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Leaders Letter 79 – Improve Culture With Agreed Departmental Principles

Dear leaders, I trust you had a good week. 

This week I want to offer a way to improve your company culture.

I have discussed the importance of frameworks, it was great to hear that quite a few were going to roll out the two up two down framework.  

I am known to almost preach the benefits of asynchronous work, specifically knowledge centres and agreed principles, particularly leadership principles to be held accountable for. 

In a standout discussion this year, I spoke to a company that struggled with department leads driving their teams forward, while they navigate their move into hybrid work. Many are struggling with this. 

Department leads are there for the two p’s I discuss regularly; 

People (culture) and Performance (strategy delivery). 

I ran one of my go-to power half hours and then a remote culture workshop, here are some of the best (tweaked) ideas that were disclosed and then agreed upon – 

  1. To have an environment where we always feel safe 
  2. To be seen (acknowledged)
  3. To be heard (ideas, feedback etc)
  4. To be respected (rank does not matter)
  5. To coach (Regular and reverse coaching and mentoring)
  6. To debate; to get the right answer not to win (an argument)
  7. To have well thought through opinions listened to 
  8. To have fair and regular feedback 
  9. To enable anyone to pitch ideas and solutions (never just for senior titles) 
  10. To collaborate to win 
  11. To deliver work we are proud with 

Gaining sign off and consensus can be challenging, at the start of these workshops it is vitally important to have a list of good, bad and ugly traits and work through them together and agree ideally on ten principles. 

The wording and framing are important as they should be clear for everyone to understand. 

These agreed principles should be clear for new starters and applicable to every member of staff. Yes, even the CEO or the founder. 

It is important to note you will likely need a few sessions to get to a place of agreement and where people feel good about them versus feeling like they had to disagree through peer pressure. 

if you leave a workshop tired but happy (likely with homework), that’s a sign of a great workshop. 

The question for today; is the last task for 2021 or the first task for 2022? 

Thanks, 

Danny Denhard

Other Focus Frameworks To Implement 

Now listen to how to improve your workplace with breathwork and meditation

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