Hello from the Cornerstone team – hope you are navigating through these strange and troubling times with a degree of equanimity….
We recently ran a Thinking Sprint on this topic - our purpose being to engage participants in a dialogue that looks to the future state (versus the current state) of organisational life, post the current COVID-19 environment.
Before we get to what happened at this inaugural event, what is a Thinking Sprint? Good question. Our idea started off as a (not another) webinar but we knew we didn’t want a talking head with PowerPoints theorising, prophesising, advocating at you for 45 minutes with a very dry Q & A after. So we used our curiosity, nous and processes from the field of knowledge called The Thinking Environment (Nancy Kline) along with some Sprint methodology and came up with a Thinking Sprint – a fast paced, interactive, uncommon, online conversation that is anything but a webinar - at least that’s what participants told us, and they also did most of the talking.
The context for this session centred around COVID-19 and the organisational realities we must face as we head into the last half of 2020 and beyond. We wanted to start a dialogue that was mostly future focused and that looked specifically at the participants’ organisations.
We suggested to the group that this is a time in the history of organisational life like no other. These extraordinary circumstances have given rise to conditions that are rich, ripe and rife with choices. These choices arise from the “…crevice between the necessity for fast-paced change and adaptation, on one hand, and the need for a dependable and reliable context on the other” (Krantz 2006, pp 222). The overarching choice is whether yours will be an organisation that suffers terribly through this time, or emerges from it such that it is fit to flourish.
We asked the group, guided by some questions posed in breakout sessions, to project forward to December 2021, some 18 months from now and to imagine their workplaces from four different lenses:
· Strategy, structure and systems
· Organisational culture
· Individual perspectives and mindsets
· Individual capability and behaviour
The phrase ‘fit to flourish’ was the focus of a second breakout session, where we posed another series of questions based on the same four lenses. Those of you who are familiar with our work will recognise these as the quadrants from the Integral Framework – our primary sense-making construct. (For a quick overview of this framework see our blog Making Sense of a F**ked Up World)
Here are just a few of the insights we gleaned in the space of one hour – a session we all agreed went by in a heartbeat. (When we say a ‘Thinking Sprint’, we really mean it….)
Systems, Structures & Processes
· “We will look at what serves us well, and what doesn’t, as a result of this”
· “It gives us permission to throw the old rule book out”
· “We’ll question things, why we do things, much more”
· “We have experienced a loss of human capital and organisational knowledge”
· “The red tape to get things done has gone or at least been significantly reduced and we need to keep doing this”
· “Going forward we need flexible structures – agility is the key”
Culture
· “The pressure cooker that is COVID-19 will amplify what is already there - We’re already in a strong position because of our leadership and solid strategy – we’ll just get stronger because of this leadership”
· “We have navigated this well and will continue to do so because we are aligned and unified by our clear purpose, exciting vision and unambiguous values – these fundamentals won’t change”
· “Our current culture is reactionary, short term, expedient and compliant –we just keep our heads down – COVID-19 conditions have only exacerbated this – it’s not good and I can’t see this getting better any time soon”
· “The stuff that we know makes a positive difference – leadership, purpose, vision, values – will be more important than ever”
· “To be fit to flourish we will need to be aligned and future focused; values driven and purpose led”
· “We don’t have a purpose, vision or values and that makes it really difficult – we’ve underestimated the importance of these organisational elements at this time”
Perspective
· “Perspectives will change – some will expand, some will narrow… the way we connect will expand.”
· “Our mindsets around flexibility will be challenged – there is a real opportunity here”
· “We will need a mindset that is open to change – fast paced change, the agility thing, because this sort of thing will happen again”
Capability & Behaviour
· “It’s interesting what has happened to trust – managers didn’t trust staff to work from home but in fact productivity has increased!”
· “What’s also interesting (and this has impacted senior leaders’ perspective as well..) is that sales have increased in the last 3 months without a single customer being physically visited - and this is not due to COVID-19 demand”
· “We’ll be much much quicker to change because we’ve had to, and we’ve learnt from this”
· “We will need to operate outside of our comfort zone and be more dynamic”
· “The change in the system – ie working from home – has changed behaviour – the line between home and work is blurred – we’re doing longer hours – we need more boundaries around this”
Our small group of participants said the Thinking Sprint worked really well for them, so we’d like to open up this space for a different kind of dialogue around COVID-19 and the future state of organisational life.
To join us for out next Thinking Sprint on this topic, please click here. In fact, click here anyway as we’d love to hear from you if you have a comment, question or insight.