Organization Development & Culture
Culture Building is a co-creative, organic, simultaneous and nourishing process. It takes time. However, being engaged with the process itself is joy and fulfilling. When the aspired culture unfolds, we, our team and our organization would have evolved in the process.
Does your culture speak?
Is nurturing the culture a role of your Leaders?
Not necessarily so. Anyone in the organization can contribute towards creating a nourishing culture. Culture is the center of the organization. It is upheld in a non-hierarchical manner by those who resonate to its essence.
What is Culture work?
Sensing the Culture - Current State
A Culture essence builds up in non-local, non-logical, simultaneous and sudden ways. We can’t control it. We can spot it, focus on it and nurture it. Over time it builds up and lives on its own – like the air we breathe.
Being Aware of Emerging Culture
Culture often unfolds unconsciously in organizations. When it unfolds consciously, we create ‘spaces’ of joy, creativity, safety and comfort.
Participating in Culture Building
Culture resonant individuals need to be psychologically connected to their organization even during conflicts, else they lose their capacity to contribute. Culture is made up of many qualities that resonate to diverse teams.
Invoking Aspired Culture Consciously
A culture quality enhances when someone invokes it through resonance or aspiration. When diverse culture qualities are mutually honoured, Integration unfolds.
Our Approach to Culture Work
Spot ‘essence’ of team cultures
Articulate it impersonally
Invoke it as attitude & behavior
Embed it in work processes
Coach others
Encourage cultural diversity
Facilitate culture integration
Train teams to nourish culture
Culture Solutions
Our Culture Solutions are custom curated to suit your business ethos.
Methodology Used: Based on your needs we assess the ‘as-is’ culture present and aspired through one-to-one interactions, focus group pulse sessions, qualitative questionnaires, dip-in workshops and our own direct sensing. We then help people to imbibe and live aspired aspects of culture by designing and implementing processes and experiences through facilitated retreats, workshops, group or individual coaching sessions.
We support you to become self–aware of what are the energy exchanges, pivot points, underlying work ethos, that flow in your organization. Many a time our clients are not fully conscious of what exactly is their culture and what are its nourishing, mechanical and outdated components. Culture work is a very living process. A culture quality could be in any phase of its unfolding cycle:
- Aspiration
- Invoking
- Presence
- Mechanical formations and
- Disintegrations
Ideally aspired culture qualities should be present in the second or third phases of invoking and being present. The moment it starts moving to its mechanical repetitive modes or disintegrative modes it would be time to enliven the culture quality, enhance and bring the aspiration back for it.
We observe your leaders, teams across levels (focus groups) or all members, to gather a pulse of the culture:
- Living essences (qualities) present in the culture and experiences - embedded within people and process interactions
- Resonant values, principles, beliefs or qualities team members hold
- Bias, fixations and mechanical habits present in the culture
- Specific culture qualities dominating
- Degree of mutuality present to allow, sustain and nurture other’s culture resonances
- Lack of clarity or alignment with vision and strategy
- Organizational restructuring and common culture messages to be shared across teams and geographies
- People managers to step up their capacity to be a crucial link to business success & people development.
- Better synergy, harmony and collaboration needed within teams as they focus on aspired work outcomes.
- Enhancing work life balance or wellbeing (mental, emotional, physical) or (heart, mind, body)
- Misaligned or fragmented communication to the people as multiple initiatives/ projects are implemented across various functions. Lack of an integrated positioning strategy aligned with actions on the floor.
- The capacity to engage learners is becoming extremely challenging given the ethos of social media attention spans.
We facilitate and coach you to see with clarity
- Culture Aspirations present beneath team member’s (focus group) discomforts or pain points
- Resonances of culture present beneath team member’s (focus group) joy of belonging to the Organization and being part of its ‘Big Picture’
- Culture contagion present through the grapevines and its nourishing or draining qualities
- Natural convergence of aspiration & resonance – through people and process interchanges
- What gets reinforced currently through work processes & policies
- What needs to get further enhanced and lived
Many a time culture statements are framed on wall and well forgotten. We coach you to keep the culture work living, meaningful and contributing in simple and subtle ways. We facilitate and support our clients to:
- Clarify and connect to the Essence of Culture (Lived felt sense, intent)
- Focus on essence and articulate it formally and informally in multitude ways
- Detect when a form of expression of culture is moving into mechanical repetition modes
- Reconnect to essence and reclarify new expressions to invoke the culture quality aspired
- Watch natural breath together for 2 minutes during crucial meetings. This drops surface masks and some of the entanglements on its own. It supports in bringing resonant aspects of culture forward when practiced as a team
As you integrate the aspired culture by taking tiny actions as you run meetings, processes, business and take decisions, we coach and train you to:
- Invoke culture essence as an inner attitude: A space to come from in the now (present) and not looking at it as a goal to reach (future)
- Role model essence – Spot in others
- Inspire self to hold and express essence – Even when others miss it
- Express the essence of culture in day-to-day activities, governance and decision making (Symbols / Interiors / Policies / Culture events / Qualitative indicators / Meetings / Work processes / Projects / Initiatives / Guidance templates and the like)
- Share stories around culture or have some activities around the same during events, get-togethers or family connect points
- Reflect culture essence through even small details like gifts or team benefits offered
We facilitate and coach you to allow integration of culture qualities over time and support its flow further into work processes:
- Coach people managers and leaders to hold space when two or more cultural qualities compete for expression. Coach managers to help people to drop any blames present and hold the tension impersonally allowing time for the culture qualities to form, be expressed and naturally consolidate
- Coach project managers and leaders to connect culture essence with competency building, KRAs and all process and performances at work
- Coach culture resonant individuals to detect the unique interiority of their organization. Within oneself and others, coach to spot and connect to uniqueness – core aspiration, natural strengths and resonant values. This enhances frequency of uniqueness and culture
- Across the organization coach and train team at multiple levels of hierarchy to seed culture, birth and cultivate it within:
- Training – skill, behavioral, induction
- Individual roles
- Collective processes
- KRA– qualitative reflective pointers
- Meetings and collective sessions