Invisibility in Culture Change

August 2, 2024

TRANSCRIPT

When I look at the current way organizations work, for the most part, we are still operating in a very siloed hierarchical kind of paradigm.

And the way in which we communicate with each other, the way in which we relate to each other is what we learned at school.

There's not necessarily full appreciation for everyone's input. We talk a lot in organizations about things like collaboration and psychological safety and inclusion and the value prop. So we have a lot of good intentions, I think, in organizations, but, primarily, the way in which people come to work every day, they're not equipped individually to really listen to each other, be willing to share ideas fully, and listen to other people's ideas. They don't know how to deal with conflict most of the time. Very few people are trained how to deal with conflict.

We come into an organization that has already got a certain culture that is fairly unconscious in my opinion.

So we operate as best we can, but so much of what we're operating in is not very well designed or intentional. So if I look at what different from the inside out type of work is, it's creating an intentional way of working together. That's one aspect of it. So one aspect of it, I I I look at as being contextual. Like, we are committed to working in full collaboration. We're committed to getting the best out of each other. We're committed to being a learning organization.

And then the kind of practices and training that we do is to train everyone in a common vocabulary and a common set of what we call distinctions or or practices that not only allow for one individual person to be working on that, but ideally for a whole team to be working together that way. And then for that to be reiterated, to be stated by the leaders, to be integrated by the leaders, and then I would go one step further, which would be and then in the systems, like the hiring systems, the performance evaluation systems, HR type of systems would be integrated to reinforce an intentional culture.

Right. I've I've heard some coaches say many businesses have a mission and vision on the wall, but is it being lived, or do the people there actually know how to pull it off or to Yeah. Interact with it? And usually no.

So it's kinda like people go through the motions to do the right thing. They think they're doing the right thing, but they're not doing the work to I like to think of that as lighting up the full contribution of the whole all the teams, all the staff, all the employees. Right. Because that is not what we are accustomed to. That's not what's been going on for the last two hundred plus plus plus years.

Right. And it's like when you say they're not doing the work, I I just pictured a bunch of people sitting around with a bunch of photo frames and nails, and no one's hanging them, but they don't have hammers.

So how could they? And the business is saying, we hang we hang photos. It's like, don't have the tools. Yeah.

So I think a lot of what we're doing in organizations that brings out the best in people and allows for creativity and possibility and all that stuff, it's very invisible. It's not something we are paying much attention to.