Culture of Openness
This is the age of the Knowledge Worker, where agility, decision making, and innovation are prized. Without them, organisations will fail in the face of growing global competition. Yet many organisations are still working in the age of Hierarchy, where information is only available to the senior few and decisions are taken at the highest possible point in the organisation. The contradiction of desired versus actual culture means the organisation never achieves the agility and innovation it needs to be competitive. Combined with the fact that organisations still see their people as “assets” or “talent” has led to an increased number of actively disengaged employees, high levels of attrition, and cultures that are driven more by fear than collaboration and bureaucracy than agility.
To make a shift towards engaged people, innovative ideas, and fast moving, adaptive organisations you need to build trust; trust at all levels of the organisation. To make sure that you are doing this with intention and with the safety and well-being of your people as your number one priority.
To do that requires a culture of openness and trust. It means building trust, it means pushing down decision making to the lowest possible level and empowering your teams to act; it means that information must be freely available to support fast decision making.
For many organisations these are new skills and behaviours, and they demand both a new mind-set and heart-set as well as new systems and processes. We approach building a culture of openness in three ways starting from the framework of the organisation’s values and strategy:
- We define the culture and behaviours needed to deliver the required culture and determine how your leaders must make your people feel safe to deliver
- We develop teams to build trust and accountability to each other and the shared goals and vision that has been created
- We work with teams to understand and implement the changes to systems and processes needed to allow decision making to be pushed down to the most appropriate level in the organisation so that you are ensuring the right people are doing the right things at the right time.
We begin by defining the base line at the beginning of the project and monitor your progress towards the desired outcome for your people, your business, and your customers. Knowing where you are and where you want to get to is critical to allowing you to clearly identify the gap. We then work with you to build the plan to close the gap and create role models in the organisation.
This process may seem simple, but it is not easy, there will be challenging conversations along the way, tough decisions to make and consistent monitoring of mind-set and heart-set. We will be there with you as you start to move towards an organisation that is trust-based, agile, innovative, and filled with people filled with motivation and passion for the organisation’s vision and goals.
