Why the current work cultures may sabotage business chance at success in the 'post covid' era.

Culture is slowly overtaking strategy discussions.

Business effectiveness and dependence on strategy alone is showing itself to be a one legged horse, in capable of surviving the long haul. More and more conversations are steering into how do we keep our business alive , and our people adjusting to the office/plant/ store within the new normal.

Well, there is always the one thing we can bank on - we have in the past - FEAR.

Fear of boss, fear of job, fear of depleted savings, fear of economic revival taking more time, fear of...It may have become our go-to mechanisms for years.

And yet , can we afford it ? No.

Let me share how FEAR may be a hidden part of most of our business and cultural strategies and why it is not an effective strategy anymore. Very few should have more than 1-2. If you do have more, pls consider changing some parts of it. Also, as the world evolves, people development and cultural transformation in line with business evolution become paramount. Here is what might sabotage your efforts ...

(Though business are beginning to realise it, they struggle in what elixirs to start adding and what toxins to remove...).

Cultural Toxin 1 : FEAR.

From Insecurity, Dispensability, Not being enough -not good enough for the position or fast enough like their competitor or peer, ...dominates business and personal decisions ... thus operating yet hiding in plain sight.

PEOPLE SIDE

1. Wealth vs Health

When what the employee want is aligned with what the organisation is providing - position, status, money, comfort , things work smoothly and occasional incentives are enough to get them to follow the line .

However, when health - their safety, mental health, health of their family is in conflict with their wealth - most people will choose health over wealth. ( Unless they are in dire poverty or desperate need for survival - neither of which make a great workforce).

Fear of job then becomes a bargaining chip that provides support but not loyalty, belonging, agility or engagement. Something the new normal post covid will need more of as people work remotely.

2. Meaning vs Needs

More and more people want their life to mean something. Their parents needed the safety and security of a job. Now they want it too and yet they want something more. This 'something more' keeps them restless in the day and awake at night. They cant seem to shed their parents advice and their own psychological barrier, but as they still look at the success stories from their own country and abroad- they wonder if they could become or experience something more out of life.

Fear of missing out is a real phenomenon for them that haunts them ever so often. Not so for our parents or before that. With working remotely and less cultural pressure to look busy, they will have time to wonder more. The less the cultural ties, the more likely they will want to plug out when the time is right, leaving them lesser engaged at work in the present.

BUSINESS SIDE

3. Above the pay grade vs we are in this together.

Ask senior management in any company and they will tell you there are many inner circles (like the planets, the moons and the asteroids)

Getting anything different, innovative or better done requires peeling through the many concentric layers. Yet, many tire down, get ripped apart or are set in place by the bias, insecurity, difference in opinions or just basic politics. Most business know this about their system but find if it works for most, it must be right. This 'culture within the culture' creates above your pay grade, chinese whispers, biases vs the lets support and find a way to do this together that kills the urge to do something new within a system.

Fear of becoming irrelevant from the incoming talent drives the talent pool away, creating false dips in succession pipelines, false generation gaps and false dis-engagement issues.

[ Aside: Generally, someone who is part of the cultural problem, is given the problem to solve, ....often failing in impact and succeeding in numbers, leading to the confirmation bias that the problem cannot really be solved so should be left as is.]

As fewer people come to office, networking and understanding the system becomes difficult. Also as fewer employees (from automation) work up the ladder, intolerance for this may increase and attrition is highest where it is needed most.

4. Marketing vs. Real Care

Many times businesses understand that most people care based initiatives have become a to-do list for their employees. Yet, marketing, changing customer perceptions, marketplace recognitions starts taking precedent over the stark ground reality that the initiatives are not more than slapstick feel good . Eventually the initiatives become a political mileage or country/community service contract or a business/ legal need more than a people need.

With observation, most employees then know whether the management really cares about them or if the employee initiatives are just a check in their to-do list , making sceptics of their employees.

Fear of not looking good enough as a business/unit to the customer/ outside world eventually starts to drives those numbers than real care. With working remotely, care and trust become relevant drivers of quality performance over fear of job loss, something most organisations struggle to then have a handle on. They pay more to monitor more, secure more, penalise more - taking them further away .

5. Purpose and Profits

With new organisations everyday giving/receiving awards to companies for displaying purpose over profits irrespective, it creates the false notion within businesses that saving the world today while squeezing all its juice yesterday, is okay.

A lot goes into a product or a service - many of which cannot be restored. Take an employees life time confined within a code, the ecological balance a 'raw' material provides, setting the right cultural precedents so employees can set the right precedents for their children, building eco friendly infrastructure, allowing more sunlight rather than air conditioning in the workplace, pushing back on customers that cant push their own employees but happily agree to a 9 or 12 hr work pace from other countries...are some of the many many examples.

Sure it gets the country business, people jobs, globalises workplaces and democratises supply. But we could all do better, if we want to.

To then use the profits generated to build the country back, becomes counter productive . Most businesses understand that , and yet find it harder to break the mould or stand up for something different than revenue and profits, among an almost-always dwindling economy and ever increasing topline chase.

Fear of not winning the race in a profit dominated economy drives the shareholders and the stakeholders of most businesses.

As employees come to work post covid, the collective rehab will ensure they ask questions on who is responsible for the mindless chasing of profits over the destruction of the planet, the mass dumbing of diverse intellect into select jobs, suppression of dreams and their own chance at massive personal growth within this lifetime. Business that aren't doing the right things for them as well as the planet, may lose people far more quickly and not attract the best talent - or any talent- in the future.

FINAL THOUGHTS..

With more remote working , Fear based , Command and control mechanisms will fail.

Many organisations still run directly or indirectly on these principles. As an example, whether it is what time people come to office, to how much time they log in, to how much work gets done - everything has been monitored by a human or a system . Fear is that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing. The answer is more monitoring when it could be better cultural precedents, raising personal integrity, alignment of personal purpose with the organisations purpose and so many more ways. Eventually remote working takes the human intelligence further out from the system. How long before people figure out how to beat the system?

Fear may not be the driver/stick anymore. Trust, Belonging-ness, Care, Growth become the reasons to stay within the job. Start with taking the embedded fear from within the system.Then building on the care, trust, belongingness slowly, steadily consistently. Take in fresh ideas from compassionate individuals who will walk that talk.

Culture needs to transform. How and who should do it are critical decisions that will define the future .

Hope this helps energise systems to shed old thinking and be open to new approaches from new-age thinking heads. More on the other toxins and Culture 4.0 in the next article. "Why Culture 4.0 may be the best business advantage... "

Till then,

All the best

Nidhi