Loving
Operations
and Culture
What happens with meaningful improvements that make culture and operations more loving?
People thrive!
Too many teams are struggling with decreased productivity, communication breakdowns, and high turnover. And too many leaders and team members are suffering from high stress and anxiety, poor physical and mental health, and low morale. Perhaps you are too.
Yet, the automatic reaction to such experiences is too often to offer self-care, mental health resources, and resilience training. There’s a place for these, but wouldn’t it be better to get to the root of the problem instead?
What if the work itself isn’t by nature distressing, and if in fact, this is work you enjoy? But what if the work has become stressful due to poor cultural and operational practices?
Then something can be done. Things can be different! And we can help.
We guide leaders and teams to learn about and adopt simple, consistent actions to shift operations and cultural practices. When these changes are made, the work experience stops being confusing, overwhelming, scary, complicated, high-pressure, fractured, and hopeless grounded in Love.
Instead, the workplace is characterized by clarity, courage, wholeness, spaciousness, simplicity, and hope. Ultimately this shift moves teams from fear to safety. Suffering stops and results improve.
Our program and methods guide overwhelmed, exhausted, and defeated leaders and teams to a more uplifting, healthy, and gratifying way of working.
Services for a Loving Culture and Operations
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Thrive: Loving Ops and Culture Masterclass for Leaders
Learn how to build a culture and operations that are healthy and productive, not harmful and struggling. Understand the 6 Thrive ways of being and why they are important to organizational success, team member engagement, and customer satisfaction. Includes a individual Thrive Assessment, understanding readiness, the science of thriving, case study examples, and tips to get started on your journey to Thrive. 3 hours, virtual or in person.
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Thrive: Loving Ops and Culture Coaching for Leaders and Teams
Our coaches support leaders, managers, and supervisors as well as teams to make the culture and operational improvements that lead to thriving. Guided by your Thrive Team Assessment results, your coach will dynamically engage with you to improve in practical activities, habits, behaviors, and norms that create more clarity, courage, wholeness, spaciousness, simplicity, and hope.
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Ready to Thrive: Prepare for Change Success
Your Thrive Assessment points to needed changes as well as strengths, but diving into change without preparing leaders and teams can be unproductive, harmful, and wasteful. Instead, prepare your organization for the shift to Thrive practices. Our culture change experts guide your team to understand what the change is, why it is needed, what their roles are, and how it will help them and the organization.
One Team’s Loving Ops and Culture Story
Their Challenges: Employee stress, burnout, and a history of trauma
This major municipal IT department was facing several cultural challenges that motivated them to seek outside expertise. Coming out of the pandemic, employees were experiencing anxiety, burnout, and difficulties balancing work and life. The organization recognized the need to be more intentional about creating a supportive culture where employees could bring their full, authentic selves to work. Additionally, there were lingering impacts from past events that needed to be processed in a healthy way.
"We wanted to create space for processing major changes in our department, in city government, and to process some historical changes that had been impacting our staff," said Leah, a key leader in the department. "And to really create spaces to center our employees' experiences and engage them in opportunities to move forward."
What We Did and How It Helped
The City IT Department engaged A Human Workplace to design and deliver a comprehensive employee engagement program. The process began with a thorough discovery phase including surveys, interviews, document review, and sense-making sessions. This allowed A Human Workplace's consultants to deeply understand the issues and design customized programming.
Throughout 2023, A Human Workplace delivered a robust set of offerings to move from the suffering, struggle and overwhelm to a better state of being. "Invitation to Thrive" Program was a multi-month themed progrram too move to Clarity, Courage, Wholeness, Spaciousness, Simplicity and Hope. The program included well-being sessions, experiential workshops, hands-on labs, leadership development, an "Activators" community, and more. In parallel, A Human Workplace guided the City IT's leadership in developing a strategic "Culture Vision" complete with defined cultural shifts, stories, and working groups.
The Impacts of the Invitation to Thrive
The Invitation to Thrive program had significant positive impacts on the City’s IT's culture. Leaders became more ready and willing to prioritize human-centered, values-driven work. "A Human Workplace really set the tone and laid the groundwork for that to be able to happen in a meaningful way," Leah shared.
Employees embraced opportunities to process experiences, build community and engage in the culture evolution. "We have proven it to be untrue in our City IT Department, that an IT organization can't do human-centered culture work," said Edward, a manager. "This has allowed people to have more faith and courage in dealing with these issues."
A cross-departmental "People & Culture Council" was formed to embody the desired culture and provide grassroots leadership. Participation in the engagement and culture work built momentum throughout the year.
The City’s IT leaders consistently highlighted the human-centric partnership they experienced with A Human Workplace. As the Chief of Staff, Will said, "It became less about them being a vendor and really being someone that wanted to partner. I felt they really wanted Seattle IT to do well."
The A Human Workplace team was lauded for its compassion, care, listening skills and willingness to adapt to the City’s unique needs. "It didn't feel like a vendor," said Shelton. "They extended that feeling of colleagues and community to me."
Will summarized, "I really appreciated how open they were to listening to our suggestions and willing to shift on a dime based on our feedback - all while not sacrificing the fundamentals that make their approach effective."
Overall, A Human Workplace provided transformative culture programming tailored precisely for the City IT Department's situation. True to their name, they role-modeled the human workplace principles they aim to cultivate.
The Partnership Experience
“Invitation to Thrive has allowed people to have more faith and courage in dealing with tough issues.”
Our Thrive: Loving Ops and Culture approach is adaptable to your unique industry operations and culture needs. Using our Thrive Assessment, we help you identify what’s strong and what needs improving, and then we help you identify solutions that fit your needs and build on your strengths, sourcing from a robust list of options as a place to begin.
From leader-specific masterclasses to all-staff events, the Thrive: Loving Ops and Culture Program is built to scale. Learn more about the building blocks we offer to get started.
Right Fit Your Loving Ops and Culture Solution
“There's now more readiness and willingness to engage in this type of work. People don't always think of an IT organization as engaging in human-centered, culture work and we have proven that to be untrue in Seattle."
— Leah Shelton, Workforce Development Lead, City of Seattle