So You Want a Flourishing Organizational Culture? (Part 2)
Consider these nine shifts in how your organization works
[You can read the first part of this piece here.]
As I noted in Part 1, our relationship with organizational leadership as well as the nature of work itself is undergoing change. Much of this was years in the making, as the dawn of the internet age rapidly changed the way the world interacts. COVID-19 accelerated many of those changes, such as the increased popularization of work from home and remote work options, as well as a massive shift in labor. While the latter is often blamed on the idea that “people just don’t want to work anymore,” that’s just plain silly.
It isn't that people don’t want to work. People don’t want to work the way they used to. People don’t want to work the way dysfunctional leaders and abusively demanding organizations want them to. People don’t want to work for for an organization for less pay and less freedom than they could get by selling crafts on Etsy.
Organizations that are positioned for recruiting excellent talent and cultivating thriving organizational culture are those that are agile and innovative. They’re chiefly concerned, not simply with churning out profits or maximizing output, but also the health and attractiveness of the sort of ecosystem they create. So at present, here are my final five recommendations for creating a flourishing organizational culture.
Shift 5: Cultivate a Truth-Telling Culture
In their excellent book A Church Called Tov, Laura Barringer and Scot McKnight spend an entire chapter focusing on how tov (the Hebrew word for goodness) churches focus on establishing a culture that is truth-telling (pp. 150-171). They specifically (and rightly) focus on bringing to light and repenting of abusive and other sinful practices that are otherwise covered up within ecclesial spaces. But the practice of cultivating a truth-telling culture can and should extend beyond sin and also beyond the local church (though it certainly must include that as well).
Organizations that create a truth-telling culture foster environments where feedback is pursued and even growth areas that are not explicitly sinful can be pointed out and addressed before they grow into more systemic and deeply rooted issues. My generation (Millennials) place enormous value on authenticity and diminished social hierarchies. In order to attract solid Millennial leadership, organizations must acknowledge and embrace the simply fact: the days of workplace environments where everyone keeps their head down and does their job are over.
Shift 6: Do Away From Traditional Remuneration
While I don’t think that traditional forms of paying employees are going away anytime soon, I do think they will fade away over the next couple decades in favor of alternative approaches to remuneration that are already becoming popular.
We’ve all heard about the widening gap between stagnant wages, corporate profits, and cost of living. We’ve heard the statistics about the widening chasm between executive pay and entry-level pay. We’ve all heard about the comical promotions that give more responsibility as a “résumé builder” but don’t offer an increase in compensation.
But one of the issues regarding organizational remuneration to employees that doesn’t get as much air time is the productivity gap. Think about it from this example:
Suppose Jane and John have the exact same role at the same company and for the same pay (I know, in the real world Jane would be paid less because #patriarchy, but go with me on this). Jane and John are both given a task by their team leader.
Jane, an efficient and higher capacity employee, gets the task done in 1 hour. John, who is well-meaning but less efficient, gets the task done in 2 hours.
How is Jane rewarded for her expeditious work?
In most organizations, Jane is rewarded with additional work! So at the end of a week, Jane may be able to accomplish 200% more than John, though their compensation remains the same.
While some people simply can’t help but be efficient, even when there’s no personal benefit, many high capacity employees throttle back. Being under-utilized, they often leave for other opportunities. But I think it’s possible to solve such a conundrum without exploiting higher-capacity employees or losing them to other organizations. Consider three alternatives forms of remuneration scenarios:
Polywork
Polywork is, quite simply, the practice of having multiple jobs. There was once a time where the employer/employee relationship looked a bit more like the patron-client relationship that we find in the cultural backdrop of the New Testament.
The employer (patron) provided a livable wage to employees, along with things like Christmas bonuses (my kids only know what that is because of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation), company picnics, and more. Back in the 1960s, General Motors—who at one time employed some 90,000 people in my hometown of Flint, Michigan (which was a city of about 200,000 at that same time)—is reported to have actually thrown parades in downtown Flint for their employees and their families!
In exchange for taking care of its people, people pledged a degree of fealty to their employer. For my grandfather’s generation, the idea of a guy bouncing from one job to the next every few years was a sign of someone who didn’t have their act together. For my generation, the idea of someone having one job their entire life sounds like a fairy tale.
Life isn’t like that any more. Organizational patronage isn’t what it once was. And employees have responded in-kind. One potential way to stave off losing high capacity employees to other opportunities is simply to do away with the expectation that employees having to be “vocationally monogamous.” Just let them—even encourage them—to have multiple jobs.
Now there’s a lot of nuance and detail that has to be worked out in those sorts of situations, to be sure. Polyworkers generally don’t just grab as many full-time jobs as they can, like my late grandmother would cram dinner rolls into her purse while at Ponderosa. Instead they generally have a main job (usually the one that also pays insurance) and one or more “side hustles.”
Take Jane, for example. Instead of accepting additional work in the extra hour while John is still working on completing his task, she might create digital products to sell online, or she might fill the time doing freelance writing, or something else.
The obvious fear for organizational leaders is that their work won’t get done. But that’s a topic for coaching, not preemptive policy making. But if you’re not going to give Jane a raise for her hard work, let the poor woman make good use of her unused time. Don’t simply give Jane more work because John’s working slowly.
Fractional leadership
Similar to polywork is the concept of “fractional leadership” (which Mark DeMyaz outlines here) is recruiting employees with the knowledge that they will have other commitments. Fractional leadership discussions normally focus on executive (“C-Suite”) folks, who are (normally) highly educated and skilled in specific and focused areas. Rather than making the difficult choice of foregoing an executive’s expertise or shelling out an enormous salary, fractional leadership essentially contracts out a portion of the executive’s time or portfolio.
So a fractional leadership scenario for a church or Christian organization may, for example, solicit the capacity of a highly skilled communicator to be on the church’s teaching team once a month. Or they may contract a theology professor at a seminary to oversee development of discipleship content.
But the concept of fractional leadership can be scaled to multiple levels and different varieties of leadership. It’s, again, about leveraging a portion of the expertise or talent of a high capacity leader while honoring their capacity by not demanding exclusivity.
Rewarding capacity
One final option is to simply reward capacity within the organization. If an employee is consistently outperforming her or his colleagues promote them (with pay!). If that isn’t an option, rather than giving Jane an extra task while John is still finishing his first task, let Jane go home. Let her take a long lunch. But don’t simply give her more work because, eventually, Jane will leave.
Shift 7: If Your Organization is “Like a Family,” then Be Like a Family
I outline much of what I have to say on the subject of organizations and family here. A lot of Christian orgs of genuinely have a family-like environment within their organization and that is fantastic. But rest assured, for a church or organization to genuinely be like family, it is a pursuit that requires intentionality and care. You can’t just call a group of people required to be together all the time “family.” (I supposed you technically can, but it doesn’t mean you should.)
Shift 8: Develop “Multi-Frame” Introspection
Lee Bowman and Terrance Deal outlined their four “frames” of organization in the early 1990s. Essentially, an organization can be assessed and cultivated by looking at it through one of four lenses:
I’ve found that different organizations favor one or two frames, usually shown in times of change or chaos.
Things aren’t getting done?
Time to change the organizational chart. (Structural frame)
So-and-so is probably to blame. He’s gotta go (Political frame)
We need to get the team through some skill development classes (HR frame)
We’re long overdue for a team retreat (Symbolic frame)
That said (and I’m probably bias as a missiologist), it’s my experience that the most woefully neglected of the four frames is the symbolic frame. Despite the fact that our entire existence is given structure, meaning, and cohesion through the power of culture and ritual, organizational leaders generally don’t think much about the formative power of culture care. Those who become expert culture makers, I believe, will lead the most thriving organizations in the future.
Shift 9: Empower Women and Non-White Leaders
I thought Nikki Haley’s recent quote of Margaret Thatcher at the Republican presidential debate in August was fantastic (and true): “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”
She ain’t wrong.
That’s not an ethic to exploit. But it’s one worth recognizing and honoring. I’ve found that both women as well as non-white women and men are not only incredibly efficient and capable workers, when properly employed and empowered—but they add enormous value in the form of their unique experiences and perspectives. If all the people at the top of your organization look like me, something is amiss. You need the fullness of God’s diverse family, not just filling seats at a table or posing for photo ops, but driving the vision of your church or organization forward.
You can read more about how to amplify the voice and place of Christian women in my new book Your Daughters Shall Prophesy. (p.s., many of you have already read Daughters, and it would be incredibly helpful for you to leave a review on Amazon!)