Building Your Virtual Culture (#65)
The coronavirus presents challenges to building your organization’s culture. But these can be overcome with a little bit of hard work. In Afghanistan, our unit was spread out across 100 miles of the Paktika Province. But, we revisited our purpose at out bi-weekly targeting meetings, used daily and weekly VTCs to give everyone a chance to talk about what they were seeing in their area, and recognized outstanding performance with badges, medals, and coins. The battalion task force also conducted After Action Reviews on our major events. It required work, but we managed to keep the culture of the Iron Rakkasans vibrant across the 100 miles of Paktika Province during the year long deployment.
Culture is defined as the beliefs, values, and behaviors that determine how an organization’s people interact and behave both inside and outside the organization. In my opinion, a superb organizational culture is built upon three concepts — purpose; values; and having a safe, connected, and engaged environment.
Purpose — the why for your company or your organization (See Post #53 for more)
Values and Behaviors — the principles or behaviors that drive the organization.
Safe, connected, and engaged environment — an environment where the group is engaged, each individual talks and listens, members talk directly to each other, and it is safe to provide feedback.
Post #50, Superb Culture, and Post #48, The Four Types of Corporate Culture dig deeper into this discussion. It is helpful to have a solid understanding of your organization’s culture before you start trying to enhance it virtually.
Reflecting on February 2020, it is clear that building or enhancing a corporate culture was significantly easier when everyone is together at one work place. But what if you have a distributed organization or are working virtually now? Here are five ways to work on your virtual culture:
Develop a common understanding of your virtual culture — Your virtual culture, especially the values and behaviors that drive the organization, is different than what your live, or in-person, culture was. It is worth having your group spend time developing the top ten virtual behaviors that shape your organization’s culture. Some questions to think about: What in the culture is helping your group achieve personal interaction? How are you encouraging collaboration? Are your virtual meetings effective and efficient? How are you helping your team’s work/life balance?
Lead the conversation — Being intentional and creating the space as a leader to get to know your colleagues and help your team get to know one another helps strengthen connections within your group and promotes your culture. One simple and engaging way to do this is by beginning your next meeting with interesting questions. Here are three questions to use:
How did you support the organization’s purpose last week?
Can you tell a story about how you exhibited one of the organization’s values from last week?
What is one thing a peer or co-worker has done for you since the crisis started that you really appreciated?
Regularly revisit the concepts of your culture — include in your meeting slide deck a slide that summarizes your organization’s culture. Revisit one of the values or behaviors during each weekly or bi-weekly meeting.
Make others feel seen and valued — Continue to grow the safe, connected, and engaged environment by showing appreciation and celebrating successes of any size. There is more on Recognizing Excellence in Post #17. Build your connections by looking for opportunities to do:
Peer recognition — have a peer recognize another peer’s outstanding performance.
Hand-written note — send a letter (not an e-mail!) to someone who has gone above and beyond.
Zoom social get togethers — opportunities for personal interaction help build the engaged environment.
Virtual AARs — After Action Reviews after big and small events are a great way to inculcate a safe, connected, and engaged environment. Remember from post #41 the four questions that the facilitator uses to drive an AAR:
What was the plan? (Typically this question is posed to the leader who takes the team through the plan. This usually takes 5-10 minutes to talk through.)
What happened? (The facilitator tries to get as many participants to talk about what happened at their level. What did they see or do? What didn’t they do? Breaking the events down by day or week is helpful to energize the discussion. Once the entire event is discussed then move to the next two questions. This usually takes 15-20 minutes to talk through)
What is one thing I should sustain, in my role or at my level, the next time a crisis occurs? (Asked to every participant. The last two questions are the real secret to the power of the AAR. These two questions should take 20-30 minutes to talk through.)
What is one thing I should improve, in my role or at my level, the next time a crisis occurs? (Asked to every participant.)
The coronavirus is not an excuse to allow your organization’s culture to atrophy. Go on the offense and use one of these five techniques to keep building and growing a superb culture in your organization, especially if you are doing remote work.