Chapter 1
Humans at the center
Help your people do and be their best
Covid was a wake-up call for every one of us. We worried about our friends, our loved ones, our colleagues, clients, and customers. We found new ways to connect, communicate and to collaborate – mostly remotely. For many of us, being forced apart only served to reinforce and intensify the importance of being together.
This new situation has also taught communities, countries, and companies a lot about their culture. Culture is how people work together and use available systems, tools, processes etc. It’s how we innovate and learn. A strong culture is purposeful, coherent, consistent. It addresses systemic issues and sustainably supports people through difficult and challenging times. A poor culture buckles and breaks under pressure. It segments, segregates, and enables cracks to not only appear, but widen.
More choice
90%of employees want to choose when and where they work
As we emerge into an ever changing, new normal, culture is more relevant than ever. Are you one of the many companies now embracing hybrid working models? Are you empowering your people to choose their own and individual way of working? After all, 9 out of 10 employees want flexibility in where and when they work.
How do you maintain a consistent culture across locations, in person and remotely? Getting the right mix of interaction, innovation, communication, and collaboration is a fine balancing act – and critical to the people experience. Not just for our employees, but for our suppliers, customers, consumers and across the whole economic value chain. In a recent global EY Survey across 23 industries and 17 countries, less than 50% of Employees believe that their company culture has changed for the positive since the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s not all bad news though. Many companies are focusing on behavioral skills like empathy, learning agility, virtual collaboration/interaction, creative reasoning, -complex problem solving, and growth mindset. For all the talk of digitalization, putting humans at the centre means honoring these behavioral skills and ensuring leaders have more than just interpersonal abilities. It requires the ability to listen and empathetically support employees to be and do their best in a tech-driven world. Paradoxical as it sounds, social and emotional skillsets are as, if not more, important than the role of data, analytics, robotics, and automation. Studies show that 80% of employees would work more hours for an empathetic employer, with no material change in compensation.
Chapter 2
Technology at speed
Be part of the next industrial revolution
Every time there’s an industrial revolution, it forces a shift in skill sets. By 2030, the time spent using advanced technological skills is set to almost double, while basic data-input and processing skills will have all but disappeared as automation takes over.
A recent WEF report estimated that 133 million new roles will have been created between 2018-2022 due to advances in technology. And they’ll displace around 75 million roles that will have disappeared.
Destined to fail
84%of digital transformations fall short of their goals
Many digitalization strategies take a fragmented approach and don’t truly uncover, or scale, the connections between expectations, people, and environment. Forbes has estimated up to 84% of digital transformations fail to meet objectives. At the root of the failure is often poor cost management, a lack of success measures (KPIs) and bad leadership. For the 16% who do succeed, there is one common element – culture. And the impact of ensuring this is prioritized minimizes significantly is able to minimize significantly the negative effects from the other root causes.
Technology at speed is not just about introducing new tools. It’s about understanding how people work together and use available systems and tools: How they continue to learn, adjust, and innovate and how these desirable behaviors impact business results. Once you have these insights into behavior, you can start to shape the culture and influence business performance.
Chapter 3
Innovation at scale
Embrace agility to enable innovation
How do you cultivate a culture of innovation en-masse, particularly now in a hybrid working world? How do you realize the full potential of your people and their ability to un/re/learn new skills? How do you flex and adapt in an agile manner to the constant changes in social, economic, physical landscapes - as individuals, as teams and as an organization?
A culture of innovation is essential for companies wishing to not just survive, but thrive in the new normal. The synergy effects are plain to see: new ways of collaborating, new products and services, new ways of interacting with customers, new ways of engaging and sustaining productivity and engagement in employees.
You need to implement quickly, succeed sustainably and give appropriate recognition for desired behaviors.
Are you already prioritizing agile ways of working? and how far is it really being embedded? Agile organizations and ways of working allow for stable yet dynamic, adaptive yet resilient, modes of operating. Typically, a network of teams interacts in various efficient combinations. In the absence of complicated hierarchies, people are empowered to make decisions – and fast. It means they can respond and adapt quickly. Given the uncertainty many have faced over the past eighteen months, these are highly appealing qualities. But success isn’t just about introducing agile organizations. You also have to address existing hierarchies, governance structures, and how technology is used to enable these new ways of working. It requires an end-to-end ability to experiment, regroup and refocus. You need to implement quickly, succeed sustainably, and give appropriate recognition for these desired behaviors.
Strong cultures are built on, and by, strong leadership. As leaders, it is our responsibility to now think hard about the following:
- In an ever-changing world, how do you, personally, enable and sustain a culture that empowers your people?
- How do you support your people to create not only short-term but also long-term value?
- Where are you leading – or lagging – in terms of the value drivers that underpin the greatest social experiment of our time?
Summary
We are living in a time of rapid innovation and technological advances. The role of culture has never been more important for an organization’s success. Empowering people to up/reskill will be critical – and only works in a culture that embraces agility and values learning and delivers an exceptional employee experience.
