[READING TIME: 8 MINUTES]

In this 8020Info Water Cooler, we look at using dilemmas to build culture, the impact of surroundings on behaviour, ways to use AI as a helper, the need for managers to communicate, the VECTOR framework for top performance, and the myriad species of problems. Enjoy!

1. Focus on Dilemmas to Build Culture

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when articulating their desired organizational culture is to focus on abstract absolute positives, says Erin Meyer a professor at INSEAD.

Words like integrity, respect, and trust are commonplace. They seem to soar but actually fall flat because there is really no credible alternative to them.

Take integrity. She notes there is no way you would advocate for a culture of corruption. So, declaring that as a value doesn’t provide direction for decision-making.

“The trick to making a desired culture come alive is to debate and articulate it using dilemmas,” she writes in Harvard Business Review.

“If you identify the tough dilemmas your employees routinely face and clearly state how they should be resolved … then your desired culture will take root and influence the behavior of the team.”

As an example, she shares the scenario of a small team of marketing specialists that might be re-organized — there’s a 60% chance the change will occur.

If you are the team’s leader, do you share the news now, opting for transparency, or keep quiet and favour stability since the team is operating smoothly and the reorganization might not happen?

Both options are defensible responses to the dilemma. When she uses this scenario in workshops, about 45% of people choose to share the information. Just over half prefer keeping quiet.

In your organizational culture, what should that choice be? And what other dilemmas for staff can be used to help clarify the desired culture?

2. Five Ways to Use AI as a Helper

Helen Lee Kupp and Nichole Sterling, co-founders of Women Defining AI, find people asking: What is something I can do today with AI that is fundamentally different and more powerful than what I was doing before?

Their five answers:

• AI as a friendly colleague:  You can simulate or practise difficult conversations, even receiving feedback on how you might do better. Use the AI chatbot function that lets you talk to it (in ChatGPT, accessed from the microphone icon) and prompt it to set up a practice session with feedback.
• AI as a thinking partner or coach:  Get AI to ask you questions about a problem to help you devise a solution. “Sometimes, it’s easier to answer questions one by one, as if you are being interviewed, instead of trying to write the perfect prompt or instructions,” they note on Charter.
• AI as an editor:  In preparing for a presentation, share with AI a transcript of a similar one from the past and ask for advice to improve it. Give it guidance, if you wish, like indicating it seems verbose.
• AI as a perspective taker:  To avoid blind spots, ask AI to evaluate a project or idea from the perspectives of different stakeholders, naming those individuals or groups and even asking it to identify other stakeholders you may have overlooked.
• AI as an expert data scientist:  Most organizations have more data than any person can process themselves. Ask AI to evaluate certain data and even create visualizations.

3. Rethinking Your Workspace

Is your workspace the best one to support your productivity and creativity?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a PhD student in the neuroscience of education and founder of Ness Labs, says environmental psychology shows changing your surroundings can change your behaviours.

“The key is to try different setups and observe how they affect your mood and productivity,” she notes in her blog.

She suggests considering five effects — on your creativity, flexibility, calm, focus, and comfort.

Contrary to conventional belief, studies suggest a messy desk can boost creativity. Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition while orderly environments encourage convention and playing it safe.

“Whether you decide to keep your desk tidy or messy, keep essential items within reach. Make sure to incorporate personal touches, as personalizing your workspace can boost mood and sense of comfort,” she writes.

To enhance focus, consider your sensory preference. Do you want silence, or white noise, or background music?

Comfort, she stresses, includes good posture. Re-evaluate your chair and desk, and invest in a better one if needed.

You have become used to your current space; experimentation could be helpful.

4. Choose Empathy over Telepathy

Entrepreneur Seth Godin believes managers too often rely on telepathy over communication, seeing no need to spell everything out to staff. Instead they expect their teams to “just think like me and do the right thing.”

But the person we’re counting on to do that, he stresses, doesn’t see what we see, doesn’t know what we know, and might not even want what we want.

“We can deny this [disconnect] and insist that they read our heart and our mind,” he writes on his blog. “Or we can embrace this and lean into empathy. We can draw a very clear picture of what we seek and create conditions for the person to do the work we’d like to have done.”

5. Zingers

• Generating Motivation: Motivation is not the cause of action, observes author Mark Manson. It’s the result of action. If you want to be motivated, get up and do something. (Source: MarkManson.net).
• Women Working Remotely: New research suggests the likelihood remote work is more beneficial or not for women depends on their career stage. For junior workers, working remotely can impair on-the-job training. For senior workers, operating remotely can boost output, in part because they have less need to give feedback to junior colleagues. (Source: Harvard Business Review).
• Just One Travel Adaptor: Back from France, Leigh Kramer, an editor with the Modern Mrs Darcy book group, recommends The Universal Travel Power Adapter for its one-piece simplicity: You choose your country on the side and the correct prongs slide out. (Source: ModernMrsDarcy.com).
• When It’s Show Time: A presentation is a time to perform, not think, warns coach Gary Genard. It’s vital you think about the elements of the presentation beforehand, prepare thoroughly, and practise. In baseball, a batter at the plate must focus on the pitch rather than being sidetracked by stray thoughts. When presenting, you must focus solely on conveying your message. (Source: The Genard Method).
• The Fear-Avoidance Trap: The most common response when we’re scared is avoidance. But the longer we wait, the greater the fear, warns Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish. Action reduces fear. (Source:  FS Blog).

6. Models: The VECTOR Framework

McKinsey & Company looked at seven top-performing companies to identify the distinctive capabilities or “superpowers” that made them uniquely successful. The result was their VECTOR framework for Vision, Employees, Culture, Technology, Organizational structure and Routines.

Here’s a brief summary of the model:

• Vision:  Articulate the value you hope to create ten years from now, and link it to the economics of your business model. Amazon’s superpower, for example, is “customer obsessed”.
• Employees:  Leading companies develop skill-building journeys for people throughout their organizations and in that way sustain corporate knowledge over the long term.
• Culture/Mindset:  Exceptional performers incorporate essential mindsets (experimentation, customer service or technical excellence, for example) as part of their hiring, leadership models and feedback systems.
• Technology:  Building a superpower without technology is next to impossible. Companies often fail to appreciate the challenge of hard-wiring technology into their core workflow systems.
• Organizational Structure:  Top companies revisit their organizational structures so they can adapt and scale core capabilities, seizing opportunities to redesign the teams most directly linked to them.
• Routines:  An organization should redesign processes so its distinctive capability is embedded into how it operates. To make sure the essential capability endures, repetition of the new process is needed to “burn” it into the organization.

7. Around Our Water Cooler

Understanding the Many Types of Problems

The best solution responds to the specific nature of the problem, and there are myriad distinct species of problems. Clearer Thinking has come up with a great list of them, all with evocative names — here are ten you may recognize from personal experience!

• A Smashed Watch:  There are so many broken pieces, fixing one part of the problem doesn’t get you back in business until you fix the others too.
• Booby Trapped Garden:  The situation looks normal, but it is filled with hidden traps. These underlying difficulties lead to repeated failures.
• Mid-Court Pass:  The problem could be solved easily, but falls between multiple roles. Nobody takes responsibility, assuming someone else will do so.
• Tug of War:  Solutions are elusive because one team’s gain is another team’s loss.
• Death Spiral:  One problem creates more, leading to an unsolvable cluster of problems. (It can be similar to cases where the solution in turn creates other problems.)
• Loose Thread:  A problem that would have been very easy to solve if it had been fixed early on, but it seemed too minor to worry about at the time.
• Sleeping Dog:  In the spirit of “let sleeping dogs lie”, these are potential problems that become actual problems only if you try to solve them.
• Feature Creep:  For this challenge, definition of the problem keeps growing, making it ever harder to solve, even after adding more features to your product or service.
• Living Mummy: A problem that, no matter how many times it is solved, will always emerge again.
• Toilet Crusade: A problem that is actually deeply important, but it is so unsexy that almost nobody wants to try to tackle it.

This is just a sampling from their list of more than 30 problem types, including some submitted by readers.

What We’re Reading:

• Harvey’s Pick: In The Problem with Change, veteran HR executive Ashley Goodall pushes back against what he calls “the cult of disruption”, which has most leaders and organizations calling for constant change. This prompts continual transformations resulting in chaos and severing of teams rather than improvement.
• Rob’s Pick: Cross-disciplinary readers will appreciate The Book of Five Rings written by the undefeated samurai Miyamoto Musashi in 1643. It speaks not only to martial artists but to all types of leaders who could benefit from the metaphors, insights and analysis of the process of struggle and mastery over conflict.

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8020Info helps senior leadership teams and boards develop, clarify and build consensus behind strategic priorities. Our services support strategic planning and change processes, marketing communications and research / stakeholder consultations. We would be pleased to discuss your needs and welcome enquiries.

8. Closing Thought

“There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finished tasks.”
— David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, 1916-1922