#404 – March 30, 2025 [6 Minute Read]
Enhancing Your Workplace Values and Culture
Since our last edition, we’ve fielded several questions about how best to enhance workplace culture and develop organizational values needed for the future. That’s our main focus in this issue, along with other insights, tools and frameworks to help you achieve greater success with your strategies.
Quick Takes:
Four Factors Influencing Your Workplace Culture
Refocusing your organizational values and workplace culture can have a major payoff, but the strategy is often difficult to implement, and it requires a sustained effort over time.
A related complication involves where to focus and how to start, since four interacting influences are in play. They are outlined in a model called The Cultural Cycle, by Stanford’s Hazel Rose Markus and Alana Conner.
Consider a comprehensive approach for:
- The Values of Individuals — personal thoughts, feelings, and actions. (For example, hiring decisions may reinforce or change your current norms.)
- Organizational Practices, Spaces and Objects (they reflect, shape and reward or penalize different types of behaviour in the workplace).
- Societal Institutions (such as education, media, law, professional or industry sector) tend to influence the approach and values applied in everyday practices.
- General Foundations (pervasive ideas about what is good, right, and human).
This model recognizes that no action is caused by either individual psychology or external influences — both are always at work. People create the cultures to which they later adapt, and cultures shape people so that they act in ways that perpetuate their cultures. A strategy implemented at one level usually requires support for change at all four levels to be sustainable.
Zoom Out and Create Space to Avoid “Solomon’s Paradox”
In his Curiosity Chronicle, Sahil Bloom suggests two core strategies for escaping “Solomon’s Paradox” — the incongruity of giving clear, rational advice to others, but not applying similar wisdom when it comes to ourselves or our own situations. They are:
- Pause and Create Space: Our emotional connection to a situation, issue or person clouds our better judgement. When making decisions, create space through time or emotional distancing. Pausing between stimulus and response allows our immediate emotional reactions to pass. Then reset and engage with the issue from a more balanced perspective.
- When in Doubt, Zoom Out: A struggle can feel bigger than it really is, but zooming out provides perspective on the true nature of your situation. Mental time travel is a useful tool for zooming out. Have a coaching call with yourself — imagine yourself in the past and consider yourself in the present. Imagine yourself in the future and consider yourself in the present.
B2B Email Marketing Stats You Need to Know for 2025
If you’re considering or currently using email for marketing to businesses and other organizations, here are some helpful statistics noted in an infographic published by Prospect Wallet, as presented on MarketingProfs.com:
Most business-to-business marketers (93%) use email for content distribution.
- Most business-to-business marketers (93%) use email for content distribution.
- Mobile devices now account for 41% of email opens.
- 69% of recipients label email as spam based solely on the subject line.
- The average open rate for personalized email is better by half than un-personalized emails (18.8% vs 12.1%).
- Targeting email campaigns by market segment increased open rates by 39%.
- A striking 95% of marketers using Generative AI for emails find it “effective”, with 54% calling it “very effective”.
Checklist:
Assessing What You (and team members) Value at Work
In a recent HBR article, author Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic shared six questions to help you assess what you (or others, such as your employees) value most at work.
- What are my non-negotiables, personal values, and top priorities? This question prompts reflection on fundamental needs like job stability, flexibility, appropriate stress, work-life balance, alignment with personal values, and desired lifestyle. Identify absolute “no-go” factors to guide career planning.
- What are my financial considerations? Explore the importance of financial compensation, current and future financial goals, and the trade-offs you’re willing to make for non-monetary benefits like learning or work culture.
- What drives you at work? This question focuses on your work-related values and motivations, such as power, status, fun, colleagues, or intellectual stimulation. Identifying these drivers will help ensure a new role aligns with what helps you (or team members) to engage and perform well.
- How much autonomy do you want or need? Assess preferences for freedom in decision-making, taking initiative, and independent work. Comfort levels may vary with different leadership styles, informal or structured work environments, and the balance between autonomy and personal responsibility.
- What are your intrinsic motivations? Delve into the degree to which you need purposeful fulfillment, joy, and enjoyment from the work itself. For some, work might primarily be a means to an end. Be honest about your expectations.
- How will you grow in this role? Most jobs and roles prioritize getting results and performing the expected tasks and duties. Consider opportunities for skill and knowledge development, and whether the role will enhance your experience and potential for promotion.
For Your Reading List:
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills (safety, vulnerability, and purpose) that generate cohesion and cooperation. This helps diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. He offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. His stories of failure illustrate what not to do, how to troubleshoot common pitfalls, and steps to reform a toxic culture. Culture is not something you are — it’s something you do.
Closing Thought:
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
— British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell.
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Vol. 25, No. 4 — Copyright 8020Info Inc. 2025