Trouble in Paradise: How do we create meaningful workplace communities?
A guide and practical steps to getting started
“We’re having the wrong debate. The debate isn’t hybrid or remote. The debate is actually as humans, how do we work best and what gives us a sense of meaning and feeling a connection, that in a particularly creative industry is what makes us thrive. And I think that’s where we’re failing”
Nishma Patel Robb, President WACL
In last week's post we posed the question: what if we’re focused on the wrong thing, and in the call of ‘back to the office’ that is rife across industry, we are missing a fundamental breakdown in trust between leaders and teams. We proffered a solution for leaders everywhere: how do you create a new contract with your internal community to drive cultural change?
These conversations often arise in times of trouble: redundancies, mergers, post pandemic working. But what if we saw the current shift, the current ‘messiness’ as a positive? A time to reinvent what has been a working culture that has been entrenched for almost 100 years?
”I think it will take us a good 5-10 years to get to a point where we’re able to start to name it. I think until then, we’re in this period of messiness, which doesn’t need to feel uncomfortable, it can feel joyous, a motivation, not a punishment”
Nishma Patel Robb, President WACL
So, let’s get straight to it. How do we go about creating thriving, self-sustaining internal communities?
Today’s post will be focused on helping you co-create a new Community Contract with your teams:
Whether you’re a leader, or in the leadership team, or you’re a team member wanting to propose a new approach, this one's for you.
Before we begin, let’s make sure we are all on the same page when we are talking about community. Official definitions of Community read as follows:
But we’d go further:
It’s important to start here, because it can be implied that an internal team of working colleagues is naturally a community. But, unless they feel this sense of connection, belonging, and affinity for the outcomes of others in the business, there is work to be done to build them as a community, hence why cultural challenges occur.
Step 1: Community Challenges
As we talked about last week, in times of uncertainty, people double down on what feels familiar, and within their control. Hence ‘back to the office’ in the face of numerous cultural challenges that are likely occurring for reasons that have limited connection with office presence.
So, we need to begin with getting real with what’s actually going wrong. The more honest and transparent this process between leadership and teams, the better.
Let’s start by interrogating a number of areas to get to the facts of the situation, rather than perceived ‘truths’.
What are the elements that are visibly causing issues, and where are there less visible factors that need to be surfaced? Where are there glimmers of opportunity that could be heightened, that greater collaboration could bring to life?
Start with the points of tension in the organisation. Is it working hours? Location? Teams overlapping in remit? Too many meetings? Particular leader and team relationships? Not enough thinking time? Mental Health Issues? This is the time to surface them all, in the name of co-designing a better working culture together. We’ve also worked with organisations post pandemic who find it hard to have any kind of conflict, which in turn isn’t healthy.
“Disagreeing is a part of being in any community group. A healthy community can handle disagreement, meaning different stakeholders, different parts of a community can see an issue differently, and pursue slightly different priorities even”
Zack McCune, Director Global Brand, Wikimedia
This may immediately spark Tangible Systems that you know aren’t working. The reality is that post-covid working was thrust on many of us, and the time to design systems that really work for the organisation and its goals was lacking. (The decision of ‘do we use Teams, Zoom, or Google’ doesn’t really count). We’ve had time for behaviours to bed in now, to understand what can be removed as well as what can be added and systems need to be designed with humans in mind. These systems might be how you share ideas, or meet new teams, or understand what others do for example (rather than just ‘we hate Slack’...although, we all do).
It’s important to also look at the areas of hope and opportunity, as well as the doom and gloom. Where have positives already emerged from post pandemic ways of working, things you want to retain and grow?
Where are opportunities being missed that greater collaboration could heighten?
Write them all down as a team, and then dig into all the underlying factors that might be affecting them (internal and external, in your control and out of your control).
When you’ve investigated the various issues, there’s every possibility that human interaction is a key factor. However, we don’t believe this means ‘back to the office’ is the answer. It’s about designing moments & methods of human interaction (IRL and digitally), and thinking about what they need to achieve.
“Gallup runs a global workplace survey. The biggest predictor is when someone has a friend at work. Reminding ourselves of the humanity of workplace cultures and trying to foster these links is really important - but the way we did it in the past we need to think about being different.”
Bruce Daisley, Author and Workplace Expert