Planning for disruption: An A,B,C

Monday, February 26th, 2018

Claire is featured in this month’s issue of The HR Director Magazine speaking about how organisations can prepare themselves for disruption and harness the potential of innovation in order to maximise the opportunity it presents. You can read the article in print or online at the link provided below.

Read the full article…

Planning for disruption: An A,B,C

What’s really important to you? Three things we know about Values Statements.


We recently addressed the topic of values in a post about how companies engage with their corporate values. This week, to recognize World Values Day on 19th October (https://www.worldvaluesday.com), we would like to take a step back and ask how values are chosen – what’s really important to you? Through our work with clients grappling with lived values in their organisations, and those whose lived values are an asset, here are three things we’ve learned about values statements:

1.   If your values statement is aspirational but doesn’t reflect your people, it’s nothing but words

Like many companies, yours probably has a set of values to inspire employees and serve as a code of honor. Corporate values statements are a great thing, because they can clarify a company’s identity and serve as a rallying point for its people. But values themselves do not drive your business, rather, they drive the people within the business. No matter how they were written or by whom, they are not based on the people who run the company, they are in the fabric of everyone who works there—from executive team to new hire. Here’s the question: if your company does have a compelling values statement, how truly meaningful it is to your people? Are your company values powerful tools embodied in everything you do, or are they just words?

Here is a real-world example: when I first started work in the early days of the dotcom boom, retail giant Walmart came to 80-person strategy event at my then-employer’s workshop space in Chicago. In those days, our clients typically spared no expense to bring a team to our offices, including business class flights, luxurious hotels and expensive dinners at fine restaurants. The works. Walmart, on the other hand, flew its party up from Arkansas on a budget airline and stayed two-to-a-room at a bargain hotel a few blocks from our office so they could walk to the workshop each morning. They catered the event through Walmart’s store deli (think tubs of potato salad and vats of barbecue), and in the evening the participants headed out together for a modest supper within a strict budget.

Why? At the time, Walmart was the single largest retail company in the world by several degrees. It’s not that they didn’t have the money for a more comfortable trip, it’s not that they didn’t have the power. It’s because their company values—a simple message of putting the customer first, personal responsibility, and teamwork—obliged them to adhere to a certain code of conduct. Expressing those values didn’t stop at store-brand cola and walking to work, it also meant that when it came time to develop a solution for an important strategic initiative, the workshop team in Chicago included representatives from all levels of the organization, including a woman who worked the checkout at one of their stores. Walmart had adopted that approach since Sam Walton opened his first store in 1962 in order to keep their promise to provide the lowest prices to its customers. The employees we spoke to about it at the time seemed to accept that attitude at face value, because they were doing things “The Walmart Way,” and it chimed with their own personal value code.

2.   Values cannot be pushed in from the outside

Values, in a true sense, are basic, fundamental and enduring and mean something to the people who articulate them. They must be internalized, and importantly, this does not mean they can be pushed in from the outside. Morality and ethics are central to the issue: think of your personal values and the decisions they compel you to make. Start by drawing up a list of what you personally treasure—don’t be constrained by words like, “integrity,” or “respect,” but think of action words and phrases that mean something to you. Making family a priority? Maintaining lasting friendships? Doing work you are proud of? We each have different fundamental values; that’s why writing values statements for an entire organization is so tricky; how can five or six core values have meaning for thousands of individuals?

Innovation Arts has taken many different approaches with our clients in order to help shine a light on their organization’s true values, from company-wide Barratt Surveys as well as from delivering facilitated consultation and discussions during Employee Values Weeks to allowing a significant proportion of an organization to articulate for themselves what they really hold true. It may be that you have already defined your values, yet somehow, they don’t seem to be mobilizing your organization in the direction you would expect. Often, the trouble with values statements is not the values themselves but the corporate language chosen to express them, which can be so openly worded as to be vague. To play a meaningful role in creating an enduring organization, corporate values must be simply expressed and derived from fundamental philosophy about what constitutes the good for people both inside and outside the company.

When we performed our own values exercise at Innovation Arts, our team came up with some unique individual values. And, like most companies, we also defined the values that we share, and that link us to the clients with whom we work. These values are also easily translatable into specific behaviors that bring them to life in our organization, which is an excellent test of their worth. Over the years, we have discovered that if our clients can’t relate to our values then—given how closely we work together—we may not be a good fit for them:

Intellect: You learn rapidly and eagerly

Imagination: You create new ideas that prove useful

Impact: You accomplish amazing amounts of important work

High Performance: You care intensely about the success of (y)our business

Honesty: You are true to yourself and others

Humor: You take (y)our work seriously and yourself less so

3.   Values statements should easily translate into everyday behaviors

If your organization has the right values—core values that cannot be compromised; aspirational values the company will need in the future but currently lacks; behavioral and social standards required of any employee; and accidental values that have arisen from the common interests or personalities of employees (i.e. “fun”)—they have to be integrated into everything. From the first interview to last day of work, employees should be constantly reminded that values form the basis for each decision and action the company makes.

From our work on corporate values, we know that values discussions are best had by small teams; better if they can include a cross-section of the organization. Better still if they involve the CEO, any founders still with the company, and a handful of employees who have to make a lot of on-the-ground decisions. When you are working out how to really embed your values in culture and process, leadership and employee collaborative work can be vital to agree on nuances and behaviors, and how they work in practice to reinforce your strategy and objectives. We engage entire organizations on bringing values and behaviors to life in practice with our custom-designed game Dilemma,® which is the perfect venue for having meaningful conversations about values. Do you stick to your values no matter what, or do you cut corners because there is no one there to see? It’s the discussion about those decisions that ultimately proves to be the most valuable part of the experience. What do your company’s values really mean to you? What do they mean to your colleagues?

Thinking back to that event with Walmart many years ago, seeing their corporate values in action was an exciting part of working with them. When they talk about customer service and respect, they mean it. Remember the checkout lady? At the end of three days of high-stakes design and collaboration, she drafted the final plan the entire group—including the senior management team—signed up to develop. From company cheers to employee training and benefits, the retail giant’s management constantly stresses its values not only for their employees, but for themselves. What does that mean for you?

Innovation Arts is a hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency. Innovation Arts brings a fresh and highly effective approach to stimulating ‘group genius’ through design practices that stretch people’s thinking and initiate ideas. 
Described by GQ as the ‘management consultant of the future’, the Innovation Arts team is a mixture of strategists, management consultants, designers, advertisers, branding and communications experts and artists, all skilled in helping organisations make change happen. It’s a unique blend that helps an organisation think differently about the challenges it’s facing, as well as address them.
Based on their experience of working repeatedly with some of the leading FTSE100 and Fortune 100 companies, governments and civil society organisations, their clients engage them because they deliver systemic, high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional approaches.

The Future of Work: Are You Prepared?


While The Matrix and I,Robot may not be on our immediate horizons, the rapid advance of digital technologies, and a ‘changing-of-the-guard’ when it comes to what future generations are demanding of their work environment are set to shake up how and why we work faster than you might think.

We asked our clients about the evolutions and transformations that are on their radar. Here are six hot issues that cross sectors and industries and will have noticeable impacts on both operating systems and culture:

1.   Marketing and selling will change beyond recognition

Data and information are allowing brands to target individuals in a bespoke manner; no more will we see the need for mass marketing such as TV and print advertising. Instead, tailored messaging across dynamic channels and based around the needs of an individual or business will become the norm. We are seeing it already online, but this will advance rapidly over the next few years. Organisations that develop frameworks to capture and analyse data will be best-placed to develop leading marketing and selling approaches in the future. This requires digital transformation in tandem with a reworking of traditional organisational structures and job roles that need to be addressed quickly in order to remain competitive.

2.   Automation replaces mundane tasks

Artificial intelligence is already here; from roboadvisers (Nutmeg, Wealth Wizards and Wealth Horizon) to voice technology (Alexa, Siri and Cortana) we are already affected by new technologies that are rapidly permeating our daily work and personal lives. Despite some push-back from consumers and organisations progress in these areas is inevitable and those that resist may well lose their competitive edge. No-one knows how much AI will impact our homes and workplaces and even Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, admitted at this year’s Davos meeting that he did not foresee the artificial intelligence revolution that has transformed the tech industry. What’s clear is that organisations must still embrace and harness new technologies to at least replace mundane, time-consuming daily tasks that are not profitable or satisfying for individuals. This frees up its workforce to spend more time thinking innovatively and being more productive as echoed by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google who said: “I would hope that, as some of the more mundane tasks are alleviated through technology, that people will find more and more creative and meaningful ways to spend their time”.

3.   Brands will become all-encompassing

We’ve heard a lot about what Millennials want and how they are re-shaping the way we do business. Now Generation Z is bringing their influence to the global economy as they come of age . We know, for example, that Millennials are demanding more of their brands than ever before; from ethical sourcing and environmental considerations to real and deep & meaningful community activities. Basically, they want brands to hold relevant values and exhibit behaviours that meet their expectations like no generation has done before them, and this applies to the Brands they work with too. At Innovation Arts, we spend a considerable amount of time talking to our clients about how their brand can evolve culturally and strategically and we advise building in responsiveness and agility to allow for these shifting needs.

4.   Innovation will speed up to unrecognisable rates

We’re not talking about the latest iPhone or Samsung iteration but a flexibile, nimble approach that allows organisations to constantly be on their toes responding to customers, consumers, their stakeholders and wider communities. This requires a new way of thinking and a corporate culture that is designed against a new model – maybe a model that we haven’t yet experienced. The organisations that puts innovation at its core will win; whether your sector is financial services, charitable, education or manufacturing.

5.   The physical workplace will reinvent itself

Leveraging the creativity and innovation within your teams should be a priority. If that means a blend of at-home and office workers, then so be it. If your teams are scattered across the globe and speak different languages, then your organisation’s design must be able to effectively support and benefit from this. Modular working, part-time and flexible working will reinvent themselves. Your teams may already be thinking (and hoping) that you are planning and designing for an agile and flexible future!

6.   Life-work balance takes on a new meaning

A combination of artificial intelligence, a changing workplace and a redefining of roles should lead to a more productive life-work balance. But where does work and life start and end? Whose responsibility is it to support employees in eating well, getting fit, productive relaxation time, enjoying their family and friends? The lines will blur as employers and employees merge to support one another – look at Google whose sole job is to keep employees happy and maintain productivity. Their efforts may just be the start, but they go beyond a couple of bean bags thrown into a brightly-painted corner and free gym membership. Their offer to employees includes free breakfast, lunch and dinner, free health and dental, free haircuts, free dry cleaning, gyms and swimming pools, hybrid car subsidies, nap pods, on-site physicians and death benefits.

What Next?

We believe that leadership teams should already be investigating, imagining and modelling for their own organisation in order to prepare for and capitalise on these issues. But the way we do that is changing too:

In the past, responsibility to reshape corporate culture, values and behaviours was the domain of the leadership team, and the leadership team only. From our experience of working with many leading global brands, your employees and teams are often one step ahead in their thinking when it comes to the future of their organisation. That’s why our Design Thinking approach is so effective at helping organisations to re-design their culture as it requires the wider team to design, model and iterate a brighter and more effective future. When strong leadership engages with all levels of the organisation, nothing can stop you. If you would like to know more about how our Design Sessions and Games Science can address issues around the future of work within your own organisation, please contact us for a free consultation at david.christie@innovation-arts.com.

Innovation Arts is a hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency. Innovation Arts brings a fresh and highly effective approach to stimulating ‘group genius’ through design practices that stretch people’s thinking and initiate ideas. 
Described by GQ as the ‘management consultant of the future’, the Innovation Arts team is a mixture of strategists, management consultants, designers, advertisers, branding and communications experts and artists, all skilled in helping organisations make change happen. It’s a unique blend that helps an organisation think differently about the challenges it’s facing, as well as address them.
Based on their experience of working repeatedly with some of the leading FTSE100 and Fortune 100 companies, governments and civil society organisations, their clients engage them because they deliver systemic, high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional approaches.

You say you want a revolution


What does it take to create a movement? For the organizers of the Women’s Marches that took place in cities worldwide in January 2017, one well-placed Facebook post, an inspiring cause, and knitted pink hats is all it took to inspire a global movement. Movements are born when a single “lone nut” is willing to put one foot in front of the other. If it looks interesting, someone else will join him, and then another, and another. Creating a movement is easy. Maintaining momentum is hard.

For a recent design event, we looked long and hard at the idea of “tipping points,” or the instant where the forward motion of a movement increases to the point at which it becomes unstoppable. In his bestselling book, “The Tipping Point,” author Malcolm Gladwell defines tipping points as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point,” when a collection of small events suddenly “tips” over like a wineglass, and the resulting contagion becomes inevitable. Inspired by Gladwell, we studied a number of different movements, from the US Civil Rights movement, the rise of streaming media, the mainstreaming of hip hop music, the adoption of the hybrid/electric car, to the improbable rise of Donald Trump, and discovered that within each, there was a specific point at which the movements tipped, and the subsequent outcome became unavoidable.

And yet many times have you experienced efforts to create a movement – perhaps to launch a product, a way of working or create a whole new culture shift – and seen them fall flat? What about that restaurant you love that despite your best efforts at evangelization has closed anyway? Or that time you tried to get your team to go paperless? What is it that movements with tipping points achieve that these efforts have not?

Gladwell’s research indicates that a tipping point is reached by three very specific means: the “law of the few,” or the involvement of people with a particular set of social gifts which allow a small number of them to influence a wider population of the rest of us. Perhaps the most influential of the three, the “law of the few,” relies upon connectors, the people in a community who know large numbers of people and who are in the habit of making introductions—the kind of people who know everyone, know who needs to know someone else, and whom everyone is happy to see (word of mouth epidemics are the work of connectors). Secondly, mavens, the information specialists we trust and rely upon to connect us with new information. For example, the friend we all have who knows everything there is to know about computers or television sets or restaurants. And finally, salesmen, who are just as they sound, the persuaders with charismatic personalities and powerful negotiation skills who have an indefinable trait—beyond what they say—that makes others want to agree with them.

Our experience with the movements we’ve helped create within client organisations backs this up: it’s the people within any movement who are most likely to make it tip. We know that you are more likely to follow that lone nut if he is a friend of yours, or even, if you have seen his work and likes what he’s doing. The 2016 US presidential election was swayed by content shown on Facebook’s news feed, a mechanism so massive that it filters content by what your most active friends are saying. You don’t read what the larger population is saying, only what your friends post. And if your friend is voting one way, you are more likely to follow her. Simon Sinek, in his book “Start with Why”, says between 13 and 15 percent of a population must be affected in order for an idea to catch fire. In most of our social networks that’s a small enough number to reach personally, and indeed, within the movements we studied, we found that when people were influenced and supported by their friends or people whom they knew personally, the movements were more likely to gain momentum.

The implications for creating a movement – culture change, employee engagement or reinforcement of core values and behaviours – in a large organisation are therefore clear. How do you meaningfully reach those hundreds and thousands of people who will be your firestarters?

The other two criteria for a tipping point are the “stickiness factor,” specific content of a message that renders its impact unforgettable, and the “power of context,” or the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which the epidemic occurs. When Gladwell says that the environment must be right for a message to spread, what he means is that there must be a critical mass within the population already, such that it is ready to tip on a slight change. For example, my efforts to get my family to adopt a vegetarian diet were destined for failure because none of them enjoys eating vegetarian food (in our case, vegetarianism was neither sticky nor in context).

A common problem we’ve seen within a lot of the populations we touch is the misleading idea that “if we build it, they will come.” A fantastic, world-beating idea doesn’t necessarily guarantee people will rush to embrace it. If that were true, everyone would eat healthily and get 30 daily minutes of brisk exercise. When you’re trying to create a movement for lasting change, great content must get into the hands of the influencers who will touch other influencers, who will bring their whole tribe with them, and only human connections can make that happen. It’s because his best friend was sitting next to him that black student Ezell Blair was brave enough to sit at the Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter in 1960, an episode widely regarded as the tipping point of the American Civil Rights movement. It’s because my friend encouraged me to buy an iPad Pro that I did. Without specific personal connections, any movement will ultimately fizzle, because accountability is weakened: there is no one to answer to when you make a decision, no one to get you up out of bed when you just don’t feel like marching, no one to encourage you to reach for the next level, the next flag, the next victory. So, if you’re trying to get a movement off the ground, make sure you count among your number the connectors, mavens, and salespeople with infectious personalities who will spread the idea like a virus. Then the next step is working out how to mobilise them…and even in this day of virtual connectivity, nothing works better than face-to-face interactions.

This is not to say that social networks don’t have their place, if there are genuine connections between the people within them. You might be able to have a thousand Twitter followers, but it’s a person within your real-life network who will be able to tell you which restaurant to visit, or who will connect you with the right person to get your project off the ground. Twitter and Facebook make it easier for activists to find other activists, but harder for their activism to have any impact, because social networks favor the sharing of information over accountability.

So basically, if you want to create a movement within your company, don’t host the revolution on your company’s intranet portal.

What happens next? The main thing to remember is that ideas will travel faster through personal networks than they will through institutional ones. In January, the original Facebook post about the Women’s March was posted on a specific group page with millions of like-minded followers, but I probably wouldn’t have put on my pink knitted hat and marched if I had seen only that. I marched because my best friend and my sister told me they were going. If the idea of stomping around outside on an icy winter’s day can spread throughout the world by word of mouth, it’s hard to imagine what couldn’t.

Do you want to create a tipping point in your organisation but not sure where to begin? Give us a call, we’d love to help.

Innovation Arts is a hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency. Innovation Arts brings a fresh and highly effective approach to stimulating ‘group genius’ through design practices that stretch people’s thinking and initiate ideas. 
Described by GQ as the ‘management consultant of the future’, the Innovation Arts team is a mixture of strategists, management consultants, designers, advertisers, branding and communications experts and artists, all skilled in helping organisations make change happen. It’s a unique blend that helps an organisation think differently about the challenges it’s facing, as well as address them.
Based on their experience of working repeatedly with some of the leading FTSE100 and Fortune 100 companies, governments and civil society organisations, their clients engage them because they deliver systemic, high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional approaches.

How Employee Engagement could Make or Break your Company in Crisis


From major product recalls to technical systems failures, from Brexit to critical safety issues, the fitness of all organisations to respond is put to the test when crisis management is required.

 

When a situation breaks, the Communications Director is on the frontline managing an increasingly complex number of stakeholders; media, shareholders, suppliers, partners and customers. The objective is to protect the brand and organization while keeping the media coverage to a minimum and stakeholders informed and placated.

 

However, while every Communications Director will ensure their company has a Crisis and Issues plan prepared in advance, one key stakeholder group is too often forgotten: your employees. They can be your saviour in such a situation, available to call upon as well-informed brand ambassadors and corporate advocates, OR they can be your bête noire if ignored. Of course when you are in crisis mode you have to prioritise, but if you wait to engage the broader employee base until the fire-fighting has subsided, it might be too late.

 

We know that most employees need to feel part of a holistic system, to be engaged with the wider purpose of the organisation. So if they are getting their updates from social media, feeling powerless to respond and sensing themselves on the periphery of the organisation, they will not only feel confused and demotivated, but could also present an immediate risk and a longer term weakness. A recent survey showed strongly that if employees no longer believe in their company, or that they can successfully uphold the brand or reputation, they are likely to start looking elsewhere (Gallup Survey 2017) and this effect is amplified in times of crisis.

 

The implications of this are borne out in difficult experience. Whatever the sector or industry, the Communications Directors and Internal Communications Directors we have worked with, who have faced such situations, all say the same – the one thing they would do differently next time is to ensure that all employees accompany the senior team managing the situation in unison.

 

At Innovation Arts, when we talk about Employee Engagement, we are not talking about the measure of employee morale previously known as ‘job satisfaction’. Rather, we are talking about actively engaging the organisation collaboratively in the aspirations, ambitions, trials and successes of the wider company. And we believe that your crisis handling should mirror the way you engage your organisation on a day to day basis, and around important initiatives – just in a more focused and intensive way commensurate with the urgency of the situation.

 

So if you were to come to us looking to put a crisis plan in place that engages your employees effectively, our first question to you would be, what is your internal engagement process OUTSIDE of a crisis situation? Don’t worry if you don’t have one yet, you’re certainly not alone. And it could well be that planning for a crisis situation provides the impetus you need to develop a broader employee engagement mechanism to support your business. We would always recommend putting this plan in place BEFORE you need it! The next question, then, is how to go about designing a plan that will actually be used, and used effectively?

 

Innovation Arts believes that more voices cut down on noise, which is another way of saying that by involving all critical stakeholders in creating the plan they will be expected to deploy, their ownership of the plan not only makes it more effective and reduces resistance but also devolves the leadership required in rapid-response situations.

 

The number of critical stakeholders we suggest you involve in creating your plan can vary between 12 and 100 depending the size and complexity of your organisation, and this in turn will guide the time investment required to collaborate and align on your Internal Engagement plan. Depending on your needs we will recommend between one and three days of intensive work in a DesignSession for exponential results.

 

Typical questions you might want to answer in such a DesignSession include:

 

By using Design Thinking and Collaborative methodologies in this process, the outcome will be more robust. From Framing of how a crisis situation might occur in your organisation to Architecting around different plausible scenarios and Building an employee engagement plan which is aligned across stakeholder groups.

 

All our DesignSessions are bespoke, co-designed with you and every one starts with a simple conversation about the opportunity to collaborate. Click here to contact us to discuss how engaging your employees could be the secret ingredient to success.

 

Innovation Arts is a hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency. Innovation Arts brings a fresh and highly effective approach to stimulating ‘group genius’ through design practices that stretch people’s thinking and initiate ideas. 
Described by GQ as the ‘management consultant of the future’, the Innovation Arts team is a mixture of strategists, management consultants, designers, advertisers, branding and communications experts and artists, all skilled in helping organisations make change happen. It’s a unique blend that helps an organisation think differently about the challenges it’s facing, as well as address them.
Based on their experience of working repeatedly with some of the leading FTSE100 and Fortune 100 companies, governments and civil society organisations, their clients engage them because they deliver systemic, high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional approaches.

Values: A Double-Edged Sword


What happens when they go uber-wrong?

When new employees join Uber, they are asked to subscribe to 14 core company values, which include making bold bets, being “obsessed’ with the customer, and “always be hustlin’.” The company particularly emphasizes meritocracy, the idea that the best and brightest will rise to the top based on their efforts, even if it means stepping on colleagues to get there. The top priority: achieve growth and revenue targets. Those values have helped propel Uber to one of Silicon Valley’s biggest success stories. Yet, the focus on pushing for the best result has also fueled its “toxic culture” and present troubles: crippled by complaints that it condones sexual harassment, bullying and retaliation against those who complain, shedding executives and board members like so much unwanted freight, a cutthroat, win-at-any-costs culture where workers gain advantage by tearing each other down. And on Tuesday, its CEO, Travis Kalanick, has announced plans to take a leave of absence to get his act together. Poor embattled Uber.

 

After months of research into the inner workings of the company, US Attorney general Eric Holder this week published a report with recommendations for what Uber could do to redeem itself https://goo.gl/zwGhJA. Central to the report was a recommendation to “Reformulate Uber’s 14 Cultural Values,” to reflect more inclusive and positive behaviors.

 

Corporate value statements—those things you often see engraved in Plexiglas in corporate lobbies—exist to remind a company of its purpose in the wider world, of its very human reason to exist. But they must move beyond the lobby to act as the glue to bind employees together like a family, a beacon to steer towards when the going gets rough, and a code of ethics to hold employees to a higher standard. And yet, because company value statements are—necessarily—broad and open (or in Uber’s case vague and meaningless), a company’s values can be difficult for employees to translate into day-to-day behavior. What, exactly is meant by “super-pumpedness,” and does that mean downing several cans of Red Bull before clocking on, or something else entirely? And what happens when colleagues have different interpretations of the values? How easy is it for the language of a company’s values to translate into action for the boots-on-the-ground employee? How can a company ensure that its values are lived, not just talked about?

 

Innovation Arts knows that company culture crises are often an accumulation of small transgressions by employees who do not understand what the corporate values mean for the day-to-day. Or that trouble begins when the values fail to communicate what top brass believes their company to be. In our experience, a company’s values come to life within the company culture, which tends to bubble up from the bottom, from the lowliest employee to the CEO. If a company’s stated values include respect and diversity, then employees will be respectful of one another, form teams with people not like themselves, and reach outside their own sphere for new ideas. When your company values and culture promote “be yourself” and “toe-stepping,” then, well, just ask Uber what happens.

 

We have worked with a number of companies and cherished national institutions who are mindful of the impact values have on an organization, and wanted to ensure their values were meaningful for the people who follow them every day. However, admitting that you don’t quite understand them, or maybe that you interpret your corporate values differently than your colleagues can be a difficult conversation. That’s where the concept of game science can literally be a game-changer. By working with game designers, Innovation Arts has developed a new way to engage and inspire employees about their organization through our game Dilemma™ that translates an organisation’s values into day-to-day behaviours for every employee to understand and act upon. Dilemma™ employs a rigorous interview process to ensure a bespoke experience for each organization that uses it, and allows employees to put their corporate values through their paces through a series of scenarios matched with potential responses. Players earn points for responding with the action most closely tied to the intent of their company’s values—carefully avoiding the reactions born of habit or context. As much as we want to aspire to the better angels of our nature, it is a fact of modern life that we go astray, especially when time is short. Dilemma™ addresses these little slips and shortcuts, and encourages the players to talk through what a “wrong” response is, and yet, why an employee might be tempted to take the easy route. By identifying the preferred actions and the likely workarounds, what we have noticed is that the people who play Dilemma™ are more likely to talk about their company’s values in a way that is meaningful for each person, clarifying what the values are, why they exist, and how they should be enacted. Being honest enough to have an open and frank conversation about the accepted wisdom of company culture can motivate a group to own their values, and bring them to life.

 

Corporate values everywhere are a hot topic. The May 2017 issue of Fast Company magazine featured a cover story about the importance of embracing corporate values, and the impact they can have on the wider world. From automakers such as Ford and Audi to fashion houses like Gucci and Ralph Lauren, from health care firms to consumer packaged goods makers, companies are increasingly seeking to align their commercial activities with larger social and cultural values—not just because it makes them look good, but because employees and customers have started to insist on it. Millennials spend money in areas they believe in, and companies will simply have to respond. If you count the number of lives big companies like Facebook or Airbnb touch, they can have as much influence as a national official, so what they stand for themselves matters.

 

And that finally is what makes a company’s values so important. With global politics in a state of upheaval and trust in governments and other institutions suffering, corporations and large businesses may have to step forward to fill that gap and lead. What will ultimately differentiate those leaders is their inner motivations, their intentions. If your company intends to do good, and your employees know how to translate that into action, then it is clear on which side you will end up. What are your intentions? Are your employees living it every day, with every action, every decision? Perhaps it’s not clear whether they are engaged or not, or if your company’s values are simply words without meaning. If so, we encourage you to challenge your people to live up to what you say you stand for, to make each other better. What do you do when the chips are down, or you are in a hurry, or you are simply desperate to make that sale? We know that if you can count on your values in times of stress, then you will be able to rely upon them in times of ease. And it is possible that having a higher purpose will help a company’s profits in the long run.

 

Corporate values, like personal ones, exist to make everyone’s life better. If you enact them in small ways every day, the value compounds, and you can make a big impact.

 

Is your organisation one of the 10% that is getting it spot on with Engagement and Values, or are you looking for new ideas and support? Whether it’s about articulating the right values for your organisation, embedding them, or engaging your employees around strategic initiatives, we’d love you to get in touch to explore how design thinking, collaboration and games science such as Dilemma™ could help.

 

Innovation Arts is a globally-recognised hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency described by GQ as ‘the management consultant of the future’. Our focus is on creating the optimal conditions for diverse groups to solve, together, any complex organisational challenge. When faced with challenging disruptions, from a major new product launch to navigating a merger, the level of complexity demands more than the existing processes can handle. By implementing a design thinking-based approach, we deliver high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional agency approaches.

HR – Nurturing Talent in a Climate of Change


Recruitment and retention issues across a number of sectors are costing businesses millions. For HR Directors, this is a priority, but it is also a complex issue and a challenge to solve.

Whether our clients are FTSE 100 Directors, Global Directors of multinationals or large public institutions, one thing HR Directors express is the need to support both change initiatives and day-to-day operations whilst under greater pressure and flux than before. To paraphrase the Red Queen, We must now run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.

With voluntary resignations at an all-time high and unemployment rates historically low, the pressure is on HR Directors to find innovative approaches.

Whilst some of the evolution in employee mobility can be put down to external shifts in culture, demographics and economics there are other factors that fall within a businesses sphere of influence. Innovation Arts suggests two areas of focus that HR Directors can lead within their organisations for proven and measureable results:

1) Employee Engagement as a verb not just a KPI.

 

Measuring absenteeism, turnover, and productivity might give you a metric of how engaged your employees feel, but true employee engagement is more than a KPI, it’s a way of life. HR Directors can lead this, but the whole leadership team needs to get behind it. It’s about getting the whole organisation involved, and actively behind the Company’s purpose and strategic objectives.

It can seem easier and faster, particularly in a large company, to take high-level decisions in the boardroom, and cascade strategies top-down rather than face the mammoth task of truly engaging hundreds and thousands of employees, and in the short term maybe it is. But there’s always a price to pay down the line when it comes to delivering the strategies.

Teams that are consistently high performing all show a number of common factors, including collaboration, trust and transparency. Conflicts are sought out and resolved together, not ignored or over-ruled. The companies we work with that invest in up-front collaboration on big decisions see pay back many times over in true employee engagement and measurable business results.

2) Values and Behaviours that support your strategy, are understood in practice and are

measureable across the organisation.

 

As well as playing a vital role in delivering an organisation’s strategy and objectives, lived values and behaviours are also instrumental to managing talent throughout the employee lifecycle. Most companies have them on a poster on the wall somewhere, yet it’s a rare company where they are actively managed. In our experience, sectors such as Health and Hospitality – where you might naturally expect strong common values to guide employee actions – show the strongest sense of shared values amongst employees, yet without company-wide interventions these values are still not translated into daily lived behaviours. Indeed, employees express a sense of frustration with that disconnect. In other sectors such as Finance or Manufacturing, the Company Purpose doesn’t always align naturally with any specific values, and if they are not integral to the recruitment process then it is only by chance that employees find anything to relate to in the values found on the corporate charter. Overall Innovation Arts estimates that fewer than one in ten organisations have values and behaviours that are clearly understood and lived on a day-to-day basis.

Can your employees articulate your organisation’s values and explain how they affect the decisions they take and the way they behave in their own jobs? When an employee identifies strongly with an organisation’s values they are much more likely to engage and to stay. The implication for HR Directors is that from recruitment through day-to-day work to performance management, values and behaviours should be an integral part of what we measure and track.

At Innovation Arts we believe playful approaches get serious results, and this is why our Games Science team has developed a suite of easy to use, effective and engaging tools including DilemmaSelect for recruitment, and Dilemma for embedding and tracking desired values and behaviours sustainably.

Where do you fit? Is your organisation one of the 10% that is getting it spot on with Engagement and Values, or are you looking for new ideas and support? Whether it’s about articulating the right values for your organisation, embedding them, or engaging your employees around strategic initiatives, we’d love you to get in touch to explore how design thinking, collaboration and games science could help.

Innovation Arts is a globally-recognised hybrid strategy consultancy and design agency described by GQ as ‘the management consultant of the future’. Our focus is on creating the optimal conditions for diverse groups to solve, together, any complex organisational challenge. When faced with challenging disruptions, from a major new product launch to navigating a merger, the level of complexity demands more than the existing processes can handle. By implementing a design thinking-based approach, we deliver high-quality, sustainable outcomes with less risk, more certainty and in a fraction of the time compared to conventional agency approaches.
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