Recent Lessons From Our Work

This article is a short summary of lessons from the last 3 months of our work. In that time, we’ve:

• Reviewed the cultures of educational institutions, investment groups, professional services firms, and food businesses!
• Worked with long term clients on keeping culture on the front foot, and continually improving
• Attended the AHRI National Convention in Melbourne
• Attended the AICD training course for Company Directors

Here’s the key lessons from our recent work.

This one is a soft spot for us given the shared ground we have in psychology studies, and ultimately how we apply our understanding of people and culture, and specifically how we apply it to culture reviews, ideas and solutions.

Psychology keeps coming through as the contemporary bedrock of good HR practice.

This is no doubt tied to the strong link from psychology, measurement, and statistics to understanding the world and population at hand. Its is the significance of a phenomena/ observation, and then how interventions and solutions are applied, and whether they work or otherwise.

This means psychology has a strong resonance and intersection with other practices like human-centred design/design thinking, finance and markets, economics, and more.

It’s about understanding, experimenting, and testing, measuring success, and then refining or scaling.

HR is not about narrow application of what you’ve done elsewhere – it must be contextualised, applied effectively, and then refined or improved as needed.

This is increasingly a topic of conversation, and the best organisations have it as ‘the topic’, not an embedded one.

Culture can feel like a big, hard to tackle and esoteric topic, even when an organisation is really proud of it. That’s why we break it down to ‘how people treat each other around here’. That’s accessible to everyone – from the Chair, to the newest member. It’s a set of everyday moments, that colour our experience of work, and determine our confidence and motivation to contribute our best.

Without sounding like a human goldfish, we can plan and strategise, but we can only really operate in the moment in front of us. That means the person, interaction, situation at hand should hold our fullest focus. Technology can assist us with this, but often disconnected us from the moment. To realise the value of organisational culture, get into the moment at hand to create a positive experience for others.

And this goes very neatly, albeit not consciously, with the importance and value of culture. As Dr Juliet Bourke recently put it, a lot of effort in ‘inclusion’ was focused on structural and systemic change. The biggest rocks, if you can identify and move them, are seen as likely to have the greatest impact. That is really hard to do, so, you need to enlist people to help. So next port of call was people leaders. The tone from the top. If it matters to my leader, I’ll do it.

While structural and systemic change matter, so do the everyday moments of micro-inclusion or micro-exclusion that we feel and respond to all day every day.

Each and every one of us is human, and, the world would be a rather different place if every person, in every momentary interaction, tried to be decent and well-intended with the other person or people they react with.

It is a simple notion, but a premise that breaks down in relationships at work or otherwise all the time as things escalate. In response, rather than resolve, we often micro-exclude, protect ourselves, and watch it elevate, and with that, our perceptions of one another shift, and relationships are damaged.

To drive change, we need the structure, systems, leaders, AND every person to do a little better. Then a little better again. Small things matter.

This is a mini wake-up call: – To the busy leader, covering a lot of ground; to a new worker starting their career; and to every one of us in between.

We get busier, our perceived complexities ramp up fast, and we feel a tad more constrained in time and effort and space.

The solution is taking a little more time to know what makes the other person tick.

The person who is ‘tricky’ to you is probably ‘not well enough understood’. Before you think ‘tricky’, ask yourself how well you understand them. And then, do the work.

I had a boss once, who was razor sharp and profound, but wouldn’t actively try to display either. Instead, they just made sure to be a little better in that fleeting moment or small interaction, to listen and hear what made people tick.

When someone came with emotion, or a problem, or a compliment, or a strength, .he’d invariably say, ‘That’s tough, I can see you’re upset/angry/invested etc.’. in that’.

And then he’d ask, ‘Who else was involved?’ ‘What’s their angle?’ and ‘Where’s the common ground?’

Most people hadn’t answered any or many of those questions. As they did, the emotions, problems or strengths looked a whole lot brighter.

In summary, this is a few hundred words to just remind us that:

• Understanding people matters – what makes them tick, and every moment matters
• Psychology – tells us plenty on individuals, and workplace dynamics (for teams, functions, enterprises, and market places)
• Culture matters – and the conversations on it are elevating, but its good to remember that the actions to make workplaces better fall on the shoulders of every single one of us

The reality is, very few want a bad day at work, or to make work miserable for others. Most of us want to do well, connect, contribute, have a good and fun day, and belong to something worthwhile.

When we get to know someone a little deeper, even those that seem so very different to us, you’ll like them a little more, and you’ll go a little further to make working together a little easier, a little more effective, or just a little more fun.