CULTURE & WAYS OF WORKING

Creating a productive and rewarding company culture is a key component to attracting and retaining the talent that you need and value. It's the heartbeat of the employee experience and dictates the tone of the environment and the way people work together. A healthy and supportive company culture can cultivate relationships and collaboration while removing friction and in fighting.

Your culture is a reflection of who you are as an organization, how you feel about your employees, and what you want to be known for in the talent marketplace. Plus, it's a key indicator on an organization's ability to achieve strategic success and growth.

Disco Porcupine can support your CULTURE & WAYS OF WORKING needs through:

assessing your current culture and identifying misalignment and gaps,
supporting your culture design and architecture needs,
reviewing operating models, practices, and processes to identify opportunities to better support company culture,
provide change management guidance and support,
and support employment brand work.

Whether you're a new organization just designing and establishing your company culture, or an established company looking to review the health and elevate the effectiveness of their culture, it's important to look at this work from a holistic and integrated perspective.

Culture impacts not only the employee experience and talent practices; it impacts how work gets done, how your company is perceived in the marketplace, investments you may or may not make, partners you may or may not engage with, how your workplace and workspace is designed, and so many other aspects.

Disco Porcupine looks at culture in five categories in partnership with your consumer brand, business strategy, operating models, and talent needs.

Signs That Your Culture Might Need a Tune Up

Often the speed of business and the demands of getting the work done can take priority over making intentional investments in your culture. It happens. The most important thing to do is to realize that you need to give your culture some focus and take the steps necessary based on the situation you find yourself navigating.

Here are a few common scenarios and indicators that your culture needs attention.

Scenario One: Creativity and Innovation Stagnation

The situation: Your company values creativity, innovation, and experimentation. You want to have a "fail fast" mentality and employees with an entrepreneurial mindset. However, innovation is slow to incubate, employees don't seem to engage or contribute to new ideas, and projects seem to take too long to implement.

Where to look: Stagnation of creativity can be the result of a few root causes. How do you actually reward innovation and creativity? What is the reaction when you "fail fast"? Are you hiring the right talent and providing them the right tools? Do your timelines actually allow for experimentation and iteration? What types of activities, traditions, and rituals do you have to allow for creativity? At what level are the ideas curated and incubated?

Scenario Two: Collaboration Void

The situation: Collaboration is core to who you are and critical to the success of business strategies. Yet cross communication is lacking and there seems to be a lot of in fighting, work around processes, and unhealthy competition between business units and departments.

Where to look: Silo building often comes down to operating models, resource allocation, organization design, and leadership. Review your operating model and look for friction, duplication, bottle necks, and lack of clarity. Do your Senior Leaders work together as a unified team focused on the company strategy - collectively owning success and failures? OR do they prioritize their teams goals and objectives over those of the whole? How do you bring together team members across departments at various levels to collaborate on work? What is the motivation to collaborate?

Scenario Three: Inclusion Feels Exclusive

The situation: As an organization you have a commitment to creating an inclusive work environment. However, it feels that no matter what you do, employees don't seem to feel that it's enough.

Where to look: Inclusion isn't just being invited in, it's also being a part of the planning, the discussion, and decision making. It's having access to information and people. It's having the opportunity to have your work observed by a broader audience than just your leader and peers. It's having a community of colleagues where you belong and feel seen. Here are some things to consider. Where do decisions get made and who has the opportunity to provide input before they are made? In what way do employees have to voice their ideas and opinions? Who is listening? What does transparency look like in your organization? Are you employees learning about company decisions from external sources first? How are internal career moves decided and how is the employee a part of that process?