Organizational Culture Transformation is a Prerequisite for Digital Transformation

If we agree on the title of this article, then how do we Transform Organizational Culture? - By Focusing on the most valued resources any company has – its EMPLOYEES by HUMANIZING HR FOR EACH AND EVERY EMPLOYEE.?How do we do that?

In a Goal Setting for each Employee and Employee’s Engagement, Experience, Learning and Development, “WHY do we do what we do?” is more important than HOW (WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, HOW MUCH Time, Cost, Risk and Value is involved in doing it) we do it because:

To achieve Employee’s set goals, in Team collaborations, each Employee has to perform

1.????Multiple Unique Roles leading to (the next in the list below)

2.????Unique set of Stakeholders (Customers and Partners) for each Employee’s Role leading to

3.????Unique one-to-one relationships and partnerships with unique set of expectations, duties, commitments, and promises with each of the Stakeholders leading to

4.????Unique one-to-many and many-to-one relationships and partnerships with multiple unique sets of expectations, duties, commitments, and promises with other Employees and Stakeholders leading to

5.????The Planning, Execution and periodic Adaptation (revision, refinement, change in direction, etc) with a Team with who the Employee aligned on addressing the WHY

Typically, this WHY is answered at different levels of the scope of a TEAM using:

1.????Values

2.????Purpose

3.????Vision

4.????Mission

5.????Goals

6.????Objectives

7.????Metrics

8.????KPIs

9.????Business Outcomes

10.?Key Results

For effective and personalized Employee Engagement and Experience, HR and People Leaders should not only have the above ten at the different levels of a Team starting Top to Down from Enterprise to Business Unit to Division to Department to Region to Sector/Function to Individual Team levels (these levels of teams are example only, each company may have a different tiers/hierarchy in organizing teams) but also have these as part of each and every Employee’s employee profile to fuel core HR functions like Talent Acquisition and Management, Learning and Development, Career Planning, and Employee Experience and Engagement.?This helps humanize HR for each person while planning and executing on the common shared Values, Purpose, and Vision for both the Company and the Employee yielding the best outcomes for the Company and the Employee.

Typically, a person’s Values and Purpose (the first two in the above list) are much more employer agnostic and relatively more stable (do not change that often) compared to the last five elements in the list above. Because when each person’s values and purpose align with that of a company’s first five – values, purpose, vison, mission, and goals, the next five will be effectively aligned with each employee’s goals, objectives, metrics, KPIs, business outcomes and key results resulting in the best employee engagement, experience, learning, development, and effectiveness.

The last five in the above list are dependent on each business project or goal as opposed to the first five which are relatively independent of each business project in which an employee needs to perform.?Below are specific actions that help Employees find the balance in their Personal WHY with the Corporate’s/Employer’s HOW:

Call for action focusing on an Employee

·??????Employee is the Chief Executive Officer of her/his life (which includes career)

·??????Employee is the ultimate owner of her/his life and accountable how she/he lives and experiences the life, this is just like a CEO who has the ultimate accountability and ownership in leading a corporation

·??????Employee needs to continuously self-introspect, listen and recognize the inner voice as her/his Values, Purpose, Passions, Aspirations, and Duties dynamically change as her/his life journey unfolds

·??????Employee needs to own the balancing of the WHY, her/his Heart and the HOW, her/his Brain as shown in the visual of this post as she/he live and develop and muster the Clarity (e.g., be clear how the work she/he performs every day at a company is aligned and in harmony with her/his personal WHY) and Courage (e.g., speak truth to the power by saying what needs to be said to inform the leaders instead of saying what they want to hear), anchored on Character and Empathy (e.g., transparent and honest in trust building by thinking and acting with the bigger picture beyond her/his personal interests in mind to serve other stakeholders) to live the life to the fullest while performing both personal and professional duties.?

·??????Employee needs to continuously ask the WHY on any business goal or objective she/he is involved in and ensure all her/his stakeholders are also clear and aligned to share that “common shared answer” to the WHY question, if not work with all the stakeholders to reach that common alignment before going on to addressing and supporting the HOW

·??????Note that all the below people – People Leaders, HR Leaders, and CXOs are also Employees and hence the above call for actions is applicable for them also

Call for action focusing on a People Leader

·??????Recognize employees are the most valuable resources to plan and execute on any digital transformation initiatives and hence enable and drive “organizational culture transformation” focusing first on employees’ total wellbeing

·??????A People Leader who herself/himself is an Employee can provide the support and business environment for all employees in the team to execute on the above-mentioned employee actions

·??????A People Leader can empower employees to perform their job duties by creating and improving the psychological safety for employees, e.g. ?by helping an employee to align on the answer to the “common WHY” question among her/his stakeholders while implementing Company’s all ten elements in the above list, meaning a People’s Leader needs to truly work as a Servant Leader to work with her/his peers to reach alignment on the common shared WHY before asking her/his team to execute on the HOW

Call for action focusing on a HR Leader

·??????Recognize employees are the most valuable resources to plan and execute on any digital transformation initiatives and hence enable and drive “organizational culture transformation” focusing first on employees’ total wellbeing

·??????Create and implement organizational governance structures, e.g., reimagine annual performance processes focusing on assessing, measuring and improving employee’s total wellbeing, create incentives in the company for people leaders who contribute to improved employee engagement, experience and total wellbeing

·??????Create differentiating value proposition for employees to work in the company by prioritizing and investing on employees by directly addressing how “organizational culture should be transformed”, e.g., to facilitate risk taking culture without the fear of failure for experimentation, identify and implement human-centric approaches for helping employees balance between Personal WHY with Corporate’s HOW

Call for action focusing on an Executive Leader (CXO - like CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, CTO)

·??????Recognize employees are the most valuable resources to plan and execute on any digital transformation initiatives and hence enable and drive “organizational culture transformation” focusing first on employees’ total wellbeing

·??????Create the culture of Employees First before Business Outcomes and lead by example in implementing this culture

·??????Create and implement organizational governance structures, e.g., reimagine annual performance processes focusing on assessing, measuring and improving employee’s total wellbeing, create incentives in the company for people leaders who contribute to improved employee engagement, experience and total wellbeing

·??????Create differentiating value proposition for employees to work in the company by prioritizing and investing on employees

(Note:?All the opinions expressed in this post is completely in the spirit of sharing the life and work experiences of the author and not reflective of any of the author’s current or prior employers)

To make the main messages in this article more relatable to the reader, sharing a story below:

Story:

Context:?There is a retail company in a local mall that the author knows (not naming it here for obvious reasons) which has a business goal to open certain number of new credit cards every month.?The company translates this goal as a KPI to each and every employee on the sales floor.?To meet this KPI as part of their performance measure, employees entice teenagers walking in the mall right by the store to open new credit card accounts as most of the non-teenagers already have credit card accounts.?Most of these teenagers have limited or no financial knowledge and do not have any financial history, and hence their credit scores may get affected when they open the credit cards first time in their life and not able to pay off the balance later.?However, the retail store’s employees, to meet their KPIs, even though they know in their heart it’s not right to entice these teenagers to open the credit cards, they still go ahead and do it to meet their performance goals.?

Problem:?Each employee may have various personal duties and obligations to keep their job, so even though their Heart (personal values) is not in synch with their Brain (company KPIs) here, they do this which is not good for either the employee’s total wellbeing or to the company as employees who do not like this way of opening new credit cards with teenagers will quit as soon as they find better employer where they do not need to do this thereby the company loosing their employees and now need to hire and train new employees.

Solution:?Employees need to share the feedback on how she/he feels about this with her/his manager without fear or penalty and question the above KPI to measure employee’s performance.?Employee’s manager and HR need to work with upper management to identify other KPIs to run the business.

The reader can relate to similar situations like the above we see and experience while being part of Digital Transformation initiatives where an employee’s WHY are not in balance with the corporate’s/employer’s HOW.?As companies roll out business strategies and execute on these strategies, all the concerned stakeholders starting from an Employee to People’s Leader to HR Leader to CXO need to consciously do their part in transforming the organization culture.?What are some of the practical and down-to-earth human-centric approaches that you know about for implementing Organizational Culture Transformation preserving Employee Total Wellbeing while producing the business outcomes that are promised by Digital Transformation?