Contents

• Understand the Importance of Leadership
• Create Unanimous Focus on a Common Goal
• Clearly Define Roles in Subgroups
• Tap into Your Shared Resources
• Use Frequent and Effective Communication
• Offer Enthusiastic, Consistent, and United Effort
• Employ Periodic and Temporary Suppression of the Ego

Off the top of your head, you can probably think of at least a few ways that teamwork in your workplace has fallen short. The team may have missed a deadline or failed to meet a set objective. Regardless of what happened, when these incidents happen it is a usually a sign that teamwork and collaboration are not functioning properly. Even when a team’s efforts lead to seemingly good results, there are often plenty of missed opportunities because of issues such as:

• Not every voice on the team was heard.
• Communication roadblocks prevented good ideas from coming to fruition.
• Subgroups went in a direction that didn’t support the team’s objective.
• The team fizzled because there wasn’t a consistent and united effort.

If any of these issues sound familiar, it might be time to take steps to improve teamwork. Effective teamwork doesn’t happen overnight. It takes intentional effort and a thorough understanding of what teamwork actually is.

Below are seven cornerstones to improve teamwork in your organization, along with links to resources that will help you learn more.

1. Understand the Importance of Leadership

Every team needs a leader to encourage accountability, model empowerment, facilitate streamlined decision-making, and maintain momentum. However, the appropriate team leader isn’t always the person you first expect. Team leaders are typically individuals who know the most about the project—which means they might not have extensive experience with leading. They might not even be the person with the most ‘senior’ rank in the room. That’s why building in leadership skills exercises into your teamwork training in the workplace is so important.

The role of a team leader extends beyond conducting everyday meetings and capturing action items. The person in a leadership role must recognize their importance, model the expected behaviors, and understand how to harness individual strengths to achieve the outlined objectives.

2. Create Unanimous Focus on a Common Goal

When teams get distracted and stray away from the defined objectives, the project will take longer, or worse, never be fully achieved. Even when teams are working on a simple project, team members still need to see it as their own project. But for that project to truly be the best it can be, each person on the team must have a unanimous focus on a common goal.

It’s not uncommon for the individuals in a team to be pulled in multiple directions. They have daily tasks that must be completed, long-term projects to move along, and departmental objectives to bear in mind. Clearly articulating and repeating the team’s common goal can help the group maintain focus, especially between meetings.

3. Clearly Define Roles in Subgroups

When a team is faced with a large goal, it’s best practice to create smaller teams, or subgroups, within the project to address more specific tasks that support the overall goal. The goal of a subgroup is also more tightly focused than the overall team goal. This means less input from higher-ranking members who are most enthusiastic about the ‘big picture’. Instead, subgroup members with specialized knowledge will steer the subgroup towards its goal.

Subgroups should operate as mini-teams, using all seven of these cornerstones in their own work. Each subgroup needs its own leader, a unanimous focus on a common goal, and so on. They must also be subordinate to the larger team, always supporting the larger goal.

4. Tap into Your Shared Resources

Many people only consider hard resources—money,  equipment, technology, and so on—when thinking about the resources that are shared among a team. However, soft resources can be just as important when cataloging your inventory of shared resources. While they might not seem like elements that must be shared for team success, but think about what would happen if just one person was passionate about the team project, or if only one person ever tried to overcome the inevitable project hurdles that sprung up. Just as when hard resources aren’t spread around equitably, it’s unlikely that project would ever be completed.

In a work environment where budgets are closely followed and individual productivity is valued, it can be culturally challenging to effectively share resources, both hard and soft. Organizations that are committed to improving teamwork must make it clear that team members have access to the resources they need in order to accomplish their goals.

5. Use Frequent and Effective Communication

Every individual on a team must always be able to say, “I know what I need to know,” and, “I understand everything.” If these two statements are not true at any given time, there is potential for the team to break down. The keys to communication in a team are for it to be both frequent and effective. And remember that effective communication requires all team members to know on a high level what’s going on within the team, but also to truly comprehend what’s going on.

Effective communication in a team requires both the right skills and the right tools. Ongoing training can help build the necessary skills to improve teamwork, such as active listening, giving feedback, and creating an environment in which people are comfortable speaking up. The right tools will depend on the team, but could include a document management system, an internal messaging platform, or a system for sharing and storing meeting notes.

6. Offer Enthusiastic, Consistent, and United Effort

The whole point of creating a team is to accomplish a specific goal. This requires effort on everyone’s part, but unless that effort meets certain criteria, you’ll soon find yourself spinning wheels. Putting in consistent, united, enthusiastic effort should be a given for every employee—but, unfortunately, that’s not always the case. That’s why team leaders must be up front about the level of personal commitment and discipline that will be expected of each member.

In addition to articulating the need for this type of effort, team leaders must also model the desired behavior. If team members see that their leader isn’t accountable for his or her commitments or makes excuses for substandard work, they will eventually conclude that this is acceptable behavior and reflect their leader’s level of effort.

7. Employ Periodic and Temporary Suppression of the Ego

Essentially, the principle of teamwork related to ego is about ensuring that individual agendas don’t take over the team’s goals, inhibit other team members’ contribution, or development and create a cycle of diminishing team effectiveness. No team will succeed if it is composed of members with a “me first” attitude. Successful teamwork depends on every individual feeling that their contribution matters.

Keeping egos in check without quashing them requires a delicate balance. Everybody on the team must intentionally manage their ego and shift the focus from individual agendas to the team’s objectives to effectively achieve the desired outcome.

Next Steps to Improving Teamwork in the Workplace

While the teams in your organization might have mastered some elements of this list, it is important to understand that in order to improve teamwork in the workplace it cannot be done alone. So, if you are committed to creating a workplace where teamwork thrives, start by performing an assessment of to determine which areas could improve. You will inevitably find a few gaps. When you do, provide competency development to bring all seven cornerstones into balance and see how the organizations in your team transform.

Contents

• Empowered Culture
• Culture of Innovation
• Sales Culture
• Customer-Centric Culture
• Culture of Leadership Excellence
• Culture of Safety

Introduction

Whether they know it or not, every company has a culture. There are many different types of corporate culture. Some evolve naturally and some are intentional, but all of them fit the same definition. When we look at culture, we are looking at the sum-total of the behaviors of all employees; culture is defined by what the people of the organization do.  Culture is not to be confused with your company mission, vision, and values. The mission of the company sets the direction, whereas culture describes environment around how the mission is achieved, and values define what the culture will be.

So, why do you need to identify your corporate culture? There are a few important reasons:

• Operate with intention – Understanding both the type of culture you want and the type of culture you currently have will allow you to forge a path to get from Point A to Point B.
• Uncover gaps – When you evaluate your company culture, it allows you to identify areas that could be improved so you know where and how to take action.
• Identify opportunities – Similarly, taking the time for self-reflection can potentially highlight opportunities that you might be missing out on.

Examples of Corporate Culture

Just as people from across the globe live in different cultures, so do companies; and in some cases, even divisions within a company can have their own culture. Listed below are a few common corporate cultures you may wish to create at your organization.

1. Empowered Culture

The epitome of an empowered culture is when every individual in your organization feel fully engaged and actively participates in the success of the business. People initiate new activities that will benefit your company, take ownership of their work, and are willingly responsible for the outcomes.

People that thrive in an empowered corporate culture are those that are not afraid to take initiative and exhibit confidence in their decisions. Some of the benefits of fostering this type of culture include:

• Potential issues are identified and addressed before they become problems
• Employees feel comfortable coming to superiors with new ideas
• Individuals are engaged in making the organization better
• People feel accountable for their actions and take ownership of their ideas

2. Culture of Innovation

In some industries, innovation is highly valued and necessary for the ongoing success of the organization. A culture of innovation focuses not just on coming up with new ideas, but also on following a rigorous process to bring those ideas to fruition.

In a culture of innovation, having a diverse set of personalities will enable ideas to percolate more readily. While some people may be better at the creative elements of innovation, others may be more adept at implementing the processes to bring them to life. The benefits of developing this type of culture in an organization include:

• A unified commitment to innovation among all members of the organization
• Competitive advantage in the marketplace through ongoing innovation
• An environment where everybody feels comfortable communicating their ideas

3. Sales Culture

Creating a sales culture at your organization may signal that there is an underlying impetus to support the activities that generate revenue for your company. For companies with a large sales force, undergoing a culture transformation to focus on sales within that group can make them better able to promote new products and services, approach new markets, develop a sales process that is in line with your company’s values, and use the tools that will help them maximize sales.

The individuals who thrive in a sales culture tend to be focused on delivering the product or service that best meets customers’ needs. Implementing a sales culture at your organization can provide the following benefits:

• A salesforce that is fully informed about every product and service the company provides

• A commitment from all teams to support the salesforce as needed
• Accountability in committing to targets and trying to exceed those expectations

4. Customer-Centric Culture

A customer-centric culture is all about the consumers who buy your company’s products or services. This type of culture permeates your entire organization, including those who have no interactions with customers at all. Employees in a culture of customer centricity are empowered to see everything through the eyes of the customer and to make appropriate decisions based on their observations The benefits of a customer-centric culture include:

• Company-wide accountability in all aspects of work
• An increase in customer satisfaction
• A workforce committed to delivering an exceptional customer experience every time

5. Culture of Leadership Excellence

In a culture of leadership excellence, individuals at every level have confidence that company leaders are committed to continuous improvement. In turn, leaders demonstrate their commitment by participating in ongoing training, leadership development programs, mentoring, and coaching.

In this type of culture, individuals who have natural leadership tendencies will readily rise to the top. Perhaps more importantly, those individuals who have inherent leadership skills but are not aware of them will be recognized and nurtured to fill their natural role. A culture of leadership excellence benefits from:

• A robust leadership pipeline
• Better employee retention through internal employee development
• Strong leaders in every area of the organization

6. Culture of Safety

In industries that involve physical labor, heavy machinery, or hazardous materials, having a culture of safety means that you are committed to protecting the health and well-being of every individual. This includes having certain safety procedures in place, requiring specific behaviors, and ongoing training to ensure that everybody has all the necessary information to perform their job safely.

In a culture of safety, employees inherently protect not just themselves, but also their colleagues. The benefits of a culture of safety include:

• Fewer incidents and associated cost savings
• A universal feeling that employee safety is valued by the organization
• A proactive approach to safety and compliance

It is important to note that each of these types of corporate culture does not necessarily have to stand alone; there can be crossover. For example, you can have an empowered culture that is also committed to customer centricity.

Which type of culture best fits your company? Which culture do you want for your organization? If these two answers don’t align, it’s time to start planning your transformation. Culture transformation is challenging, but it is possible. When done right, you can achieve lasting behavioral changes that will propagate for the life of the company. Are you ready for a change?

Many B2B organizations recognize the importance of focusing on customer experience in order to drive results and growth—being customer centric is simply good for business. Despite this, most companies are not quite there yet. According to Forrester, only 23 percent of B2B companies have embraced a customer centric approach to their organizational structures. Becoming a customer centric organization may seem like an overwhelming challenge, but making the investment in this culture shift is worth it. When striving to become a more customer-centric company, consider the following strategies to ensure success.

Create Corporate Clarity

Building a culture of customer centricity requires a clear vision and set of values to create a shared foundation. These ideals must be reflected in the actions, behaviors, and thoughts of both leaders and employees when making decisions. The message of customer centricity should be distributed clearly and consistently throughout the organization via meetings, everyday conversations, emails, and company message boards over a sustained period of time. Throughout the transformation to a customer centric culture, reiterate the vision in multiple ways and make it part of the company’s DNA to keep people motivated and engaged.

It’s also important to recognize that just spreading the vision of customer centricity is not enough to create lasting change. It’s essential that every person sees their part in the vision and knows what individual changes they need to make in order for it to become reality.

You’ve heard about the importance of company culture and how it can both attract new employees while keeping current ones engaged. However, you might still be wondering what exactly makes up company culture, why is it important, and does my own company even have a defined culture?

Company culture may seem like a vague and elusive concept, yet there are several ways to define it. Here are four keys to understanding your organization’s culture and the necessary criteria to determine whether yours may need to evolve.

Key 1: Recognize That You Do Have Company Culture

Every organization has company culture, whether intentionally cultivated or not. In short, it refers to the combination of values, goals, ethics, and expectations that govern and influence employee behaviors. If negative behaviors have been left to develop unchecked, with no guidance or direction, then yes, a company culture that supports bad habits may have taken root.

Simply put: There’s no blank slate when it comes to company culture. If you’re envisioning a specific kind—for instance, a customer-centric one—it’s not enough to simply announce that vision. You must first figure out what (and how) current behaviors need to shift in order to develop a roadmap to achieve those changes. That’s why it’s so important to define your current company culture before you try to steer it in a new direction.

Key 2: Analyze Your Company’s Priorities

If you want to better understand your culture, look at your company’s priorities. These goals and initiatives reveal what your organization values and what it does not (both explicitly and implicitly). Questions to ask yourself about company priorities may include:

• Do your employees hear more about increasing the bottom line or increasing customer satisfaction?
• Does your company give employees the freedom to experiment and innovate when it comes to solving problems, or is following protocol more important?
• Is taking calculated risks seen as a distraction or opportunity?
• How much (or how little) does your company invest in ongoing training efforts, both in terms of money and time?
• When your company considers adopting certain efforts or changes, are the thoughts and feelings of both leadership and employees considered?

Exploring questions like this can give you clues as to what kind of culture your company has cultivated. Is it one with a workforce that’s empowered, engaged, and encouraged to innovate and improve? Or a culture where the bottom line is often prioritized? If your company’s priorities give you pause, it may be time to explore a culture transformation.

Key 3: Inquire About Company Culture

Your company culture is made up of behaviors, those that are encouraged, permitted, and hindered. To understand what kind makes up your organization, it’s best to go directly to the source: your employees.

Consider ways to get feedback on which behaviors currently serve the company well and which need to be discouraged or changed to elevate your organization. Gather feedback from all levels of employees, from executives to front-line managers. Surveys, company-wide assessments, and focus groups can all help create a clearer picture of the behaviors that define your current company culture. Again, the key is to engage every employee as you ask for feedback because the sum total of all employee contributions and behaviors are what make up your culture.

Key 4: Look to Your Leaders

While every employee contributes to company culture, leaders have more impact and influence. Examine the messages your leadership team puts forth, and whether action follows those words. Leadership may espouse values and a mission that excites employees, but if leadership itself doesn’t “walk the walk,” their behavior can contribute to a culture of distrust and disengagement. Culture starts from the top down, and your leadership sets the tone for what’s permissible and encouraged in your company and what’s not.

After examining your culture using the four keys listed, where do you think your company culture needs a tune-up—or is a complete culture transformation in order?

As more companies are asking what it takes to provide a customer experience that will set them apart, people are getting hung up on definitions and feeling unsure of where to concentrate their efforts. To differentiate themselves, organizations need to adopt a customer-centric mindset. But how is that different from providing excellent customer service?

What is the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Centricity?

Customer service is what happens at the front line between someone receiving a product or service, and the business that is providing it. In B2C organizations, this includes the interactions between the paying customer and the business. In B2B companies, customer service most often happens between the end users at the organization making the purchase (individuals and departments), and the provider of the product or service (most often the sales and customer service departments).

Then, what is customer centricity? Customer centricity is a value that informs the behavior of the entire organization. It involves every individual at every level of the organization operating under the assumption that everything they do has the potential to affect the overall experience of the customer. Customer centricity includes customer service, but it doesn’t begin or end with frontline staff. Instead, a customer-centric organization considers the entire customer journey, and anticipates customer needs beyond the single transaction.

Adopting a customer-centric culture can have a tremendous impact on the organization and its employees. In fact, researchers at Forrester found that employees at 93 percent of customer-centric companies are happy to work there, compared to only 20 percent of employees at companies that are less focused on the customer experience. In addition, 95 percent of customer-centric companies said their customers are satisfied with their products and services, compared to only 46 percent of other companies. Meanwhile, a Walker study found that even a moderate improvement to the customer experience can impact the revenue of a $1 billion company by an average of $775 million over three years.

With such an impact on employees, customers, and the organization’s bottom line, it’s easy to see why more companies are putting a focus on customer centricity.

What Do Customer-Centric Organizations Do Differently?

Adopting a culture of customer centricity can be a major shift in mindset for some organizations. By definition, it requires the organization to put the customer at the center of business decisions, and work together to consider the total customer experience at all times. Here are just a few of the ways that customer-centric organizations approach work differently:

1. Place the customer at the heart of all decisions and actions

Customer-centric organizations don’t just promise excellent customer service. They define the customer experience they wish to provide and create policies, frameworks, and procedures to make it happen.

2. Empower individual employees

Customer-centric organizations make sure that every individual knows they can take action to impact the customer experience, and that they know the balance between personal judgment and corporate policy when taking such action. These organizations inspire accountability within their workforces; by giving people the ability to do what needs to be done, each individual is able to take ownership of their part in the customer experience.

3.Communicate effectively

Customer-centric organizations break down silos. They understand that the flow of information between departments and functions has a huge impact on the customer experience – especially when something that “looks good” for the customer’s experience when examined in isolation actually causes friction when considered in the context of the entire customer journey. Open communication helps everyone understand and create the desired customer experience.

4. Obsessed over data

Customer-centric organizations seek out data and use it to improve the customer experience. They watch the market and emerging trends in order to anticipate evolving customer needs. They obtain permission to use customer information to personalize individual interactions. They examine referral rates, customer satisfaction surveys, online reviews, and so on, to understand how effective the organization’s customer experience initiatives really are.

Consider Customer Centricity a Journey

Customer centricity is so much more than just providing good customer service, and becoming a customer-centric organization doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a shift in mindset, new policies, and changes in behavior across the organization. To learn more about customer centricity, the impact it can have on your organization, and how to make the shift, check out Eagle’s Flight founder and CEO, Phil Geldart’s book, Customer Centricity: A Present and Future Priority.

“Putting the customer first” sounds like a selfless, lofty goal for businesses. But organizations wouldn’t be so focused on providing top-notch customer service if it didn’t make sound business sense. In fact, Deloitte and Touche reports that customer centric companies are 60 percent more profitable than companies not focused on the customer. But let’s back up for a moment—what is the art of customer centricity, and how exactly does it lead to business growth and success?

Why Customer Centricity Is an Art (Not a Science)

The shape that customer centricity takes in your organization depends on whom you serve—there’s no one-size-fits-all customer centric formula you can simply plug yourself into. In fact, that’s the opposite of customer centricity! This is much more than a “customer first” motto. Customer centricity is an organizing principle, with the customer at the center.

Think of customer centricity as a painting. You paint the customer into the foreground, and everything else in the painting exists to keep the focus on the customer. Taken individually, the elements of the painting that enhance the customer—all of those background techniques—don’t seem to make much of a difference. But if you take them all away, your painting becomes dull and lifeless—the color seems to drain out of your painting’s central figure (the customer). For example, designing an office that feels inviting to your customer (think comfy chairs, a coffee station, and offices full of natural light) may seem superfluous, but it can have an outsized impact on the customer’s first impressions of your organization. Furthermore, the elements that don’t serve to enhance the customer can be reworked, painted over, and redesigned. Customer centricity, like painting, is a process that takes time, trial and error, and practice to perfect!

A company that truly embraces customer centricity organizes the corporate culture around its customers and ensures that departments don’t operate in silos when it comes to interpreting customer data and the customer experience. In fact, “customer service” isn’t limited to just one department—every individual at the company becomes a customer centric artist, striving to see things from the customer’s perspective, taking ownership of the ways that his or her work can directly or indirectly impact customers, and pulling out his or her paintbrush to take action to improve the customer experience.

Discover Potential Areas for Growth

Creating a customer centric culture isn’t easy, as the description above entails. So, why do companies do it? What’s in it for them?

Customer centricity can be a major boon for business, in part because it allows companies to discover and identify potential areas for growth, where new products or services can be created to meet customer needs. When you put yourself in your customers’ shoes, you can more easily see what may be lacking for them—and that spells business opportunity. Relatedly, customer centricity also helps companies develop the right products and services, the kind that are actually going to be used. When you truly understand your customers’ needs, you won’t waste time developing and marketing services that aren’t going to help them.

Create Long-Term Partnerships with Customers

Customers are going to be appreciative of the care that customer centric companies put forth in meeting their needs. When you consistently deliver solutions that are customized to the customer, that gives them an incentive to work with you further. That’s good news for your business’s bottom line, because the statistics show that it’s far more cost-effective to retain current customers than acquire new ones.

However, the reality is that customers aren’t going to stick with you if you ever stray from the customer centric model. Customer loyalty is eroding; today’s customers aren’t afraid to switch companies at the drop of a hat, and they certainly don’t feel beholden to a company due to past good service. What matters is how you treat customers now. A customer centric organization approaches customer retention as a way to create long-term partnerships with customers. Partnerships that will be mutually beneficial and rewarding to both customer and company for years to come.

Sell More with a Customer Centric Approach

Customer centricity can even inspire business growth by reviving a company’s lackluster sales results. Putting the potential customer at the center of the sales process—by researching the customer’s current reality and the climate of the customer’s industry and by identifying the customer’s real and perceived needs—can lead to more (and bigger) sales. Today’s customers want complex, custom-fit solutions, which companies can only sell to a customer when they put themselves in the customer’s shoes. That’s how a salesperson can determine what solution would truly fit best.

Does your organization possess a customer centric culture? If so, how has that contributed—directly or indirectly—to your organization’s growth?

Introduction

Organizational changes come in all stripes and many flavors. Some changes are small, such as moving your office, which ranks at about a two on a scale of one to ten. Implementing a new accounting system ranks about a five. The changes encountered during the merger and acquisition process are, on a scale of one to ten, hovering right up there near the double digits. With the merger and acquisition comes a culture transformation and the overall sense of identity within the organization. Individuals may even be worried about their job status. A merger or acquisition is a time of uncertainty and adjustment. Clearly, it’s a time that calls for not just good leaders to guide your organization through merger and acquisition, you need a great leader.

Here are seven things great leaders do to shepherd organizations through the unique changes organizations undergo during the merger and acquisition process.

1.  Decide on Your Approach to the Culture

Most M&A teams are great at thinking through the legal, financial, and operational components of a transition but what can be missed is the people who are undergoing this change asking: Will I fit? How do I fit? Do I want to fit?

These question will always be in reference to their previous experience of the culture they worked in before the merger or acquisition. As a senior leadership team you must have one of the 3 basic approaches clear in your mind.

1. Transform one of the cultures to align with the other.
2. Amalgamate the two cultures leveraging the strengths of each
3. Create a new culture free of the stigma of either of the previous cultures

2. Create a Compelling Vision

A compelling vision will be the North Star and set the direction for the majority of actions to be taken. A vision is broad sweeping and encompasses dreams and hopes. A vision is a motivating force, though action steps must be drafted to move toward that vision. Your vision will most likely encompass the mission and the culture of your organization following the merger and acquisition.

Once the vision is clear, ensure the articulation paints a clear distinction between current reality and desired future state, especially in regards to the culture you will ask people to fit into. This will help people fill in the blanks required to answer the “fit questions” they are asking. It will also clarify the expectation of the type of things that must be different.

3. Set a Series of Goals

Goals translate the vision into reality. Reach your vision by setting, then executing, a series of sequential goals that will result in the overall vision for your company, following the merger and acquisition. When goal setting, keep in mind each goal must be:

• Specific: Goals should have a specific, deadly-accurate deadline–not a fuzzy or flexible one.
• Measurable: A well-thought out goal is one in which there is some way to measure the outcome.
• Crystal Clear: Goals should be expressed so simply and so clearly they are truly “crystal clear” to everyone. Any questions should be addressed and the goal statement clarified.
• Action-oriented: Goals describe what is to be done; they should not be expressions of intent or desire.

4. Manage the Project

Managing this transition is a lot like managing any other project. Think of it, in fact, as project management. Working back from how the merger and acquisition will look and function when fully implemented, create incremental goal steps—and a timeline for completing them—that will get your organization there.

1. Get buy-in from managers and teams affected by the changes.
2. Based on your goals, assign tasks to managers, departments, and teams.
3. Keep managers, teams, and yourself, accountable. Hold weekly check-in meetings with managers to assess progress.
4. Continue to gather feedback. Make changes to tasks or timelines if necessary.
5. Take responsibility to ensure your managers and their teams meet their assigned goals.

5. Collaborate

The secret to collaboration is the willingness to listen and seek input, making sure those on the journey with you feel heard and esteemed. For clear collaboration, follow these steps:

1. Listen to others’ opinions and even frustrations. The most effective solutions come out of overcoming the criticisms of those who haven’t yet bought in.
2. Be willing to change tactics after getting feedback early in the process.
3. Provide opportunities for team members to contribute to the discussion.
4. Ensure effective dialogue around new assignments prior to them being finalized so that people work on outcomes they feel they can be successful in delivering. Nothing will erode trust more than people perceiving they are being set up to fail.
5. When working with managers and team members, be willing to voice your thoughts and opinions in a proactive way.
6. You become a great leader by being willing to listen to others, to give them their chance to lead the discussion while you listen quietly and incorporate feedback.

6. Engage Every Function and Level

During massive change, a significant percentage of people will default into a “victim of change” mentality and not proactively seek to do what is needed to succeed and bring the new culture to life. Skilled M&A teams intentionally build events into the transition period that create conviction around the new behaviors that must be adopted. The best initiatives deputize every employee as soldiers in the battle for the new culture as opposed to people who must be converted.

Engagement is accelerated when the achievable benefit is experience. Smart leads are diligent at ensuring early, visible wins that are relevant to front line employees, middle managers and support staff.

7. Develop Change Leadership Capacity

Feeling overwhelmed by the task? The majority of executive teams are, which is why smart leaders ensure that they and their teams are developing themselves both individually and collectively. This investment helps accelerate the adjustment period of the merger but also serves as an organizational asset post-integration. Winning companies in today’s market place are increasingly agile and able to rapidly adjust to change and effective leaders are the lynch pin of this agility. Nothing transforms a company culture quite like a merger or acquisition. The question is whether the new entity is transformed into a stronger organization delivering on the improved synergies and profits promised pre-M&A or whether it is transformed into a less productive bureaucracy that underperforms relative to what your team envisioned when you started this process. Where you end up is largely a function of your team’s ability to enhance the collective leadership skill to cause others to positively and rapidly adapt to change from the C-suite right down to the front line manager. This doesn’t happen by accident but requires a well-structured approach.

A term first used in military environments, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity), describes the kind of environment in which today’s organizations are increasingly operating. New technology and competitors, evolving customer demands, and changes in the regulatory landscape, among other factors, all result in four distinct types of challenges that company leaders must face:

• Volatility – Challenges are unexpected, unstable, and may last for an unknown duration
• Uncertainty – Causes and effects are unknown and the future is unpredictable
• Complexity – Information and variables are plentiful and overwhelming
• Ambiguity – Situations are vague and hard to interpret

Every organization is subject to varying degrees of VUCA, both internally and externally, and some of these factors will be beyond company leaders’ control. However, strong leadership can have a positive impact on a company’s ability to navigate and overcome VUCA challenges. Here are four ways leaders can make all the difference in successfully guiding the organization through change in times of VUCA.

Provide an Inspiring Vision

When times are uncertain and ambiguous, people need to understand why certain changes are happening in the first place, and then they need a line of sight to the end goal. Leaders can provide the vision and direction that helps employees to be less fearful and resentful of the changes and uncertainties happening around them. A strong vision not only helps individuals see what the organization will look like in the future, but it also explains how certain processes will be improved over time. With a clear, compelling vision, leaders can inspire employees, answer their questions, and allay their concerns, putting them in a better position to embrace change and navigate it successfully.

Define the Strategic Plan

Once employees see the vision for change, they will naturally want to understand how all the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity will impact them day to day. A strategic plan brings the vision for change alive by detailing the timetable for shifts in certain processes and explaining how individual and team responsibilities will change. With a clearer understanding of how the vision for change will be implemented, employees will be more likely to connect the dots between their evolving work environment and what they can do to be successful.

Communicate Effectively

Communication is at the heart of every organizational change effort, and leaders play an important role not just in communicating the vision and strategy to their teams but also in listening and creating opportunities for healthy dialogue. Leaders who communicate early, often, and consistently help others remain focused and build a common understanding across the whole team. Some examples of effective communication leaders can incorporate into daily activities include:

• Virtual focus groups and chat rooms that enable all employees, including those who work remotely, to share their experiences and provide feedback
• Team meetings that focus on a particular process that is changing and how employees can approach it
• One-on-one discussions that provide individuals with advice and coaching for how to navigate specific challenges

Provide Consistent Support and Reinforcement

Because there is always likely to be an element of VUCA in the workplace, employees will benefit from leader support that helps them navigate change on an ongoing, day-to-day basis. Company leaders can sustain the energy around change and support employees through it by:

• Providing ongoing coaching and mentoring to help employees adjust their mindset and behaviors
• Modelling desired behaviors for embracing change
• Supporting employee learning and development, including periodic reinforcement to keep new skills fresh and top of mind
• Celebrating successes and milestones

All companies face times of VUCA, and those that pursue and embrace change will be better able to evolve and grow than those that do not. Strong leadership not only helps individuals understand change but also positions them to embrace it and thrive in an ever-evolving work environment. By taking clear steps to communicate and support employees through change, leaders can guide the organization to success in times of VUCA.

When you assess your organizational culture, you will be looking at the values, beliefs, and behaviors of leaders and employees. While some characteristics of your culture may be evident, others may be harder to define. It can be a challenge to analyze organizational culture, but it is a worthwhile exercise because understanding culture can help you identify which aspects of it are working and which may need improvement or transformation.

Examine Key Attributes of the Organization

A helpful way to analyze company culture is to explore some of the key attributes of the organization, such as how decisions are made and how employees feel about change initiatives. While each organization’s culture is a mix of different attributes, here are some examples that will facilitate a deeper understanding of your corporate culture:

Leadership involvement: Leaders are often key catalysts for driving a particular kind of culture. They model corporate values and deliver feedback that shapes employee behavior. When looking at organizational culture, it’s helpful to observe whether leaders demonstrate the behaviors that are needed to support the culture or if they take a “do as I say, not as I do” approach.

Decision-making: When you examine the role of critical analysis and the degree to which multiple stakeholders have a voice in decision-making, you can pick up useful clues regarding the type of organizational culture that exists. For example, centralized decision-making may be more prevalent in a hierarchical culture, but, as one researcher points out, the same organization may have pockets of consensus-driven decision-making.

How people communicate: How employees communicate internally says a lot about your culture. It can be helpful to observe not only the most common forms of communication (for example, whether most employees communicate face-to-face or via email) but also the degree to which open, honest, and two-way communication is common among employees and leaders.

Openness to innovation: When analyzing culture, it’s helpful to note how the organization approaches risk and evaluates new ideas. A culture of innovation is not limited to start-ups. As one venture capitalist notes, innovative cultures in companies of all sizes share attributes such as embracing risk, accepting failure, and routinely experimenting with new ideas.

Approach to learning and development: A culture of continuous learning is typically one where employees and leaders seek out opportunities to acquire new skills and knowledge that will help them improve their performance. To better understand your culture, examine the variety of learning and development opportunities available to employees and how they respond to the opportunities.

Approach to change management: Change is the great constant, and how organizations approach it is an important characteristic of company culture. If leaders and employees resist change or rarely talk about it, that could be a sign of a more rigid culture. Alternatively, if change is welcomed and the organization has a strategy and detailed processes for managing it, then a more flexible culture may exist.

3 Steps to Successfully Improving Your Culture

Every organizational culture has room for improvement. Here are three steps to successfully implementing changes to your corporate culture:

#1. Identify culture gaps: With the aid of tools like surveys and culture assessments, conduct a gap analysis to fully understand the culture you have and how it compares to the culture you want. A gap analysis not only helps you define the existing culture, but it can also deliver new insights into employee attitudes and beliefs that might have been previously unknown or misunderstood.

#2. Develop a plan for the new culture: Once you’ve identified the desired culture, it’s important to develop a strategy for achieving it. Transforming corporate culture often requires new skills training to help leaders and employees develop the behaviors required to succeed.

#3. Reinforce the new culture: Sustained culture change requires that leaders continue to model desired behaviors and leverage the skills and knowledge they’ve gained to support their employees. The use of reinforcement tools can also significantly help. These tools include mobile boost learning, multi-rater assessments, and culture impact scorecards that help manage culture on an ongoing basis.

Build a Thriving Culture

Culture is unique to each organization and analyzing it is a process of observation, asking questions, and using tools to identify a variety of organizational attributes. Regardless of the type of organizational culture you have or the one you strive for, it’s necessary to provide employees with the required skills and knowledge for adjusting their behavior. Depending on your size and the degree of culture transformation  you’re trying to achieve, there are a variety of tools available to help you successfully analyze your culture, and if needed, change it.

Every individual is unique, and everyone brings with them a unique set of traits to the workplace—from their personality and past experiences to the way they learn. In fact, there are several types of learning styles and ways that workplace training can be designed to meet those diverse learning needs, as well as decrease learning decay. While some individuals learn best with written material, others are make sense of new information when they can see or hear an explanation of what is being taught.

In order to ensure that employees get the most out of their training experiences, it’s best to tailor workplace training to address the needs of all types of learning styles as much as possible. By making small adjustments to existing training or larger changes to your training programs, you can position your organization to achieve strong training ROI, improved employee engagement, and sustained behavior change.

How to Tailor Training to the Various Types of Learning Styles

Though there are many learning theories, we’ll focus on one of the most popular, Howard Gardner’s Seven Learning Styles. There are a number of elements that can be included in workplace training so that it appeals and connects to each learning style, helping individuals learn new behaviors that will help improve performance and job effectiveness.

Here are some ways your training initiatives can be designed to appeal to the various learning styles:

Visual Learners

Visual learners learn by what they see and build comprehension of new concepts through pictures, images, and the spatial relationships of objects. Workplace training for visual learners can be tailored to include presentations with plentiful diagrams, videos, and charts.

Auditory Learners

Auditory learners are excellent listeners and discern patterns in spoken, lecture-type teaching. This type of learner prefers speeches, audio recordings, and training that includes plenty of opportunities for dialogue.

Reading/Writing Learners

These individuals learn best through close examination of text, reports, stories, and case studies. Workplace training for reading/writing learners can be tailored to include manuals, handouts, quizzes, and presentations.

Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners expand their comprehension of new information through their senses, and enjoy hands-on activities like simulations, walk-throughs, and sessions that include building or working with physical objects.

Logical Learners

Sometimes referred to as mathematical learners, these individuals learn from studying whole systems, patterns, and high-level concepts. They are particularly drawn to spreadsheets, multi-step methodologies, and graphs. Logical learners respond well to workplace training that includes opportunities to distill multiple concepts into one big idea, showing them how to improve their behavior.

Interactive/Social Learners

These learners are strong at understanding the feelings and motivations of others. The thrive on team learning activities, role-playing, and group discussions.

Solitary Learners

Solitary learners focus on self-reflection and introspection as their prime way of synthesizing and making sense of learning. Training for these learners should be tailored to include opportunities to work through the content at their own pace, as well as a balance of collaborative activities with those that allow them to work independently.

Experiential Learning Works for a Range of Learning Styles

Experiential learning can be an appealing workplace training choice because it addresses the different learning needs of employees. Here are some examples of how experiential learning works with many types of learning styles:

• For visual learners – The immersive nature of experiential learning features stories with vivid details that allow these types of learners to visualize desired behaviors introduced to them in training.

• For auditory learners – The discussion and dialogue inherent in experiential learning allow auditory learners to learn by hearing how others synthesize and apply newly learned behaviors.

• For reading/writing learners – Reading/writing learners thrive on making connections through what they read, and experiential learning addresses this by offering discovery-based learning that compels learners to create order out of the information presented, then take action based on their understanding of the material.

• For kinesthetic learners – Kinesthetic learners love to learn by doing, which is at the heart of experiential learning. Participants engage in immersive activities that mimic real-life situations and are directly relevant to the workplace.

• For logical learners – Experiential learning works for logical learners because it challenges them to think about their actions and behaviors, and link it to what they did with the aid of a facilitated debrief.

• For interactive/social learners – Experiential training appeals to social learners because it is by nature an interactive experience. Expert facilitators engage groups of participants and help them to learn from their shared experiences during the session.

• For solitary learners – After the collaborative portion of experiential training wraps up, a facilitator-led discussion gives solitary learners the chance to think about their behaviors and actions, how those affected their results, and how the experience relates to their everyday life on the job.

Selecting a Solution That Appeals to All Types of Learning Styles

Though it may be challenging, it is possible to implement workplace training that addresses the needs of the many types of learning styles. Everyone learns differently, so it’s worthwhile to consider the various learning needs that exist within your organization and adjust your training accordingly. Experiential learning in particular includes elements that naturally appeal to many different learning styles and offers benefits that can be appreciated by every employee.