Comstock's magazine 1119 - November 2019 | Page 29

Some of those cultures were intention-
ally created by the leadership and team,
while others were organic. The cluster of
various cultures within the organization
was created as multiple startup busi-
nesses were acquired and merged into
the company throughout the years.
UNDERSTANDING THE CULTURE
The leadership team began to reflect on
the culture that had been created hap-
hazardly. They started by asking them-
selves questions about the team. “Are em-
ployees proud to work for Foxclore? What
words best describe our culture?” And,
ultimately, “Are we OK with that culture,
or do we need to work to shift it?” Thus
began a two-year journey of assessment,
strategy sessions and goal planning.
I started by conducting interviews
with the leadership team, hoping to cre-
ate a confidential and safe space to share
their impressions and concerns and pro-
vide feedback about the organizational
culture as they perceived it. We then used
results from the annual engagement sur-
vey to understand employee opinion.
Three themes emerged: Employees
did not trust all of the leadership team,
employees did not fully understand Fox-
clore’s strategy and overall engagement
was relatively low.
DEFINING THE STRATEGY
The business then needed to define a
strategy that encompassed an organi-
zation’s purpose, core values, vision,
priorities, objectives and actions. As
much as the leadership team discussed
strategic initiatives, there was not a
one-page summary of the strategy any-
where in sight.
We conducted an in-person strategy
workshop for the leadership team. Be-
fore meeting, the leadership team shared
their individual visions and core values,
and then I worked with the CEO to align
their statements with the corresponding
elements in the strategy. A draft strat-
egy was created before the session so the
leadership team had something to react
to. On the first day of the in-person work-
shop, we devoted eight hours to refining
and finalizing the strategy.
As a group, each of the strategy’s six
components were debated until there
was one, united strategy for the orga-
nization. We then created a detailed
communication plan that incorporated
numerous mediums, repetitions of the
messaging and conversations to discuss
internally. The communication plan in-
cluded a series of staff meetings, emails
and visual aids to ensure all employees
were aware of the strategy. company from one acquisition in 2014.
Employees who came aboard from other
acquisitions felt their contributions were
not as valued and that employees from
the 2014 acquisition received preferen-
tial treatment.
Recognizing that dynamic allowed
leadership to have some difficult, but
necessary, conversations. Over the next
year, changes were made at the top to
diversify the leadership. Leaders spent
more time with employees from differ-
ent acquisitions so that they could get
to know the wealth of talent they previ-
ously were not as familiar with.
ENGAGING THE TEAM RESULTS
Once the strategy was established, it was
important for employees to understand
how they personally connected to it. By
involving employees and obtaining their
buy-in, we hoped to address the low
engagement in the survey results. The
leadership team met to determine their
goals for the following fiscal year and
decided on the key metrics that would
measure success. These goals were then
rolled out to employees through a series
of staff meetings and emails. The expec-
tation was for the goals to cascade down
through the organization and become
more granular as that happened.
To ensure continued success, the
leadership team set quarterly metrics
and reported on them. This ensures ev-
eryone knows how much progress is be-
ing made, and it also allows the business
to shift if necessary and alert the orga-
nization of that shift. Employees would
understand where they fit in and what
their roles are so they could feel directly
responsible for the team’s success. The company’s annual engagement sur-
vey scores have increased every year
since the culture transformation began.
There is more work to be done, but the
leaders discovered there were dynam-
ics in place that could not be addressed
with team building. Culture change al-
ways starts at the top and is not some-
thing that can be trained into employ-
ees. There are a series of levers that
leaders can pull in order to make culture
change happen, including incentive
structures, transparency commitments,
physical workplace changes, technologi-
cal implementations, and, yes, even time
spent at happy hours. n
Jessica Kriegel, Ph.D., is an organizational
development consultant and an expert on
generational issues. For more, visit www.
jessicakriegel.com.
LEADERSHIP BLIND SPOTS
With the foundational aspects defined
and communicated, the group tackled
the lack of trust in leadership. Through a
series of focus groups and internal con-
versations, we identified a blind spot:
All the senior leadership came to the
Tell us how your organization
shares its culture with staff.
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