How to upgrade organizational culture even when you're not at the top
From Renee: Our series on challenges continues with the challenge of organizational culture. How can leaders at all levels of an organization move towards a more positive and constructive culture? It’s not easy, as we’ve written before. We asked Hunter Gatewood to share insights on expanding your influence - wherever you sit in an organization.
Hunter Gatewood is an instructor, coach, and thought partner in managing change and developing leaders at all levels. He specializes in supporting people who manage from the middle of their organization, particularly people in the complex worlds of healthcare and community health. Check out courses, workshops, speaking, and articles with his doodles at huntergatewood.com.
If culture is often set by the bosses at the top of the org chart, how can people at all levels of an organization influence culture?
People throughout an organization can and do influence culture, in small ways and large ways, in helpful ways and not-so-helpful ways. To want to shape culture in healthy and productive ways is wise and brave. Many organizations already have strong, healthy cultures - but if you find yourself in one that needs some help, there are ways that you can influence it positively, regardless of position.
What is culture, anyway?
Culture is the way things get done in a team or organization. The rules of the workplace, written and unwritten, accidental and intentional, including how we treat each other.
Think back to your first day at a new job. You were on high alert about culture:
How are decisions made? Who listens to whom?
Do people respect their colleagues for their differences?
Do deadlines matter too little or too much?
How much do I hear people laughing during the workday?
Do I need to watch my back?
For anyone, even the people with the most power, culture change is complex work. It is something to do carefully, with open eyes that consider the level of effort required, your chances of success, and the power dynamics at play.
To Change Culture, Start Small
There are many levers for changing culture. I’m going to write about one that can work regardless of position and power that reinforces the core cultural value I want us all to focus on: trust.
In working on culture, as with most change in human systems, it helps to think in terms of scope, or footprint. How deep and broad are we going? The big wide organization-level culture is set at the top, based on executive personalities and habits, history, the industry we are in (finance, healthcare, community nonprofit, construction). It can be difficult for people with lesser power and titular authority to impact overall culture by fiat or speed.
A more approachable and opportune level of culture is the culture of your team, the people you work with most. We can all influence our team’s culture, as long as we go about it in a humble and inclusive way.
Scope and size note: The smaller your organization, the less this distinction between levels exists. This is good news! Each individual has more influence in a smaller organization.
The ideal culture is one of learning and improvement that relies on trust and safety, instead of the old command-and-control compliance culture that relies on power and force.
Five steps for team culture change
To make culture change happen, you can start in the sphere of your highest influence. Stay humble (walk the walk, hey!) by learning with your team as you go.
Here is a process to pilot a change in your immediate team to help you decide how and when to scope up to influence the whole organization:
Get specific regarding the behavior change you want to see, that will contribute to one aspect of culture or a shared value, you want to improve.
“Respectful and brief emails” supports “professional communication.”
“Sending meeting agendas ahead of time” supports “collaboration.”
“Having difficult conversations directly” supports “respect.”
Seek agreement with your team that this change would help and be a win for team culture.
Work on the change together. Maybe it’s a new workflow or a week-long experiment.
Review progress, roadblocks, and questions with your team. Share the creativity and the responsibility. Stay open and humble to model the type of culture you want.
Keep learning together. Iterate until it works well and sticks. Then pick a new better culture habit.
If this approach seems small in scope and scale, it is. In starting small, you are talking about culture and working on culture in a concrete way, and building knowledge, and developing shared values. Small changes get us to new mindsets and habits.
How far to extend the change?
Now for the tricky part. Whether and how to spread better-culture changes beyond your team, to the overall culture. Consider your options:
Keep the change within your team. Maybe it’s too much work to spread the change. It may not be politically safe, meaning: a negative reaction could harm trust between you and more senior staff. Or maybe you see slim odds of the change being adopted by the larger organization. With this option, the leader or leaders of your one team needs to manage this difference between your team and other teams. This can be easy or tough to do, depending on the change. I have worked places where my team meetings were different from the other meetings I attended. It wasn’t my ideal, but it worked fine. And, at one organization, over time my team recognized some of our team’s meeting habits taking root in other meetings. Culture osmosis!
Help this change take hold outside of your team. Think of this as humble advocacy. Gather evidence and anecdotes about the benefits of the change. For example, “When we put a midday break on everyone’s calendar on our in-office days, people started going on walks together and talking about ideas to improve workflows.” Then look for an opportunity. How could this change help what my boss or another team needs right now? By pointing to the benefit and matching it to a current need, you aren’t being a preachy know-it-all culture critic. Take it from me, the founding member of the Recovering Know-It-All Club (there’s stickers!). Show, don’t tell, when it comes to advocating for changes to culture.
I hope these ideas are helpful.
This is tricky work, impacting overall culture without titular authority. Take care of your culture builder self. Think strategically. Pace yourself. Consult a trusted colleague. And remember, the little things add up. Culture does change, and you can help steer it in a positive direction.
From Renee: Our work at The Ross Collective is about creating spaces in which each member of the staff and board team knows that they have an important perspective to contribute. In that sense, trust matters - a lot! And as Hunter points out, values must be felt throughout the organization, to the members, donors, clients, and beneficiaries.
Next time we’ll share strategies for working through the challenge of Succession Planning.