A large part of my professional life involves helping organisations and teams develop their strategies and business plans. Another large part involves helping them sustainably transition from a current state to a desired future state aka change management. The two are as inseparable as a choreographer and a performance….an orchestra and a conductor…bread and butter….pick your metaphor!
Broadly speaking, culture can be defined as “the way we do things around here.”
Enter Covid-19, turning our worlds upside down, how has that translated into how things are done in your workplace?
Has your culture changed? In what ways? For the better? The worse? A bit of both?
But it has changed things: The way we work, collaborate, lead, engage with our clients. Even down to what we say, wear, do and don’t do.
So will you allow a new culture to simply emerge or will you take a more proactive approach and define the changes and what you want it to be? Will we create culture? Or will we allow it to create us?
How do you lead troops when you’re not with them?
A board colleague of mine had just landed a super job with a well-known global brand which involves managing a team of people across different locations. Pretty quickly, he realised the challenge of building a high performing team that don’t have the benefit of eye-balling each other on a daily basis and asked a few friends this question: How do you lead troops when you’re not with them?
A key conclusion of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (aka The Royal Commission), is that close attention must be paid to culture, leadership, governance and remuneration practices.
When it comes to engaging clients, it means that we should always act in their best interests. In other words, selling is not a dirty word, but ensure that it based on client need first and foremost.
I had the fortune of witnessing a rehearsal performance by the world-acclaimed Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. You may be thinking, “big deal, a rehearsal, what’s so good about that?”, and I’d forgive you for thinking it.However, I’d have to answer that apart from being the first time this famous orchestra has graced Australia’s shores; it was a wonderful, exhilarating and pedagogical experience that I won’t easily forget.
