating supportive, empathetic workforces as and when we get in front of Covid-19. Understanding what people collectively value and need to be at their best will help to create a culture that people want to stay in and are attracted to join.
Below we’ve focused on the importance of metrics to both culture and the Employee Value Proposition.
CEO and C-suite Culture and EVP buy-in and ongoing investment and sponsorship
There’s unanimous agreement that without CEO and C-suite buy-in, culture and EVP will not gain the investment or traction to become, and remain a business priority.
Making or maintaining culture and EVP as organisation priorities depends on a robust business case, backed by measurement rather than sentiment. Supporting this view is i4cp’s research finding that ‘90% of organisations that were unsuccessful in transforming their cultures, did not set clear success measures upfront.’
Questions you may want to ponder as you consider this point:
Have you clearly defined your current and desired culture?
How are you currently measuring culture and cultural change within your organisation?
What metrics do you use to measure the impact of your EVP with both internal and external audiences?
How do you go about combining these in a compelling business case?
An engagement survey gives different metrics to a culture survey
Unsurprisingly from our research, we’ve found that the people engagement survey is how the majority of companies measure their culture, but it’s important to point out that an engagement survey is different from a culture survey.
The engagement survey focuses on the feelings of individuals and their first-person experience, the latter explores the collective patterns of behaviour, in response to the ‘organisation’s operating system’. The ‘system’ includes aspects such as the unique structures, processes and communication methods which send signals to employees around how they should behave, in order to be accepted in the organisation.
Whilst there are a number of generic research surveys through which to gauge and compare engagement, this does not exist in the same way with culture. This isn’t surprising as a company culture is unique, with different values, business objectives and situational challenges.
Measuring colleagues’ collective view of what they perceive the current culture to be and what they’d like it to be if they and the organisation were to be at peak performance, is an effective way of measuring and defining your culture change programme, and also gives a benchmark measure. The Barrett Culture Values Assessment, which I’m trained in and know well and highly rate, does exactly that. It can be tailored to each company, and produces results that are not only insightful, but enable organisations to prioritise the action required to create a healthier culture, that subsequently creates higher people engagement and better performance.
Similarly, EVP impact can be measured in a number of ways. But they have to be ways that are relevant to your organisation, its talent audiences and its direction. Such metrics might touch on pipeline leakage, offer acceptance ratios, propensity to consider you an employer of choice and retention over the first three months. However, they will not be relevant to every organisation. We increasingly have the means to take such readings regularly, but too many EVPs are based on what is now historical data and insights. They look backwards, rather than inspiring future talent.
Our key metrics takeaways:
A strategic and robust business case underpinned by clearly defined success metrics, will help secure senior leader buy-in and ongoing sponsorship;
Think twice about using an engagement survey to measure culture;
Bespoke the metrics you use to measure EVP and culture change impact;
Ensure that cultural metrics are applied to EVP development and vice versa;
That the way we measure the hearts and minds of our people and candidates could be a lot more nimble and a lot more regular.
EVP and culture have the capacity to be transformational soulmates that drive effective organisational change.
The question to ask yourselves – are the numbers you are producing able to tell such a story?
Food for thought and if you’d like to talk more about our findings, do get in touch…
White paper launch: Culture and EVP, transformational soul mates driving organisational change
Approximately four months ago when Neil Harrison (from NH237 Consulting) and I sat down to talk about a potential research project, our main concerns touched on employee engagement and retention, labour and skills shortages, the reasons people might join an organisation and the reasons they might or might not stay.
What we wanted to better understand was the relationship between an organisation’s culture and its Employee Value Proposition. Both are increasingly seen as key, if often under-exploited, business drivers. But do they exist in splendid isolation, ships that pass in the night? In order to make more compelling and actionable use of their potential, should there be a more obvious, more structured connection between the two?
That’s what we set out to establish.
The research white paper you can download below, is the product of a number of structured conversations with leading industry professionals whose responsibility touches on culture and EVP. We are hugely indebted to them for their time and insights.
What did we learn? Quite a lot.
We wouldn’t want to pre-empt the white paper entirely, but some of the key points touch on the sorts of metrics that should be applied to both culture and EVP. How topical should the measurement and insights that inform culture and EVP be? Do we need to tear up the rule book and think much more nimbly than ever before? There are also some fascinating questions about the ownership of both culture and EVP. About how organisations could better articulate and communicate their culture and EVP.
Perhaps most fundamentally, this is about making better use of the clear and tangible link between the two. An EVP helps to welcome new talent into your organisation on the basis of the culture they see portrayed. And such new talent can also act as change agents, helping to evolve the culture within an organisation.
There should be a supportive and synergetic relationship between the two. But this feels more like a possibility within many organisations than a reality.
We hope we’ve managed to whet your appetite. Who knows the full implications of the coronavirus. In the short term, it feels unlikely to be anything even approaching positive. Whatever its impact, however, organisations will continue to need to create an engaging, inspiring cultural workplace to get the best and the most out of their people. And such people will still have to be attracted by an accurate, aspirational message that looks forward not backwards.
If you’d like to talk further to us on these two topics, we’d be delighted.
Joss and Neil.
Culture isn’t one aspect of the game, it is the game!
Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM stated ‘I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game.’ Wise words indeed and sums up why culture is now a priority for most CEOs, MDs, Exec Teams, Team Leaders, HR specialists, and more often than not, it finds itself included in the CEO scorecard. (Do read to the end and why not complete the Capitalise Culture Health Check to gain some high-level insight relating to your company culture.)
Everyone’s looking for the ‘game, set and match – it’s in the bag’ scenario, however, few are getting the slam dunk! There seems, however, to be a dichotomy going on in the workplace. When it comes to culture, a high number of Boards/CEOs agree (92% in fact - E&Y Culture & Boards at a Glance 2016) that focusing on culture has improved financial performance, however, the stats repeatedly dictate that the majority of culture transformation/ change programmes do not get properly approached and measured and therefore fail.
Take heed if you are in a people leader role as creating high performing, healthy company and team cultures are of equal importance. To be effective, any change management or culture transformation process should focus on the whole system, not just part of it. To assess how well your culture change process is going, three types of performance indicators are crucial to identify:
Output indicators – factors that related to the delivery of products and services such as productivity, efficiency and quality.
Outcome indicators – factors that relate to goals such as income, sales, new clients, repeat business.
Causal indicators – the factors that relate to cultural toxicity/entropy and cultural health, values alignment and purpose/vision alignment, which are the factors that influence colleague engagement.
The first two indicators are tangible and can be relatively easy to measure, whilst the causal indicators are subjective and aren’t easy to determine or measure. The latter has a major knock-on effect on the former two.
Performance is influenced by culture, culture is influenced by values and behaviours, and behaviours are influenced by motivations. I inherently believe that most of us are motivated to come in to work to do the best job we can, but we’re complex beings and a multiple of different aspects can take us ‘off piste’ into the land of unproductivity, conflict, frustration and resentment, a land we all want to try and avoid.
Leaders are the drivers of change, whether it’s cultural change or not. Culture change requires a shift in the values and beliefs of leaders and managers. When people leaders engage in caring and trusting behaviours, and encourage colleagues to be responsible and accountable for their work, engagement increases. So the fact that people leaders are responsible for driving healthy, high-performing cultures collectively and individually, it may be beneficial to answer the following questions…
Do you feel that the leaders in your company are highly focused culture vultures?
Are the leaders skilled in the art of culture change and bringing out the best in themselves and their teams, to deliver the company’s purpose, vision and strategy?
Just a minor, but positive shift in a team of leaders and their approach, can bring about a step change in overall company performance which positively hits the bottom line. However, if your answer is ‘no’ to the above two questions, you must ask yourself:
How high is your cultural entropy (toxicity)?
How at risk is your business because of this cultural toxicity?
I’ve been working with a number of companies recently to help them answer these two questions and I’m just about to start another round of team high-performance culture interventions with some leaders and their wider teams. These workshops will tackle the core themes and areas of cultural entropy identified from the Culture Values Assessment (CVA) results, as well as focusing on creating team and individual understanding and meaning and then getting them to set objectives to ensure alignment with the bigger picture purpose, vision and values.
It’s motivating work for all involved, including myself. There’s nothing like seeing the dial move, light bulb moments occur and clear action plans created, honed and committed to. Creating understanding and meaning and interconnecting them to the bigger picture purpose is not only motivating work for those involved, but helps to bring around the desired long-term behaviour change required.
If you want to get closer to winning the culture game and feel you need a helping hand, do get in touch. You may not know where you sit on the culture journey, and if not, why don’t you complete my short, freebie, high-level Capitalise Culture Health Check which appears under the resources section of this website.