How executive teams can diagnose broken cultures

If your organization is consistently underperforming, does your executive team have productive conversations about what to do about it? Often these discussions either stay at a superficial level (e.g., "Our people aren't working hard enough") or descend into blame (e.g., "Everything is so-and-so's fault").

To avoid these traps and have a productive root cause conversation with your executives, use the ten questions below at your next executive team offsite to help you get on the path to build a legendary culture.

Question 1: Which type of performance do we most need to improve?

There are fundamentally two types of performance:

1. Tactical performance - the force of convergence, or getting people to follow their plans and processes.
2. Adaptive performance - the force of divergence, or getting people to branch off from their plans and processes.

An organization can have high or low levels of both:

1. An organization with low adaptive and low tactical performance often feels like a chaotic fire-drill. It can mobilize itself when there is a crisis, but otherwise, it isn't proactive in any way.
2. An organization with high adaptive and low tactical performance feels fragmented and sub-scale. While each team can proactively adapt to changing circumstances, the teams are not pointing in the same direction or working in ways that reduce friction between the teams.
3. An organization with low adaptive and high tactical performance feels command-and-control. Teams are able to follow their orders and stick to their processes well, but if the organization had to adapt, it would take a long time to do so well.
4. An organization with high adaptive and high tactical performance has teams that are able to be adaptive, but are still pointing in the same direction together, with very little friction between them.

Improve tactical performance when direction, consistency, and scale are your biggest problems. Improve adaptive performance when innovation, quality, problem solving, and experimentation are your biggest problems.

Ask the team: Which type of performance do we most need to improve (it could be both)? Why?

Question 2: Which of the five factors of performance do we most need to improve?

At first we shape our systems. Thereafter, our systems shape us.

To sustainably operate at peak performance, your organization needs to systemically manage the why, the what, and the how.

• "The how" of tactical performance is ==process==. A Michelin starred restaurant will have recipes, processes, stations, and tools for every dish they cook. Or alternatively, the magicians at Hogwarts all had a textbook to help them make their common potions. (True facts.)
• "The how" of adaptive performance is ==skill==. That same Michelin starred restaurant will have highly trained chefs preparing each meal, because even with the best processes, something can always go wrong. Or alternatively, Severus Snape had the skill to adapt the recipes in ways that improved their outcome. It takes skill to see that and adapt.
• "The what" of tactical performance is ==strategy==. Strategy ensures that there is a direction for every team to follow.
• "The what" of adaptive performance is ==habit==. When there is no direction, or the direction is wrong, it is through a team's habits that they sense the problem and correct it. Harry and his friends did not have great study habits keeping them on track for potions class.
• "The why" of both is ==motivation==. Colleagues need to want it if they are to perform at their best. Harry didn't like potions class, so his potions weren't very good. Draco on the other hand...

Potter metaphors aside - 

When you look at these 5 factors in totality, each are critical for peak performance:

Ask the team: Which of the five factors of performance do you believe we most need to improve? Why?

The next five questions (from 3 to 8) will unpack each of these five factors.

Question 3: Which motivations do we most need to improve?

Why we work determines how we work.

To be a master of motivation, you must unpack "why" we do anything. Our reason for doing something is called motive. Your motives are the root of your motivation.

There are six human motives.

• Play - This motive is driven by the enjoyment and satisfaction derived from the work itself. When people are motivated by play, they are engaged because they find the work inherently interesting or fun. People don't feel bored.
• Purpose - This motive is driven by the belief that the colleague's individual contribution matters now. There's an instant realization that they matter. People don't feel like cogs in the machine.
• Potential - This motive is driven by the belief that the work will benefit the individual in the future. People motivated by potential see their work as a stepping stone to future opportunities, personal growth, or an important mission.
• Emotional Pressure - This motive is driven by the desire to avoid negative emotions such as guilt, fear, or shame. People motivated by emotional pressure work to avoid disappointing others or to meet external expectations.
• Economic Pressure - This motive is driven by the need to gain a reward or avoid a punishment. When motivated by economic pressure, people work to win financial incentives or to avoid financial penalties.
• Inertia - This motive is driven by the absence of any other motive. People motivated by inertia continue to work because they have always done so, without any specific reason or drive.

While any motive can increase tactical performance, play, purpose and potential increase adaptive performance, while emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia decrease adaptive performance.

Ask the team: Which motives do we most need to improve?

Note: you can measure motivation through the team Habit Checks in Factor.AI. This will give you a leading indicator of your organization's performance.

Question 4: Which phase of the strategy flow needs to be most improved?

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince

To grow performance, high-performing organizations must know how to convert ideas to impact. That's the fundamental purpose of their strategy flow.

The VEGA model is how strategy should work in organizations that balance tactical and adaptive performance.

The model has four phases:

1. Visioning - To maintain motivation and adaptability, a vision is an articulation of the organization's future (three to ten years out) and the problems it needs to solve to get there.
2. Exploring - This is the process of ideation and problem solving to move toward the vision.
3. Galvanizing - This step sets the organization up for success given the specific ideas it has explored.
4. Achieving - This is the last part of the flow, where teams tactically and adaptively execute the tasks needed to implement their ideas.

The VEGA model hints at the three most common problems we see in organizations:

• Most organizations don't know how to manage creation-oriented work (visioning and exploring) where task management is less effective than continuous and ongoing discovery and problem solving.
• Most organizations are too conflict-averse for the collective work (visioning and galvanizing). As a result they are overly focused on "achiever-mode" and not enough on the other three.
• Because Visioning (where an organization gets motivated to achieve a common vision) has both of these problems, it tends to be problematically lacking in many organizations.

Ask the team: Which of the four phases of strategy do we most need to improve? Why?

Note: Factor.AI's Strategy Checks use artificial intelligence to help teams build their strategies. Moreover, Factor helps you identify which VEGA phase each colleague thrives in.

Question 5: Which skill sets most need to be improved in your organization?

Skills are the currency of the future of work.

Without skill, organizations will struggle to be adaptive. And as companies continue to automate the tactical work, skill is only getting more important. Yet, skill gaps are widespread in today's workforce - especially communication, leadership, and problem solving skills.

Within most typical organizations, there are 26 skill sets that are needed collectively to perform well:

Ask the team: Which of the 26 major skill sets do we most need to improve? Why?

Note: you can use Factor.AI's Skill Checks to manage the skill growth of all your people across all of these skills.

Question 6: Which types of process most need to be improved across all your teams?

Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.‍

- The Toyota Way

Process is the second to last of the factors of performance. Good process orientation helps teams focus less on work that should be rote so they can focus more on where they need to be adaptive. Moreover, good process orientation creates enough (but not too much) structure to make it easier to work together and coach each other. For example, even highly adaptive soccer strategies, like Total Football (Ted Lasso anyone?), where players can take over the position of any other player, still has the structure of positions.

There are four ways to manage the tactical side of work to create structure:

• Playbook-based - playbooks capture work that is episodic but still repetitive. As a result, the steps should be continuously improved. For example, imagine if you had a merger playbook. You'd use it on occasion, and you'd hope your people keep making it better.
  ‍
• Process-based - process management is for work that has repetitive steps and is continuously done - for example, your sales process, where leads are managed through a funnel; or a manufacturing process for a machine you build.
  ‍
• Project-based - project management is for work that is unlikely to be done again. As a result, continuous improvement of the steps is unimportant. Think of traditional Gantt chart management as an example of project-based work.
  ‍
• Problem-based - problem based work management is used for the visioning and exploring phases of the strategy flow. In these steps, teams should be managing a continuous flow of ideas against their problems and challenges.

Ask the team: Which types of process most need to be improved across all your teams?

Note: Factor.AI uses artificial intelligence to help any team in your organization properly manage all four of the ways to organize tactical work. This keeps all of a team's work in one platform, saving time, decreasing training costs, increasing knowledge retention, and ultimately making it easier to coach and prioritize work.

Question 7: Which habit needs to be most improved across most of our teams?

People do not decide their futures; they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.

- Frederick Matthias Alexander

For a team to be proactively adaptive it needs effective habits. Those habits should be the steps needed for them to continuously strategize when the top-down directive is either incorrect or imprecise.

The highest-performing teams have 12 habits that make them distinctive:

Ask the team: Which of these habits most needs to be improved across most of our teams?

Note: Factor.AI's Habit Checks help teams self-diagnose which habit to improve, and come up with practical ways to get better.

Question 8: How does the habit of efficient routines most need to be improved within our typical team?

A car doesn't have brakes so you can drive slower. A car has brakes so you can drive faster.

Many teams build routines that are not very effective (i.e., daily stand-ups). Instead, the team's routines have to be constructed and led to drive velocity and encourage coaching.

There's a minimum effective dose of meetings that are critical for a team to drive velocity:

Ask the team: How does the habit of efficient routines most need to be improved within our typical team?

Note: When all your teams conduct quarterly Habit Checks using Factor.AI, you'll gain a much more precise understanding of which habits need your attention.

Question 9: Which aspects of the apprenticeship habit most need to improve in our average team?

For decades, organizations have been trying in vain to implement feedback cultures. However, these cultures often fail to take root or motivate. This is because unsolicited feedback is often taken as unfair criticism, and thus lowers motivation. Leaders, knowing this, are rightfully reluctant to share unsolicited feedback.

Instead, organizations should build apprenticeship cultures, where colleagues are actively pursuing skill growth through goals they set and on-the-job practice.

Ask the team: Which aspects of the apprenticeship habit most needs to improve in our average team?

Note: Factor.AI's Skills capability makes it easy to run a motivating and effective apprenticeship process at any scale. Learn more here.

Question 10: Which accountability loops need to most improve in your organization?

We've studied performance and motivation for decades. You can see our work in the worldwide bestseller, Primed to Perform. After decades of research, the closest thing we can find to a silver bullet for motivation and performance are three critical accountability loops:

1. Everyone should have an important problem that they own solving. Quarterly Strategy Checks create accountability for this outcome.
2. Everyone should own their own skill growth. Quarterly Skill Checks create accountability for this outcome.
3. Everyone should own their own motivation and habits. Quarterly Habit Checks create accountability for this outcome.

Ask the team: Which of these accountability loops most need to be improved? Why?

Note: Factor.AI runs all three of these accountability loops using artificial intelligence. It's finally easy for every team and organization to build a high-performing culture.

At this point, as an executive team, you should have a deep and comprehensive hypothesis of how to improve your performance culture. You should also see that the tools exist to make each of these elements easy to implement. However, if you're still not feeling confident on how to proceed, feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to talk it through with you.

Ask the team

For fast access, here are all ten questions to ask your team to diagnose your culture:

1. Which type of performance do we most need to improve - tactical, adaptive, or both? Why?
2. Which of the five factors of performance do you believe we most need to improve - strategy, process, skill, habit, or motivation? Why?
3. Which motives do we most need to improve? (Play, purpose, potential, emotional pressure, economic pressure, or inertia)
4. Which of the four phases of strategy do we most need to improve -  Visioning, Exploring, Galvanizing, or Achieving? Why?
5. Which of the major skill sets for the future of work do we most need to improve? Why?
6. Which types of tactical performance most need to be improved across all your teams? (Playbook, process, project, or problem)
7. Which of the 12 habits of high-performing teams most needs to be improved across most of our teams?
8. How does the habit of efficient routines most need to be improved within our typical team?
9. Which aspects of the apprenticeship habit most needs to improve in our average team?
10. Which of our quarterly accountability loops most need to be improved - Skill Checks, Strategy Checks, or Habit Checks? Why?

‍