Leading Workplace Change™

As soon as I wrote my last post about the workplace culture of a presidential campaign staff, a friend referred me to Tom Dickinson’s 7/10/08 post in Rollingstone.com called “Obama’s Brain Trust”.  This post explores the ins and outs of Barack Obama’s campaign staff.  Upon reading, it reminded me of a few ah hah’s about how a workplace culture can make or break a leader’s legacy.

Leaders are the primary creators of a culture for their organization – some do it unwittingly, by just acting the way they do.  Others are very mindful and clearly articulate their personal beliefs and model their expectations about how people should act in the organizations they lead.  It appears that Obama’s approach is one of mindfulness as seen in the following quote from Dickinson’s post.

“When I (Obama) started this campaign, “I wasn’t sure that I was going to be the best of candidates. But what I was absolutely positive of was that there was the possibility of creating the best organization. The way great things happen is when people are willing to submerge their own egos and focus on a common task. That’s my old organizing mind-set. It’s not just a gimmick, it’s not just a shtick. I actually believe in it.”  

You can see from this quote that Obama is talking about his expectations about how people should act and he tells them why - based upon past experiences that proved successful and personal beliefs.  What also struck me while reading the post was how mindfully Obama models how he wants others to act in his organization as seen by this quote from one of Obama’s staffers.

“When he (Obama) is running a meeting, he does more listening than talking, asking questions and taking the temperature of everyone in the room. Regardless of wherever you fall in the hierarchy, he listens to you as though you are the campaign manager. He focuses, he prods, he pushes, to make sure that he fully understands your position. That sets an important tone as well: When you go into a meeting expecting to learn and not dictate, it fosters camaraderie.”

Mindfully setting the tone is a primary role for leaders – most focus on the behaviors that enable strategies and for Obama this includes how his campaign team works together to execute.  It is a balanced internal and external focus and usually the make or break practice that allows leaders to create legacies and presidential candidates create political machines.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Leaders Leading by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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Here is a story that is representative of findings from our field work. I recently worked with a cross-section of employees within an organization to help them identify their organizational culture.  Let’s call them, the Culture Team.  We discussed one of the findings - that job security and advancement are more likely to be determined by “knowing the right people” than it is by job performance.   An employee quote that seemed to define this culture characteristic is - … we tend to not be a meritocracy.  Capabilities and performance are less important than personal relationships, friendships, history and tenure in being personally successful here.

The longer-tenured members of the culture team looked confused, and noted there was talk about putting in a pay-for-performance process.  While an articulate young man could not help himself and burst out with - “this is crazy, I want to be measured by what I do, not by how well I network and make other people look good!” 

The room fell silent and finally, an older female Team member said - “yes, our culture does honor the use of relationships to get our work done and it is not all bad.  Working together well and having interpersonal skills in how to relate with people is important for our success - we are in the service business.”  The discussion then moved to how quickly the organization is growing and how the work is getting more complex and that there are more younger people here from many different backgrounds.  The discussion concluded with the thought that using relationships to get our work done probably worked better when the organization was smaller, more homogeneous and a simpler work place.  

The Culture Team agreed upon the need for balance - and that the first step for culture change was for leaders to start talking about the importance of setting clear goals and measuring results while working together.  And, the new pay-for-performance system must be clear in its rewards for people who meet performance goals as well as for building relationship skills.

Tags: Workplace Stories by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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