The dominant, but tacit, influencer that has the capacity to both limit and liberate a business: are the shared organisational beliefs. They are a silent power within every organisation that’s quietly moulding the patterns of behaviour that will determine the culture and organizational performance.
Category: Leadership/People Dynamics/Culture
Avoid Disastrous Decisions With These Four Meeting Practices
If teams practice and are used to top-down communication and way of handling decisions on a day-to-day basis, these patterns will likely become the trained muscle memory for the group and the muscles for speaking up, dissenting, and taking initiative will atrophy. Leaders can follow four meeting practices that will help bring organizational muscles that include the employee’s diverse eyes, ears and voices in shape.
Written by David Marquet, published on Forbes
Five Skills You’ll Need To Lead The Company Of The Future
Today, we live in a time of rapid change, when products and services often become obsolete overnight, and competition includes startups and companies in adjacent industries – the traditional leadership archetypes of a singular vision and strong command need not apply. To accommodate and achieve effectiveness in highly dynamic environments an entirely new value system is beginning to emerge for the leaders of the future, one that will continue to grow with the rise of new tools like artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation.
Written by Jared Lindzon, published on Fast Company
Day 1 Culture Checklist
When an organization is brand new, very little is assumed about how everyone interacts or works together. It’s in this period when you have the greatest control to set the tone for the culture. The team of Median, a New York based organizational design consultancy, put together a checklist of steps to take to help founders and execs to build the culture they desire, from Day 1.
Written by the Median
Why Leaders Eat Last
In this talk leadership expert Simon Sinek reveals the hidden dynamics that inspire leadership and trust. In biological terms, leaders get the first pick of food and other spoils, but at a cost. When danger is present, the group expects the leader to mitigate all threats even at the expense of their personal well-being. Understanding this deep-seated expectation is the key difference between someone who is just an “authority” versus a true “leader.”
Watch 45 video published by 99U
How Humans Kill Companies
Startups don’t always fail because of a bad product or no market. Most of the time it’s due to human factors. The awesome part about realizing this is that it’ll help you avoid making these mistakes with your own team.
Written by Hiten Shah, Co-Founder of KISSmetrics and Quick Sprout
What Is A Culture First Company And Why Does It Matter?
A growing number of companies are starting to recognize, if you don’t get people and culture right, your efforts in every other area will ultimately result to nought. But building a Culture First organization is not about perks, or about being perfect, a perfect culture isn’t a culture, it’s a cult. Putting culture first means focussing first on employees, as the driver of company performance instead of concentrating first on the end result (profits to shareholders).
Article by Didier Elzinga, CEO of Culture Amp, on the Culture Amp blog
The 10 Biggest Questions We Have As People Managers
Buffer has a strong culture of nurturing people into more advanced roles and promoting from within. This is fabulous for the opportunities this affords to their teammates; however, it does lead to a steep learning curve with disciplines like strategy, vision, coaching, and mentorship that aren’t as big a part of an individual contributor role. This article is about the biggest questions Buffer had for Jason Evanish, the Founder of HR start-up Lighthouse, and the answers and ideas he shared with the Buffer team.
Article by Kevan Lee on Open Buffer
Leaders Can Shape Company Culture Through Their Behaviors
Building culture begins with the behavior of the leaders in organizations. To say that another way, if you are interested in changing the culture of your organization, your first step should be to look in the mirror and make sure you are setting the kind of behavioral examples you want everyone else to follow.
Article by Jim Whitehorse, CEO of Red Hat for HBR
Fighting Factions: How Startups Can Scale Without Mutiny
Alexander Grosse, Director of Engineering for BCG Digital Ventures, and David Loftesness, the Head of Platform at eero, have both lived through the brilliant and bleak moments of scaling teams. In this interview, they look at five areas where startups can either take action to deactivate destructive factionalism or even prevent them from forming in the first place. They share concrete processes for regaining the efficiency that leaders might not even realize they’re losing to competing mindsets and poor communication. Through these tactics, they show through specific scenarios why empathy is just as vital to a startup’s success as innovation.
