g-f(1)5 Managers and leaders to sustain the organization’s culture in remote work

Fuel your growth with essential knowledge

Extra-condensed knowledge

Managers and leaders with a firm sense of what their organizational culture is — a common tool kit that enables their employees to act, and the beliefs and commitments brought forward by acting in certain ways — can help their employees navigate the current environment in a way that is authentic to the organization’s history yet flexible to the realities we all face.

Genioux knowledge fact condensed as an image

Condensed knowledge

• Culture is the holistic and somewhat mysterious force that guides actions and interactions in the workplace.
• Sociologist Ann Swidler describes habitual practices as the core carriers of culture. She argues that people draw from a “tool kit” of cultural habits and practices. Knowing how to use a culture’s tools — that is, when and how they apply — is the real mark of belonging to a culture.
• Welcome modifications to the cultural tool kit. One benefit of thinking about culture as a tool kit is that it alerts us to the fact that we have a variety of tools at our disposal when we get things done in an organization. And, like a real tool kit, we often have more tools than we regularly use.
• Tool kits also change somewhat over time. This is because we all are exposed to various cultural tool kits through other aspects of our lives.
• Use disruption to bolster the cultural core. Not every aspect of culture is equally critical to guard.
• A time of disruption presents an opportunity to remind employees of aspects of an organization’s past — founding ideals, stories, and commitments — that have shaped both its culture (how we get work done and think about our work) and are central to its identity (who we are as a company). Building up these core elements of culture can remind employees of an organization’s strengths and help them navigate tough times.
• Disruption can also open the door to challenging outdated aspects of a culture that are nonetheless given outsize symbolic and ceremonial value but are now holding back needed transitions.

Category 1: A new, better world for everyone

[genioux fact extracted from MIT SMR]

Authors of the genioux fact

Fernando Machuca

References

How to Sustain Your Organization’s Culture When Everyone Is Remote, Jennifer Howard-Grenville, June 24, 2020, MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2020, Vol 62, No 1. 

Jennifer Howard-Grenville (Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, videos)  is the Diageo Professor in Organisation Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on how people generate and navigate change within and beyond their organizations.