Photo: Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA
Culture
Purpose
DEI
Leadership
Environment
Grit
Culture Overview
Your organization’s culture encompasses the ideas, customs, and social behavior of your leaders, employees, and customers.
Corporate culture is the shared values, attitudes, standards, and beliefs that characterize members of an organization and define your company's mission and purpose.
Five to Flow will assess five key areas related to culture including organizational purpose, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), environment, leadership, and grit.
We will take a deep dive with you into the above-mentioned areas and optimize each one of them independently so that your organization can reach and maintain a flow state holistically.
Purpose
Great culture starts with an organizational purpose that is deeply rooted in serving a “just cause.” The best cultures are strengthened by the relationships of the people who are aligned to a clearly articulated and meaningful vision, mission, set of values, a strategic plan, and a dedicated effort to community contributions that all enable the purpose. Purpose guides the authentic behaviors of all of your people and facilitates progress with intention. That intention, in turn, orients every decision employees and leadership make.
Five to Flow's solutions and recommendations on Purpose will focus on enabling organizations to define and execute on the following:
- Mission. Clearly define the “what” that you want to achieve as an organization; ensure alignment and belief in the mission are consistent across teams and matches the effort of the organization and its people.
- Vision. Document and socialize a coherent and transparent vision to fully understand the “why” of the organization and what the world looks like when you achieve your objectives.
- Core Values. Live the clearly defined values based on “who” you are as an organization and hold each other accountable to them in an atmosphere of safety, integrity, and open interactions.
- Social Responsibility and Impact. Define and uphold the established frameworks for benefiting and serving the community, and interacting with colleagues with trust, that also move the vision forward.
- Strategy. Operating from a deeply authentic place, your purpose-based strategic plan will help orient your employees, customers, suppliers, and stakeholders alike on the “how.” Connect every action, behavior, and intention to move the organization forward with fluidity.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
A purposeful culture embraces all aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion recognizing why it matters far beyond mandates or being told that it’s the right thing to do. Research around the world has found that DEI benefits individuals, organizations, teams, and society with significant positive impacts. Statistically speaking, organizations that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion as standard within their culture have access to more talented people, show greater strides with innovation and group performance, gain a more positive reputation among their communities, and exceed the financial performance targets. As we appropriately apply the peak performance factors of all the other core elements and the flow triggers, DEI simply becomes the fabric of the company.
Five to Flow's solutions and recommendations on DEI will focus on enabling organizations to define and execute on the following:
- Diversity. Recruit from a diverse talent pool the skilled and capable people who align to your organizational values and retain diverse and high-performing talent. This can encompass diversity of thought, personality types, expertise, and experience in addition to traditional categories such as age, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, veteran status, disability status, etc.
- Equity. Equity recognizes that each person in an organization has different circumstances, incorporates fairness with integrity, and allocates the precise resources and opportunities needed for employees to reach their specific goals. By meeting people where they are and equipping them with the tools they need, they are far more likely to feel empowered, engaged, and successful.
- Inclusion. People work best when they are part of the conversation and feel like their perspectives, opinions, and unique contributions are respected, whether they can be implemented or not. Incorporating feedback from every level of employee from all backgrounds further enables flow for individuals and team, as the people of the organization can feel what they do matters as part of the overall vision and mission and achieving toward what the organization is accomplishing.
- Belonging. Foster a sense for each person that they belong and add value. Organizations that provide a seat at the table and value the diverse voices to ensure people are seen and heard while being authentic have higher levels of engagement and retention.
- Trust and Healthy Conflict. Offer respect, acceptance, and an open forum to disagree, face conflict, and resolve issues without fear. Ensuring that there is clarity in each role, with well-defined responsibilities and a sense of accountability toward a common goal promotes people to comfortably express themselves without fear to reach an effective alternative.
Leadership
Coherent company culture involves people who share its core values and possess the willingness and ability to embrace those values to move the mission forward. Conscious and effective leaders promote transparency, accountability, ownership, and offer fairness across the organization.
Five to Flow's recommendations on leadership will focus on optimizing individual and team-based:
- Emotional Intelligence. Develop the capacity to be aware of, control, and express emotions; to handle interpersonal relationships empathetically.
- Transformational Leadership. Execute on a strategy where a leader works with teams to identify needed change, creating a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and executing the change in tandem with committed members of a group.
- Conscious Communication. Implement radical candor to be available for another person to meet your need by asking for the specific behavior that will fulfill it.
- Coaching. Help each other learn in ways that enable progress and career growth; ask questions and provoke thought and self-guidance.
- Managerial Competence. Demonstrate capabilities to resolve conflicts, support solving complex employee challenges, build effective teams, and drive optimal performance.
Environment
Environment, on location and remote, is composed of the actual physical spaces and the effects they have on your people. Things like green spaces, open architectural design, location, and light engineering promote how your people feel and interact throughout the day. Whether your teams are onsite, remote, or hybrid, the environment directly impacts behavior, collaboration, engagement, and distraction which all influence productivity, flow, and burnout.
Five to Flow's recommendations on the environment will focus on optimizing individual and team-based behavior and performance in the following areas:
- Architecture. Architect an office design and layout that promotes creativity and collaboration; this includes incorporating virtual spaces aligned to physical.
- Art. Create a vibration of inspiration and innovation; art in our environment reduces stress, promotes creativity, and overall improves quality of life.
- Energy. Promote the flow of communication and interaction.
- Open Spaces. Provide physical room for people to think and move freely.
- Virtual Environment. Foster an office-remote-hybrid environment aligned with your mission and values so regardless of where your people are, they want to be there.
Grit
Grit has been said to be the most important indicator of success. When it comes down to the bottom line where do you stand with grit? The amount of resistance you are willing and able to push through will determine where you rise above your competition and thrive in your industry. As leaders consider offering challenges at appropriate levels that promote empowerment, people can develop grit and resilience in a trusting environment where they can take risks and be creative. Challenges - which are needed to access flow - are also the means to develop grit.
Five to Flow's recommendations and solutions on grit will use our proprietary Grit Score to focus on improving individual and team-based performance through:
- Courage. Give permission and empowerment to take risks, fail, iterate and persevere.
- Conscientiousness. Focus on quality driving positive customer outcomes and realism.
- Long-term Goals and Endurance. Focus on enabling ebbs and flows in the business, investment in the future.
- Resilience. Promote a dynamic combination of optimism, creativity, and confidence to regulate emotion.
- Excellence. Forgive, allow, and embrace failure and vulnerability on the ongoing quest for improvement.