Discover What’s True Now

This post is the next in a series illuminating the steps for going “Forward to Work”.

In my last post, I named the tremendous pressure leaders are under to make critical business decisions and get the team “back to work” while exhausted and anxious about the future. When fear is triggered, it’s easy to revert to old habits and familiar choices. But so much has changed that “going back” is not a safe response. Instead, wise leaders will de-escalate that fear and choose instead to go forward. The first step forward is Reconnecting with Care to bring people together as humans to process this experience and create norms for collective well-being.

Now let’s talk about Step 2: Discovering What’s True Now.

We know a lot has changed. But exactly what has changed and what matters most? To move forward with wisdom and confidence, leaders need a clear idea of what’s changed in three specific areas. Working with our team, we can discover and better understand what’s changed for our customers, our employees, and our shared values. This step is about seeking to understand these important changes to inform Step 3. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, let’s look at these one at a time.

1.       Discover what your customers want now to be satisfied. Every organization exists to satisfy the needs, expectations, and requirements of its customers. Before the pandemic, you probably had a pretty decent idea of what they wanted and how you could meet those needs. You designed your team’s work, processes, products and services, features, technology, and more to fulfill their requirements to the best of your abilities. Suddenly the pandemic hit and these were interrupted. What you delivered or how you delivered it may have changed overnight. And while you and your team may be ready to go back to serving customers as you did before, your customers may not actually want things that way any longer. So it’s imperative to discover what they DO want.

For example, the low-income clients of a local non-profit now prefer to engage with counselors online rather than in person which required taking time off work or hiring a babysitter and traveling by bus, or paying for parking downtown. The same is true for students who are customers of the Student Services Office of a university. Their welcoming physical space is no longer important when students prefer to connect with advisors virtually. What do your customers want now? If you haven’t posed the question, then it’s time to ask and learn.

2.       Discover what employees want to be satisfied now. Whether you have full discretion on your organization’s return to the office policy and implementation or you must cope with the decisions of others, it is important to have a robust and rich understanding of what employees really want and value now.

It’s time to ask questions to truly understand what employees are looking for like, What will it take now for you to be fully satisfied as a team member? What is important to you about your work? What makes your work meaningful? What makes life meaningful? What experiences are important to you? What’s shifted for you? Listen with empathy and interest because they are telling you the most important business intelligence you can get. This information can help you shape your work policies, practices, and culture to attract and retain high-performing, dedicated team members. Remember satisfied team members create satisfied customers.

3.       Discover the human qualities and experiences valued now. You and your team members held a set of values in common before the pandemic. These were qualities you had agreed were important to do your work well and made you distinct as an organization. The pandemic and racial reckoning have shaken up our sense of what is important and recalibrated many of us to prize different human qualities and experiences that we did not necessarily prize before. It is important to revisit and refresh your values, or as I like to describe them, “the human qualities and experiences you value.”

The discovery process should be a rich, engaging experience of listening to each other. This can be done through focus groups, interviews, site visits if safe, team meeting dialogues, facilitated activities, and yes, through surveys too. But I’d rather you talk with each other! Create safety for truth-telling and engage your team using multiple channels to gather a rich tapestry of insights about your shared values. Be open and ready for those to have shifted. Be ready to let go of that value that was always important in the before times. Be present and ready to embrace what is emerging now.

Some Tips on Discovery

Be humble. It’s certainly easier to convince ourselves we know everything we need to know to make decisions about the future of work and fall back on old assumptions than it is to ask questions and discover what we don’t know. Real leadership means being vulnerable and admitting that things have changed and you don’t know what those things are! By example, your humility will open up your entire organization to listening and learning too.

Be curious. What an incredible time we live in when so much has changed and is changing. We have the chance not only to witness but to be part of shaping history. Let your innate curiosity guide you to seek to better understand just what’s shifted and what’s the same. Let yourself be amazed at the changes you learn about.

Be courageous. It is brave to ask these kinds of questions and then hear truthful answers which will probably be disruptive. But the truth is going to be disruptive anyway. The question is, do you want to be aware of the truth or not? Do you want to know the real state of affairs now so that you can adapt or do you want to be blindsided? Of course, you want to know, so be brave!

Listen to understand not defend. Customers or team members may share things that you don’t agree with, want to explain away, or even hurt your feelings. Put those feelings aside and make it your job and the job of everyone involved to listen to fully grasp the perspective of the person sharing and never to argue or defend. This is hard but crucial. Thank people for sharing their preferences and views. They are giving you a gift.

Don’t panic. As you gather all this information, it may be striking and even shocking the number and scope of changes you discover. Your world may be more disrupted than you realized. Don’t panic.

These insights about change are not the end; they are the prelude to the next step of designing your culture. But here’s the even better news: You don’t have to do this alone. You will co-create your culture with your team.

I mean, you can, and sadly some will. But you don’t have to! Instead, your team is ready to help. You know the team right? The team who suddenly reconfigured their entire work and personal lives to keep your organization operating last year? Yes, THAT team. You can trust them. They are ready to engage with creativity, commitment, and care to bring all that is discovered about customer expectations, team member expectations, and shared values into harmony within the circle of your business purpose and requirements. We will talk about THAT next time.

But first, go Discover What’s True Now!