Tag Archives: Organizational Behavior

Organizational Artifacts

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Organizational Culture

Modified Jug_by-NikitaAvvakumovCompanies carefully develop and vigorously safeguard their corporate logos and trademarks because the leaders understand the importance of brand. Logos speak for the company, what it makes, and stands for. Some trademarks become terms for common items, actions, or a range of products. Years ago people would Xerox a copy when they wanted a photocopy. Everybody had a Frigidaire even if their refrigerator was a Whirlpool. Today if you want to find out some piece of information, you Google it. Mention these names or show their logos and people create a vision of excellence in each of those industries. The trademark is the company and people know the values of each. Artifacts, such as logos and trademarks, are the visible representations of an organization’s culture and values. Other aspects of artifacts include customs, traditions, celebrations, buildings, and attire. Leaders can use artifacts to change behaviors of stakeholders to align with desired values.

Back in the day, families had coats of arms that contained symbols representing significance accomplishments from the past, the region of origin, and tools of their trades. Military organizations thrive on the symbolism of their unit crests. Good leaders understand the qualities shown in organizational symbols and use them to provide a common bond for all stakeholders. The symbols and traditions create a unification for all those involved in the organization.

The terms blue collar and white collar demonstrate how artifacts affect perception. Mention blue collar worker to someone and they probably envision a person working on a factory floor, working in an automotive repair facilities, or dumping waste cans after the office closes. White collar workers are viewed as those working in clean environments such as offices, hospitals, or laboratories. Blue collar workers have GEDs or high school diplomas. White collar workers have college degrees, have offices higher in the building relative to their perceived power. These statements are not necessarily true as there are plenty of people holding traditionally blue collar jobs with high levels of education, and many office workers with high school diplomas.

Ceremonies and customs are other artifacts that show the world and stakeholders where an organization places value. Organizations that toss their new employees to the wolves with little training demonstrate they value people less than accomplishment. Those who celebrate small successes show they care when people succeed and understand that when an individual succeeds, everyone in the organization is better because of the achievement.

A smart leader seeking to change an organization’s culture can use artifacts to help that change occur. He can point to the symbols of a logo to talk about the important values of the organization. He describes how certain behaviors emulate the organizational values while others detract. He eliminates ceremonies celebrating negative achievements that belittle and embarrass, and replaces them with rituals observing feats supporting desired behaviors. Awards for compliance with desired organizational values serve as visual representations of success and encourage others to model similar behavior. Employee of the month is one example, but a creative leader finds other ways to also provide visual cues.

Understanding organizational culture is a critical leadership skill. Knowing how symbols, ceremonies, and traditions creates certain behaviors enabling leaders to change artifacts to encourage behaviro changes. If something runs counter to a professed value, it is shed. Leaders adopt new artifacts that support behaviors aligned with desired values. Take a look around your work place. What do the dress, visible symbols, behaviors, and traditions say to someone walking in for the first time about what is valued? Change those that subvert what you want others to think of you and your organization, and replace them with artifacts that show the character you seek to achieve.

Photo Credit

Nakita Avvakumov https://www.flickr.com/photos/drnik/2857646470/in/photolist-5mwbJJ-6bXTAW-cWNuEG-ogb2uP-6bXUYC-74auQQ-bjUuLa-dfPbpg-BsuyfJ-8eCvnt-ogstHx-dMZSDL-2A6cFN-E1JUTs-67mS86-ATUtr2-9euKg7-uLhc-57xfTs-Bz4NEy-PZP2PQ-5V9AWA-c7hjWf-wMfExB-QvqyfS-MGFg37-N6NaAj-PZP3zh-NncCAS-zEmsYi-QkEA9Q-ManQ54-N2jNX8-KdZwbq-MCHQ11-MEWtdK-S35rzb-S35rnC-QU9tXK-S35rfd-ExDU2b-622Hms-S5FNVK-RXKgGM-T2GiWi-kHLLyN-RoViju-qyFLP4-r2BLQg-6iE95L Creative Common License

Building a Foundation for Character with Organizational Guiding Principals

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Guiding principles, or values, lay the foundation of character for every organization. A wide variety of people make up organizations, coming from different backgrounds, and bringing different personal and cultural values to the group. An organization’s guiding principles establish what things are important for the organization. Successful organizations establish and ingrain compliance with their guiding principles through training. Using a daily or weekly meeting is an easy way to train employees about the organizations principles.

Let’s say the organization has three guiding principles; loyalty, quality customer service, and finding winning solutions for everyone. Supervisors hold meetings every Monday with their staff. In addition to the regular items, modified_meeting_torimiddelstadt_uaf-school-of-managementthe supervisor includes one of the guiding principles on the first Monday of the month. The supervisor provides the company’s definition of the principles and facilitates a discussion about ways employees can incorporate behaviors into their work lives to live up to the principle. This week they discuss loyalty. The conversation includes loyalty to the company, the smaller group, customers, and shareholders. The meeting breaks and employees go about their work.

During the week the leader moves about the work area looking for opportunities to recognize behaviors that comply with loyalty issues discussed during the weekly meeting. The leader notices a technician on the phone who appears to be talking with a customer. He tells the customer how much he appreciates his loyalty by sticking with company. He explains that he cannot do the repair work for free but will research a discount because of his loyalty.

During the next Monday meeting, the supervisor continues the discussion on loyalty. He starts the conversation by telling the story of the technician who found a way to stay true to the company while rewarding customer loyalty. Next he goes around the room asking others for stories of things they did during the previous week to live the principle of loyalty. Not everyone had a story, but all participated in the conversation. He also facilitated a conversation about how their views of loyalty changed during the week as they focused on different ways to be loyal to all the company stakeholders. The conversation was lively. Eventually the supervisor had to cut them off so they could conduct the business of the company.

The following week, the leader may start the loyalty discussion by telling a story of an experience he had where the principle was the focus of the situation. He opens the floor for others to tell stories. One way to ensure there will be some discussion is to have a chat with one or two employees during the week ending by asking them to share their story at the next weekly meeting.

On the fourth Monday, the group engages in a conversation wrapping what they have learned about loyalty. Again there should be time to allow story telling of application of the principle, but the conversation should shift to lessons learned and how to apply them. Using these steps allows people to be taught about an idea, followed with examples of how to use the idea and concludes by them practicing what they learned. The discussion allows corrections to be made so everyone becomes better and also recognizes behaviors meeting expectations for the particular guiding principle.

On the first Monday of the next month the supervisor introduces the next guiding principle, quality customer service. He follows the same format during the month when they learned about loyalty. The employees are told about quality customer service. They are shown examples of quality customer service. They try and report on their efforts. They are praised for success and coached to improve when they fall short of the standard. The process is repeated the next month for the finding winning solutions principle.

Change up things after going through the guiding principles once . Ask one of the employees in the group to lead themodified_geese-flying_john-johnson conversation when you return to the first guiding principle. Allow that employee to discuss and introduce the guiding principle. She could lead the conversations about how others engaged in behaviors exemplifying the principle. Repeating the process instills a deeper understanding of each principle and allows employees to further ingrain that principle into their daily lives. As new employees come on board, they learn not only how things are done, but why.

Creating organizational change is difficult. Helping employees improve their understanding of an organization’s guiding principles is one step leading to change. As employees begin to live the principles of the organization, the culture changes. Reinforcing each lesson through reflection of behaviors supporting compliance with organizational principles ensures lasting change. Employees see how small changes improve working conditions and organizational cohesion. Focusing attention on a guiding principle at daily or weekly meetings results in easily training teams about each principle. Try it at your next group meeting.

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Photo Credits

All photos from Flickr.com with Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Granite wall by Wolfgang Tonschmidt, cropped by author

Group meeting by Tori Middelstadt at UAF School of Management, modified by author

Geese by John Johnson, modified by author

Training Ethics or Ethical Training?

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There are so many ways to approach ethics training that it is unethical to have people sit bored while training ethics. Instructors can conduct ethics training on three levels. ImageThe first is to demonstrate by training ethically. The next is to provide ethical training. The third is to identify organizational behaviors that require changing and provide training that will change that behavior. What follows is a short dissertation how trainer can accomplish each of these goals without having to speak above the din of snoring in the classroom.

 Within the realm of training ethically there are three sub-categories; civil liability, ensuring employees are fully prepared to complete their duties and using the time of trainees well. Every organization wants to avoid law suits. Training your employees to do the right things the right way for the right reason ensures tort avoidance better than the coverage from insurance. By training employees well to avoid liability, you create added value by developing better employees who do their jobs well. Trainers have a responsibility to ensure they train employees well and when you do, students’ time is wisely used. Everyone despises the torture known as Death by PowerPoint. The point of presentation software is to help make critical points powerfully. By showing everything you are going to say on the slide the importance of the points are lost. Be prepared to speak ideas, not the slides.

 The next major area of ethics training is training ethics. Teach organizational standards, orders, policies or other written documentation governing behavior in your organization. These rules establish expected behavior. Let students know what the maximum and minimum penalties as well as the typical penalty for violating norms. Often these topics are approached by reading each document verbatim. A better idea is to assign the reading to be completed before class, review the material in the form of questions and answers and then use stories as examples of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Facilitated classes are great opportunities to share ethical theory with students showing how their biases effect their focus of organizational standards.

 The next area is training to change behaviors. Repetition is required for this training to be successful, but do not teach the exact same class to the exact same audience time after time. Both you and your students will become bored quickly. The point of this training is to focus student attention to behave in compliance with the organizational mission, principals, expectations and norms. Use this time to explain what the mission statement means to their section. Talk about how the organizational principals support the mission. Express your vision for the future of the organization. If you are training others, then you have been chosen to lead. Leaders have a better view of what lies ahead. Share your vantage point with others so they understand the importance of doing the right things the right way.

 As you develop training for each of these areas, you will soon find you have far more material to cover than the time available. Newer trainers will curse and try to squeeze everything into the allotted time. Experienced trainers recognize the opportunity to provide follow up training without repeating previous classes improving student attention and retention in subsequent classes. Focus on the three areas, ethically train, train ethics and change behavior. When you do, your students will clamor for more.

Improved Communication, Hit a Home Run with 3 Pitches

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IMG_0633Three Pitch Rule

Dateline Concord 1991: “Any lesson you want your students to remember needs to be repeated at least three times in different ways.” Linda Lang stands before a class of wanna-be DARE Officers as she introduces the Three Pitch Rule. Fast-forward to 2000 something. Ray Mello, a trainer of police prosecutors introduces one of Ray’s Rules, “Present anything you want the judge to remember at least three times. Fewer than three times and he or she will forget.” During firearms instructor class, Brad Parker, the curriculum development specialist, is presenting tips for teaching adult learners. “Ensure your officer students remember important parts of your class by telling they what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. When people hear the information three times, they are more likely to retain the it.” By this point in my career, I figured out anything worth saying is worth saying three times.

Recently I asked my boss for information for a project he gave me to complete. He told me he would take care of it. Several weeks had passed so I asked again. He assured me he would take care of it, “tomorrow.” Several weeks later, I was asking again. After the third request, he gave me what I needed and acted surprised I had not asked him for it sooner. I had asked three times.

Several months ago I gave one of my officers a community relations program assignment. I told him he had four weeks to do the research and put together a rough outline of his proposed presentation. He left excited about the project. Three weeks later I asked him brief me on his progress. I got the deer in the headlights look from him. He had no recollection of our discussion but assured me if he needed to, he could finish one by the end of the week. I asked for an update at the end of the week. Though he remembered the assignment, he forgot some of the details. He did complete it the following week, after I asked the third time.

My wife and I were discussing some vacation plans. I had some questions. The look on her face told me I should have known the answer. She says she told me the answers to my questions several weeks ago while I was working on a home project and on the way to a ball game. She commented that it seems like I never remember anything unless she tells me three times. My wife is right; she does need to tell me three times!

This conversation made me wonder why trainers employ the three pitch rule, quote the three pitch rule and follow the three pitch rule during training yet fail to follow the rule in other areas of their careers and lives. I remember thinking after my second conversation with my direct report that I should only have to tell him once. Likewise I could not understand why the boss couldn’t remember what I asked for after the first time. Obviously my wife thinks when she tells me the departure time of the plane in January for our April vacation, I should remember it. The reality is people need to hear things three times to remember them, whether that person is a supervisor receiving information from an employee, an employee making requests of a supervisor, or a husband talking with his wife, the three pitch rule applies.

The key to using this strategy effectively requires some creativity to avoid hen pecking. Calling an employee into your office and telling him, “I want you to do this, I want you to do this, I want you to do this.” is not effective. How you implement this strategy requires you to identify your communication strengths and how your intended receiver best receives information. Using three different methods increase effectiveness.

Begin by simply telling the other person what you want or expect. You might suggest they take a few notes. Follow up within 24 hours with an email, letter or sticky note. Place a phone call or send a text message two or three days later to see if the other person has any questions and check on preliminary progress. Using this method allows you to pitch your message three times and reinforce the importance of the task or appointment. Each connection allows opportunities for additional information sharing, idea swapping, asking of questions and clarification of expectations improving the quality of the finished product and the employee’s abilities. Using different modes of communication, in person, in writing and by telephone, also improves communication by appealing to different communication styles of others. What they miss in one, they pick up in another. Making your pitch three times means three weeks from now, when you have your follow up meeting, you are more likely to have results.

During this message, the Three Pitch Rule was introduced by a series of three teaching stories about The Three Pitch Rule. In the middle of the article three examples of failure were provided to reinforce the message of the importance of the Three Pitch Rule. The middle of the essay also provided directions to apply the three pitch rule by using three means of communication for each pitch. Here in the conclusion I have mentioned the Three Pitch Rule three times and demonstrated how you can apply it to ensure important messages are received, understood and acted upon. Go forth and start pitching!