What are Ways of Working and Why Should We Care?

Are you hearing the term “Ways of Working” a lot lately?

Thanks to the pandemic, the concept of Ways of Working (“WOW”) is now becoming part of business vernacular. For good reason - with work and the workplace norms being stretched, we had to get more intentional about how we are actually doing it.

In my world of culture change, building the right ways of working is critical. Why? Because ways of working is where we define what our culture looks like in action and outline the key pillars of how we work together.

What Goes into Ways of Working?

First we start with the key behaviors which reflect the culture we want to have.

For example: if we want a culture of ownership, what does this look like? What are we committing to doing on a regular basis (as part of BAU). What does “ownership” look like in action?

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Next we assemble the key pillars and design the “how we do it around here” for each pillar. The most common pillars include**:

• Rules of engagement: The set of rules/procedures that outline expectations, what to do in certain situations and how to solve problems. There are rules of engagement for your organization and rules of engagement for working with other teams within your company.
• Priorities: What we prioritize and how we determine (and agree on) what is important.
• Communication: Includes expectations and standards for communication across a variety of situations. It is how we “talk” and how we “listen”.
• Accountability: Taking/giving responsibility and ownership; how we track this and make it a positive, not a negative.
• Escalation: When do we need to escalate and for what reasons? What is the protocol? How do we agree on resolution?

Once we have crafted our desired ways of working, there is always great enthusiasm to infuse this into our organizations. Before we hit “go”, we need to decide how much we can reasonably take on right now.

We often can’t do it all at once. We need to ensure we start in a manageable way and build momentum, because we don’t want to overwhelm our teams and cause our efforts to fizzle out. We’re in this for the long term.

Why Are Ways of Working Important to Your Organization?

Imagine having a shared understanding of your ways of working! Imagine how much clarity, alignment and focus you have around how your teams work and how to make decisions. Making even the smallest intentional changes towards your ultimate WOW blueprint will make a difference.

You will see previously time-consuming things become easier. There will be less friction between people/teams and fewer misunderstandings. Other benefits: reduced downtime, faster deployment, greater engagement with internal business partners… and yes, greater revenues and EBITDA!?

Your performance improves and your ability to deliver goes in one direction - up and to the right!

**Note: there are others, but I have limited the list to maintain article brevity.