Our chance to rebuild great organisations
We all know Covid-19 has brought significant disruption and accelerated change at phenomenal rates, manifesting in numerous challenges and benefits at individual, team, organisational and societal levels. Organisations looking to rebuild post-pandemic are making their best predictions of a ‘new normal.’
As our focus moves to thinking and planning forwards, as well as bringing the learning from recent experiences to shape the building of healthy, high performing environments where everyone can be at their very best, it’s also worth considering how we address some of the issues of pre-pandemic workplaces.
In the 2018 HBR book ‘Alive at Work,’ Daniel M Cable sums it up perfectly when he says that ‘our organisations are letting us down’; despite wanting to feel motivated and seeking meaning in their jobs, Gallup studies show around 80% of employees don’t feel they can be their best selves at work.
With many organisations failing to tap into the true potential of their workforce, workplace malaise and dulled performance is rife. And much of it stems back to the Industrial Revolution, where the roots of modern management, organisation design and work itself were defined. Organisations were purposefully designed to suppress natural human impulses and activate fear systems in a bid to control the masses.
The results? Pre-Covid 19, employees found it harder to experiment, and felt a lack of stretch beyond specialist roles, unable to leverage their unique skills. Many people weren’t seeing the ultimate impact of their work, leading to a narrowed perception, submission, anxiety and wariness, and, for some, depressive symptoms, feeling ‘it’ is unchangeable and driving disengagement.
Wellbeing and mental health were becoming as much, if not more, of a focus as physical health, impacting massively on individual resilience and organisational bottom lines.
Nowadays, whether you lead a global corporation, provide consultancy, work in essential public services or work in information technology, you are a knowledge worker. Growth today is driven by innovation, ingenuity, and relationships. People need to collaborate with each other to solve problems and accomplish work that is perpetually changing. The old ways, with their reliance on routine and repetition, just don’t work anymore.
So how do you create work environments that allow people to thrive and organisations to succeed? And how to capture this massive topic in a short blog? Here’s a starter for ten.
We can start by focusing on designing our organisations around the intrinsic human drivers. Dan Pink expresses these as Autonomy (the desire to be self-directed); Mastery (the urge to get better at things); and Purpose (‘why’ we exist and what we are here to do.)
This is reflected in Daniel Cable’s research. Cable refers to a part of our brains which he calls the ‘seeking system.’ Humans are designed to crave exploration, experimentation, and learning.
Finding ways to enable self-expression, experimentation and finding personalised purpose (not one handed down by the organisation) will stimulate the ‘seeking system’ which then rewards us for these activities by releasing the ‘feel-good’neurotransmitter Dopamine. An activated ‘seeking system’ leads to increased motivation, feeling more purposeful, more zestful and more alive.
"When the seeking systems are not active, human aspirations remain frozen in an endless winter of discontent.”
For many leaders and employees, the pandemic is an opportunity to engage in meaningful work, bringing problem-solving skills to the fore, navigating and delivering on complex issues alongside personal, organisational and societal changes at a pace rarely experienced. Capitalising on the positives from this experience is a no-brainer.
As you rebuild, consider how small but consequential nudges from leaders can allow employees to play to their strengths, experiment and feel a sense of purpose in their work. Consider how you can make these nudges systematic so they are built into the policies, systems and processes by which you run and govern your business.
The results, increased creativity, more positivity, and people in the ‘flow’ in their work in turn impacts on bottom-line results and contributes significantly to the future sustainability of your enterprise.
Some elements to consider, for yourself and with the people you lead
Self-expression: bringing your best self to work AND
Autonomy: the desire to be self-directed
If you were free to imagine and interpret it as you see fit to help yourself, the team and organisation succeed, how would you leverage your unique skills and strengths, and how would you continue to develop these? How can you move to managing and working by outcomes, rather than inputs and outputs? What can you do in the next day, week and month to facilitate this?
Experimentation: the continual process of exploration and learning AND
Mastery: the urge to get better at things
Ways to develop this include attempting difficult challenges to better understand the environment and find the best blend of complementary skills, talents and actions to enable success. How can you bring more experimentation to your own role, and the roles of your team members? How can you coach and agree stretch targets that are in the zone between boredom and anxiety with each member of your team?
Purpose: seeing the cause and effect between our inputs and our progress and end results
Seeing how your contributions help others progress creates meaning. Maybe ask yourselves how you and the team can make more contributions or have more insights into how to improve your environment and performance.
If you would like to know more about how I work with individuals, teams and organisations to create healthy, high performance, please do get in touch.