In this era of rapid digital transformation, it’s really important to build a culture that sets your organization up for success and ensures much-needed talent stays put. In this article, we’ll look at several components that I believe are absolutely crucial in any organization’s culture. These components – combined with an investment in future skills development and a solid future internet strategy – will provide a strong foundation for success.
The key ingredients for success are:
1. Being purpose-driven
Does your business exist to serve a meaningful purpose – a purpose that people can genuinely connect with? If not, this is something you’ll want to work on because purpose is a vital part of attracting people – customers and employees alike – to your brand. Indeed, according to Deloitte, companies that lead with purpose enjoy higher market share gains, grow three times faster than their competitors and achieve higher customer and employee satisfaction.
Purpose defines why the organization exists. Not what the organization is or what it does. Purpose is about striving for something better, be it a better world, a better way to do something, or whatever is important to your organization. It’s about delivering more than profits, basically.
2. Encouraging continuous learning
It’s so important to encourage curiosity and continual learning in your teams. Because curiosity and continual learning are fundamental to being able (and willing) to embrace change, it ensures skills stay sharp and that individuals and organizations can keep up with the major transformations taking place across all industries.
A good starting point here is to celebrate learning and effort (for example, by linking performance evaluations to learning goals) instead of just celebrating outcomes or output. You can also let employees broaden their interests and define their own learning goals. You can invest in learning and upskilling resources for your teams. And when it comes to hiring, you can make curiosity one of the attributes you assess candidates for.
3. Embracing a flatter organizational structure
The traditional hierarchical business structure has worked well for generations, but now, companies are recognizing the need for more agile structures that allow the business to respond to change.
For established, larger organizations, the “flatter” structure may be more appropriate than a truly “flat” structure. Flatter organizations adopt some of the facets of flat organizations, for example, the bulk of the company being built around flexible communities or teams and decision-making being more democratic. But a flatter organization still retains some form of hierarchy – albeit with fewer layers than traditional hierarchical companies. So, in a flatter structure, departmental boundaries are eliminated, and teams collaborate freely on projects that deliver the organization’s strategic goals.
4. Becoming a more porous, gig-ready organization
We’re heading for a future in which more people work as “free agents” rather than traditional employees. The talent pool is now truly global, and you’re no longer limited to hiring people who live in the same city or those who are willing to move. This is good news as organizations seek to tap into new skills that they’ve never needed before.
This means all organizations must start planning for a more blended, porous workforce, where employees and independent workers collaborate on projects. Even if you don’t regularly dip into a freelancer pool at this time, chances are you’ll need to in the future, so start building that freelancer network.
5. Supporting individualism (without losing collectivism)
The current trend towards individualism and personalization will no doubt have an impact on your company culture since employees will increasingly expect an employee experience that’s tailored to their unique needs.
The ways to foster individualism are fairly obvious – flexible working, tailored development plans, allowing people to decide how best to complete tasks and projects, and so on. The tricky part is balancing individualism with collectivism. Since, even in this age of the individual, organizations still need people who can work well in teams.
What you want, then, is to adopt the collectivist ideals of collaboration – for example, by embracing a flatter organizational culture – while leaving space for individual innovation, freedom, and expression.
6. Providing an awesome employee experience
Many parts of life are becoming more experiential, and people increasingly want to spend their money on experiences rather than, you know, stuff. Amidst this wider trend for experiences, work must also become more experiential. What I mean by that is employers must consider how to create an experience that helps to attract and retain talent.
The employee experience encompasses everything that occurs in the employee lifecycle, from the recruitment process to the final day of working for the company. Obviously, organizational culture plays a big role in the employee experience. But you’ll also need to consider things like technology and skills (as in, making sure people have the technology and skills they need to do their job well), and the physical work environment.
7. Becoming a technology-enabled (yet human-centered) business
When people don’t have the technology they need to do their job well, motivation goes down the toilet. So if you think you’re not a tech business, think again. These days, every business is a tech business. Regardless of sector or size, the rise of future technologies such as AI and the metaverse will utterly shape how you do business. This means every organization must invest in the right technology that enables people to do their jobs successfully and work how they want (which will increasingly mean remotely).
But it’s also really important that companies don’t lose their “humanness” on the journey to becoming a tech-centered business. Because even though we’re experiencing rapid digital transformation, human skills like collaboration and communication will still be important (arguably more important than ever). This is why I encourage the organizations I work with to see themselves as a “human-centered technology company,” one that benefits from the very best of humans and technology.
8. Being transparent
Future technologies like blockchain and web3 are fundamentally built on the notion of transparency. For all types of businesses, I believe transparency is going to become even more important than it is today.
Transparency means being open and straight-up with customers, employees and even, in some cases, your competitors. Open about how you source your materials, how employees feel about working for your business, where your company needs to improve, the climate impact of your business activities, diversity (or lack of) within the organization, your values, your business processes, how you make decisions, and how you use technology.
9. Becoming more diverse
Diversity and inclusion will be key differentiating factors in the more porous, more flexible, faster-paced organizations of the future. And the incentive is certainly there for employers to embrace diversity – after all, organizations with inclusive cultures are more likely to achieve better business outcomes. In particular, diversity boosts innovation, creative thinking and problem-solving.
I cannot stress enough how important it is for organizations to embrace new perspectives and experiences in the future. But remember, we’re not just talking about hiring with diversity in mind; we’re also talking about building a culture of inclusion (meaning people feel like they are welcome and belong).
Read more about these topics in my new book, The Future Internet: How the Metaverse, Web 3.0, and Blockchain Will Transform Business and Society. And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube for more on the future trends in business and technology.
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