'Culture and Diversity is the key for an Organizational Development’ Part 1
*This article is a repost from my previous blog ABC (Art, Business, Creativity), which is due to technical reasons is no longer on operation.
Recently I read among other books, articles, reports etc a study by ‘MITSloan’ in collaboration with ‘Cognizant’ entitled 'The New Leadership Playbook for the Digital Age', finding several interesting facts about the present and the future in terms of the culture for an organization , agreeing with some elements and disagreeing with some others.
Through my career and involvement in personal, professional and in artistic level, I have always liked to socialize and connect with people with other interests, different knowledge, polymaths… with a variety of backgrounds.
The recent situation and events with the global pandemic, shows us how important is the personal structure and investment for each entity, for a team, as well as for the organizations that benefit from their people, must focus and develop more of investing for the training in the characteristics of their employees and, consequently, benefiting themselves (organizations) earning better support and results with more structured bases and below I’m sharing some freely and random expressions of my ideas, thoughts and suggestions.
It turns out through the current situation with COVID-19, that personal structure, skills and development are very important, as well as for a leader to be able to control his/her team, people, as well as for an organization, beyond from its financial strength and security, to have a strong culture and connection with its people, where it will help it in every difficult circumstances to come out as untouchable and unaffected as possible.
Culture is the glue that holds an organization together and unites people around shared values and beliefs, the interwoven patterns of beliefs, values, practices, and artifacts that defines for members who they are and how they are to do things.
Pluralism and diversity in an organization has a lot of positive elements to give to itself, to society, to the market, to the connection and the development of all the previous ones.
Organizations in any of their activities and sector could and should play a significant role for our society and for the planet, starting from their inside and their people, because the recent events show us that as a people, as organizations, that we need to redefine some of our values.
People are the most important tool, part, element for every organization
Organizations today are changing rapidly due to technology, globalization, and cutting-edge production, subsequently morphing into new structures and workflow processes. Organizations should become more diverse in terms of gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, especially in cultural skills, knowledge and background, and other elements. The core of organizational composition worldwide still remains within the human resource realm for a shared and cohesive culture is behind the success of every company.
Companies should increase transparency, demonstrate authenticity and emphasize more in collaboration, resilience and empathy.
Organizations must understand that people don’t want to be just employees; but also an active citizens and important part in a workplace that are doing their best to change the world for the better. We must constantly remember how important the human factor is for building great teams, to working well with customers, and to creating amazing organizations, through listening, empathy, engagement, resilience, equality, etc, bringing in front of, more anthropocentric values.
According to a research by Harvard Business Review, 71% of respondents rank
employee engagement as very important to achieving overall organizational success, 72% of respondents, rank recognition given for high performers as having a significant impact on employee engagement but only 24% of respondents say employees in their organization are highly engaged.
Diversity helps organizations to become more resilient and flexible, to understand and communicate also more emotionally and with more basic human values, from their employees to their customers and to our society.
We all talk about numbers and we always consider them indisputable judges, at least most of the times, but we forget what is hidden behind them ... People ... who are the ones who create them, influence them and control the large percentage and part of them.
Organizations need to create a respect for every entity, to enhance wealth and diversity, equality, which it will help them also to develop innovation, through the right basics and structures, for social growth.
‘Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simply way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing.’ Brian Chesky. Co-founder and CEO, Airbnb,
Companies will have to invest even more in their people, to have a deeper level of communication and understanding, because the root of business is relationships, and dialogue is the basic unit of work in an organization and healthy relationships must be at the heart of every company.
Dialogue is the single-most important factor underlying the productivity and growth of the knowledge employee (the people who get paid to think). Ram Charan in his essay on ‘Conquering a Culture of Indecision’, (HBR 2001) said the Dialogue is characterized by incisiveness, creativity, and synergizing diverse points of view into a cohesive understanding that illuminates new insights, enabling decision-making and action. The quality of dialogue determines the quality of idea generation, problem –solving and how people make decisions. How people feel about one another impacts the outcome of these decisions.
For a team, getting the right people and understanding each of their specialized expertise is essential. A team is important and so are their ideas; this is what leveraging creative collaboration is all about.
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ Peter Drucker, Management Consultant, Educator, Author.
More than 50% of millennials say they would take a pay cut to find work that matches their values, while 90% want to use their skills for good. And these trends are on the up. Deloitte’s 7th Annual Millennial Survey of 12,000 young people, for example–both millennials and gen Z–reports record low opinions of businesses. Fewer than half now believe that businesses behave ethically, and this directly affects how loyal they feel to their employers; 43% of millennials and a whopping 61% of gen-Zers expect to stay in a job no more than two years. And all this against a backdrop of general public opinion that is also looking increasingly unkindly on the economic paradigm we have.
