Our organisations are socio-technical systems. Very often in our improvement efforts we over-focus on the technical (strategies, priorities, processes, methods, metrics) & under-focus on the socio (collaboration, agency, relationships, culture). We have to work with both: - Use systems to organise tasks AND rely on relationships to help motivate people. - Create processes for consistency AND foster trust to handle the unexpected. - Develop policies for accountability AND lean on connection to build engagement & belonging: nateschloesser.medium.com/pe…. By @nateschloesser. Graphic via @junek.

We want to build a strong, positive organisational culture, based on values. Leaders often set out abstract absolute positives as organisational values (integrity, respect, trust etc) but these don't drive the day-to-day decision-making (& therefore the behaviour) of the people at work. Therefore, they have no impact on the actual culture. @ErinMeyerINSEAD has undertaken research on organisational culture for two decades & suggests six actions for making values-based culture come alive: 1) Build your culture based on real-world dilemmas: identify the tough dilemmas that people routinely face and clearly state how they should be resolved, in line with the stated values. 2) Move your culture from abstraction to action: “dilemma-test” your values to determine if they are actionable enough to be useful in real decision-making situations. 3) Paint your culture in full colour: articulate your desired culture using concrete, colourful images to get the values to stick. 4) Recruit people whose values fit: “bad” behaviour is contagious. 5) Let culture drive strategy: identify your strategic objective & use dilemmas so people understand what decisions they should be making to move the organisation in the right direction. 6) Don’t be a “values” purist: Identify dilemmas in which your stated values do not apply. hbr.org/2024/07/build-a-corp… Graphic by @julianstodd