Culture of Cooperation = Networking

How do networking skills change the way people work?

Imagine a work environment where people beg you not to give them any more work, because they are overloaded as it is. Imagine promising this group of people that by participating in a networking leadership course for three afternoons in a 3 month period, they will experience their work as being more fun and they will get more done with less effort.

This is the promise of a project designed to promote a culture of cooperation that NETSHEILA is presently undertaking in a school environment in the Netherlands.

 

 The people

Before looking at how this promise is working out, let me introduce you to the project. It takes place at a secondary school with thousands of students and many many staff. My client loves being an educator and wants his staff to have the best environment possible in which to do their work. The teachers in the project were hand picked by my client. From the moment we met I could tell they are passionate about teaching. They have a busy load, and one of their challenges is to carry the load and stay positive about their work. They are passionate about what they do. They are delighted to be teaching, proud to be the people who are educating the young people in our community. They work closely with the students to surmount problems and they celebrate wildly when the students are successful. They give themselves fully to their job. They really do work hard. And they are willing to test run a project that is designed to improve the quality of the work environment at the school.

Outside of school hours they are also passionate. I am working with teachers who live full lives outside school hours. One is a volunteer at a radio station and has been for years. Another loves to build things for people, and one business administration teacher with one little child and one on the way converted her attic into a kitchen where she makes delicious cakes and pastries. One person is secretary of a car-lovers society, another runs the local ice-skating club, a third trains kids to be Olympic champions in judo. 

 

Defining the need

On the first afternoon, everyone was asked to think of a task or a plan or an issue that they have on their plate that is bigger than what they can deal with alone. They are assured that having something on your plate like that is a sign of strength. After all,  if you can deal easily with all the challenges you face, your game is too small. If you are up to something big, you need other people.  I defined this ‘something’ as a need.

Everyone could easily think of something. They then shared with the three other people at their table what their need was. 

 

Ding that people are social assets

Putting their need aside, people then proceeded to map out their circles of friends and acquaintances. Some noted the categories of people, others the people themselves.  Friends from college friends from school, friends from previous work situations, people they play sports with, family, colleagues, and on and on. 

 

Matching needs to assets

Each table of four then took one for one the needs people had described, and looked at who in their community map could be useful for that person.  Even if they felt they could help the person themselves, the purpose of the exercise was to see what other human resources they as an individual have that they can provide their colleagues.

Everyone left the first afternoon with a need that was concretely expressed, and with an understanding of conversations they could have in and outside school that could easily help them work further on this need.

 

Concrete results

Twenty days later the group came together for a second afternoon. The intention of the afternoon was to take the knowledge of connecting to people to the next step, creating a culture of cooperation at school. A lot had happened in 20 days.  One teacher had been able to overcome management failings in her department by asking to be assigned the role of section head, and getting the role. The other section heads in our group freely offered to support her in developing herself in this new role. Others had found the space they needed to sit together with their team and plan. Another had started conversations with various people to find the money he needed to implement an innovative plan. When one teacher declared he hadn’t done anything relating to the need he had expressed, two other people let him know they had taken up his issue and big progress had been made. 

 

After 20 days teachers were experiencing their work as being lighter and they were getting more done with less effort.

 

Moving toward a culture of cooperation

The challenge is to create that ease and lightness in a structural way, which is why we then proceeded to working on developing a culture of cooperation.

Tribal Leadership, the work done by the good folks at CultureSync, forms a basis for developing this culture.

 

The 5 stages of culture

Tribal Leadership distinguishes 5 stages of culture existing in the world of work.

Stage 1 is Life Sucks. Researchers Dave Logan an others found 2 percent of companies in their 10-year study to fall within this category. I see stage 1 as mainly the realm of criminal societies, where there is no empathy for others and it is an environment of shoot or get shot. Having said that, I can think of plenty of examples where people try to trip up their colleagues to avoid getting tripped up themselves.

Stage 2 is My Life Sucks. It seems to the individual that everyone else is doing fine, its just a pity that their own life isn’t where it should be. When asked if they will do something this people in this culture say “I’ll try”, but they won’t commit.

A stage 2 culture can advance into (and not step over) a stage 3 culture. “I’m Great!... and the Others Are Not.” Why did that project fail? The other people were not of a good enough quality.  Why did you not get the job you wanted? Someone else had the boss’s ear. About 49 percent of organizations function within the culture.

A stage 4 culture says “We’re Great” and while there is rivalry in that (the implication is that the others, the competition, is not great) there is a sense that we can work together to get things done. This is a culture of cooperation, and 22 percent of organizations function at this level.

Then there is stage 5, which is a great place for saints like Bishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama to dwell but most of us can be pretty satisfied if we manage to operate consistently in a stage 4 culture. At stage 5 the dominant expression is “Life is Great”.  

The structure of the environment in each stage is key to the capacity for organizations having cultures like these to be cultures of cooperation. Stage 5 cultures are an interlinkage of integral units. At Stage 4 the working units are integrated. At Stage 3 management operates the hub and spokes method: tell me everything an don’t disturb your colleagues by telling them what you are up to. At Stage 2 there is little adequate management and at Stage 1 the actor is outside the culture, looking in.

In other words, to have a culture of cooperation the best place to be is in Stage 4. Or stage 5 (Good luck on that).

 

Consistent at stage 4

At our school, we are working on developing a culture of cooperation where the participants are consistently operating at Stage 4. And to do that, the advisors at CultureSync say, people have to be able to operate in triads. Triangles are powerful structures.  Each side of the triangle keeps the other side in place. In a triad, each person listens to the expressed intention of the other two people. The expressed intention is the thing that inspires the person to undertake something that is bigger than him or herself. The genuine desire to educate kids, for example. To not be stopped when there is not enough money for projects, or not enough other teachers wanting or willing to participate in a project, but to keep going, keep looking for that funding, keep enrolling those teachers to participate because educating kids takes courage and effort. Each player at Stage 4 regularly checks in with two other people to have the discussion: are you acting in a way that your intentions will be realized. These two people are not necessarily colleagues. They just have to be people who are committed to you being successful. They are your committed listeners.

 

Practice

The teachers have now formulated shared projects, taking some of the needs expressed in the first session to the level of projects. They have triads supporting them in focusing on their intention, helping them to not get bogged down in the rejections, the complaints, or the negativity that Stage 3 people around them will possibly place in their pathway.  The coming 6 weeks is a time of practicing being consistently in Stage 4. 

Lin  McDevitt-Pugh

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Lin McDevitt-Pugh MBA, owner of  NETSHEILA, is a management consultant with a particular expertise in creating cultures of cooperation in the workplace.  With a culture of cooperation, organizations can realize big goals through fun, ease and connectivity. Call +31 6 150 48468 to see how NETSHEILA  can support your organization. We work in Dutch-language and English-language environments.

Creating cultures of “We”

29 August 2012. On Sunday night I watched four straight white men in suits debate their party stance on the way forward with Dutch politics. We are heading for a general election, and the leaders found o so many others to blame for the crisis we are in. Greece is ruining the Euro! Migrants come here looking for free handouts! Development aid should be a voluntary decision per person.  Only one potential new Prime Minister talkedof solidarity, of the Netherlands being a place where ‘we’ live. I hope he gets a lot of votes in September at Dutch elections - the 5^th general elections in 10 years.

None of these four will get my vote.  I will vote for a party who believes that ‘We’ can face the environmental crisis with renewable energy sources, and that ‘We’ are a diverse nation with many gifts to bring each other. Migrant, indigenous, men, women, gay, straight, young, old, black skins originating generations ago in warm climates and white skins of ancestors born to temperate climates.  I will vote for this party because it matches my values of promoting dignity and respect for all people. As a party they are not as evolved as they could be – there is a lot to improve in the culture of the party that will make it better able to achieve its vision. I would like to work with them on that!

I am inspired by cultures of We. Of working for and developing ideas together, listening to each other, taking on the good ideas, debating the sloppy ones, discarding the ones that don’t work because they don’t work for us.

In the coming days and weeks I am working with several different kinds of organization to develop the culture of We. The processes we use are based on the work of Dave Logan and CultureSync. Our intention is to build tribes of leaders that empowering organizations to do the impossible, over and over. The key is synchronizing the organizations’ culture with its strategy, structure and processes.

This approach is very much grounded in business knowledge.  What I observe in the companies and organizations I work with, is that simple business concepts help all employees be leaders. Take one of my favourites, the stakeholder analysis.  I recently did a stakeholder analysis as part of a staff communications training. In a stakeholder analysis I like to work with a grid, and to map onto the grid who are powerful players and which players are interested  - or not - in the outcome you as an organization want. I then like to map where the organization would like the players to be, several months from now.  Everybody in the group has a different piece of knowledge about the players and their influence on the outcome. Each piece of knowledge is a contribution to the group.

From a We culture perspective, the insight is more than just: “You have different knowledge to me”. The insight is that we together know what we need to know to be a great organization and to succeed in fulfilling our mission. When this way of thinking becomes integral to the organization , the organization has what Michael Porter calls Competitive Advantage.

Another favourite is the Hedgehog concept, from Jim Collins. This is a tool to give people to use over time to understand their strengths in the world. It is useful in  both for profit and not for profit organizations.  

The exercise is to look at three components of success - however you interpret that word. First is to discover what you are passionate about. In reflecting on this over recent weeks I have found that I love to work with people who promote dignity and respect for all people. What I am passionate about is creating a listening in the world for dignity and respect for all people. 

The second inquiry is into what drives your economic engine. In a context of shifting spending priorities for governments and individuals, not for profits have to constantly measure and gauge this. I am working with an organization that has found it can function and grow using direct donations for specific products. It can also attract grants, but these will never be the basis of growth. The individual interest in and willingness to donate directly to a product is the driver of the organization’s economic engine.

The third inquiry is into what you can be the best in the world at.  Take Twitter. It was started in 2006 as an SMS system for following the transport of goods. Could the founders have ever envisaged the millions of users it has today? Could they have envisaged that people would share tips and tricks and even make a business out of on how best to use the service? Twitter took off and since then the company has concentrated on developing what it is the best in the world at. Chances are, if it wanted to expand and buy up products it really doesn’t understand, Twitter will not do well.

So here are some great questions for a school, a university, an employee network, wanting to ignite leadership. What are we passionate about? What drives our economic motor and what are we the best in the world at.

Being in the inquiry, and being a culture of We, are the road to follow.

Lin McDevitt-Pugh
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Management Consultant Lin McDevitt-Pugh advises and trains organizations in developing leadership in organizations,  promoting stable environments in which all people have the power to make their organization successful. Call +31 6 150 48468 to talk about working together to create more We in your organization,

Stalemate in Journey of Women to the Top

Amsterdam, 27 July 2012. The talent pipeline that should lead to more women in top positions in major Dutch companies is too limited. There are not enough women in the sub-top to be promoted to the top, according to new research by Dutch daily newspaper the Volkskrant (26-07-2012).

In 2016 companies by law must have at least 30% women in their top management and supervisory or executive boards. But in 2011 the numbers did not increase from the 20% of women at the top in the preceding year.

The research looked at 35 leading Dutch companies. A slight improvement in the metrics in some companies was balanced by losses of women in the top in other companies.

The electronic publishing company Reed Elsevier has the highest perentage of women in the top: almost 50% of management is female. At Unibail-Rodamco almost 4 in 10 women hold management positions. But technical companies like Imtech, the chip machine producer ASML, builders Boskalis, BAM and Heijmans can only find one in 10 women, if that, to fulfill the highest positions in their companies.

In total, 7592 women work in management positions in the 35 companies in the research. Many work in an international post and are not Dutch nationals.

Where to go from here? For one, research looking at gender and leadership in the Netherlands is needed.

The Netherlands signed the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, a UN declaration to advance the position of women. By signing this Declaration, the Netherlands committed among other things to gathering gender statistics to identify, produce and disseminate statistics that reflect the realities of the lives of women and men, and policy issues relating to gender.

Gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men.  These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes. They are context/ time-specific and changeable.

We need those statistics now.  In the 6^th edition of the World Economic Forum’s  annual Global Gender Gap Report (2011) the Netherlands ranks 27 in the world on economic participation and opportunity for women.

We need to determine why women who are not Dutch nationals have opportunities Dutch women do not have – and what that has to do with gender relations in the Netherlands.  Such a study could make use of 13 gender-diversity measures determined by McKinsey in its 2012 Women Matter survey. These measures range from options for flexible working conditions, to inclusions of gender-diversity indicators in executive’s performance reviews and a systematic requirement that at least one female candidate be in each promotion pool. 

It is getting more and more urgent to address the issue of women and leadership in the Netherlands.

To read more on this issue, go to the 2012 McKinsey report entited Women Matter.

Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Quotas the “only way to increase number of women in boardrooms” say women’s business networks

From the collection at Aletta, Institute for Women's History

Compulsory quotas for women in the boardroom are a key way forward, according to a new poll of influential women’s business networks, carried out by leadership consultancy, White Water Group. 

The research presents a sobering view from the ground a year after the government-commissioned Davies report concluded that companies needed to achieve 25 per cent of women on UK boards by 2015 or face compulsory government measures. The poll asked leaders of 30 corporate women’s networks, representing well over 10,000 women at some of Britain’s top firms, what had changed since the Davies report was released in February last year revealed that: Two thirds had seen no change in the opportunities for women in their companies, with 80 per cent of those surveyed saying that they think that it will take up to 20 years to reach 30 per cent of women in the executive suite with a further 20 per cent thinking it will take even longer.

However 67 per cent believed that the introduction of quotas will be needed to achieve the target of 25 per cent of women in senior positions by 2015.

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron wants to “accelerate” the increase in women on the board of top UK firms, preferably without resorting to quotas. This survey suggests that women in management don’t believe that self-regulation will be enough.

Averil Leimon, co-founder of White Water Group, said: “Statistically the proportion of female directors at FTSE 100 companies rose from 12.5 per cent in 2010 to 15 per cent in 2011, but the women we spoke to don’t feel that change is going fast enough or far enough. Quotas may be a blunt instrument but they may be inevitable.

“We don’t believe, however, that compulsion will be enough to create change and reap the benefits of a more diverse management team. Our survey revealed that many women want more visible involvement from men, who will support the clear business case for more women in senior posts. This means mentoring women, investing in coaching and encouraging more female role models, as well as improving fairness in work practices.”

“Getting this right is not just about careers for women; it’s essential for the economy as a whole. We’ve shown that businesses with equal numbers of men and women at the senior management level are more profitable than businesses with predominantly male leaders. What’s more, demographic shifts mean that by 2030 the UK will be short of 1.3m people of leadership age. More women in senior management would address both these issues.” 

In the Netherlands, only 46.5 per cent of AEX companies has at least one woman on the Executive or Supervisory Board, according to the Dutch Female Board Index 2011. Of these, 36% do not have the Dutch nationality. Prof.dr. Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers, author of the Dutch Female Board Index, believes that if reappointment was no longer automatic after 4 years, 98 per cent of listed companies could have at least one woman on its Supervisory Board by 2016. Only 68 per cent of Boards of Directors could potentially have a place for a woman, because one hundred directors have been appointed for an indefinite period. 

In the Netherlands, where parliament has declared that by 2016 30% of board members must be women (no sanctions for failure to meet the deadline) a number of initiatives have been taken to promote women in boards. The LinkedIn group vrouwelijke commissarissen en toezichthouders
is collecting an overview of offerings. Most offerings are not specifically for women. Two are:

• The Vrouw en Toezicht-dag (Governance University and FZ Female Leaders and E&Y) June 5th. See the flyer.
• De Beuk organises workshops on women and leadership.

You can follow the White Water Women on @whtewaterwomen 

You can follow Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers on @mluckerath 

While you are at it, follow NETSHEILA on @LinMcDevittPugh

The UK material in this article is drawn from a March 2012 edition of Business Matters.

Lin McDevitt-Pugh

Lin McDevitt-Pugh MBA is a management consultant with gender expertise, project developer and manager in the public sector, private sector and civil society, based in the Netherlands. With a background in human rights and networking, she works with organizations to move the conversation from “This is not how it should be” to “This is how it will be”. Lin gets very excited when she trains organizations in working with people as creative economic resources.  By mobilizing the resources we all have at our fingertips - the people we know and the people they know - we can create unique knowledge, build trust and access the people and institutions we need to access.

Read more about Lin McDevitt-Pugh and workshops.

Read more fromNETSHEILA on women in boards in the Netherlands.

Contact: mcdevitt-pugh@netsheila.com