Five steps to create a sustainable pace of work in your organization.
When the pandemic began, it kicked off wave after wave of crisis management. Our relationship to the passage of time changed, becoming more fluid and fraught as we all struggled to adapt to unfamiliar working and living conditions.
For many, pandemic recovery isn’t over. In fact, moving from recovery to the next normal can be incredibly difficult. Behaviours, actions, and leadership styles change during crisis in ways that can be challenging to recognize. Oftentimes, leaders struggle to relax control, resume more regular routines, and work through their own crisis-born fatigue.
Here’s a secret that can help leaders move towards their next normal, and bring their organizations with them: Focus on pace.
The overlooked importance of pace in leadership
In a leadership development program we ran a few years ago for new and emerging community leaders, we centred the curriculum on 12 leadership values and had participants explore their relationship to each one. One of the most engaging sessions focused on pace, a value that is often overlooked in leadership programs.
Knowing when to go fast and when to go slow, when to push harder and when to rest, is a critical leadership value and tool. Mastering pace is complex and requires discipline. For example, in times of crisis, everything around you screams at you to go faster, to speed up, to do more. What will serve you better, however, is going slow and imposing necessary pauses on yourself and your team.
So, let’s take a step back and reflect. Think about your organization, your team, and your own work.
Are you setting new workplace and leadership patterns, or are you still working through pandemic-driven dysfunction? Perhaps more importantly, are your patterns a result of pandemic management needs, or are they indicative of your organization’s culture?
If you notice the following behaviours or patterns taking place, you’ve made it through to the next normal.
|
Culture Blueprint |
Leadership actions and characteristics |
Pace |
|
Careers strategy |
You look beyond the structures of formal career paths, meetings, and reviews that exist within your organization to focus on individuals. You engage in meaningful career conversations (which are not the same thing as performance discussions) and take a longer time horizon for how career moves today create opportunity in the future. |
Your pace is responsive to your current situation. |
|
People strategy |
You are thinking about “why” people want to be part of your organization. You understand the overall value proposition that you offer to those who are part of your team and those who should be. Your focus is on outstanding leadership and your culture—the one that you want to foster, not the one that you read about on LinkedIn or other business networks. Your people notice and appreciate this. |
Your pace is responsive to your current situation. |
|
Space strategy
|
You have identified the unique elements of your organizational culture that require in-person engagement to thrive, and those that don’t. These might include creative collaboration, well-being, and the ability to mentor/shadow other people. You know who within your organization will be most advantaged and disadvantaged by in-person activities, and you set out a strategy that supports a culture where everyone thrives. You can explain how you will use physical space to your staff in a way that is clear, compelling, and true to who your organization is (or wants to be). |
Your pace is controlled and stable. |
If you notice the following behaviours or patterns taking place, you’re still operating in recovery mode.
|
Culture Blueprint |
Leadership actions and characteristics |
Pace |
|
Careers strategy |
You focus only on the logistics of performance-related activities, rather than also on employee reflection, experimentation, and self-determination. You prepare and conduct standard annual reviews, but react to other employee needs only as they come to you. In your own career, you may feel a need for change, but you aren’t sure now is the time for big moves. |
Your pace is largely reactive to day-to-day events. |
|
People strategy |
Your primary worry is how people work (such as hybrid work models). You see gaps in resources and reset priorities to accelerate hiring, which takes a short-term toll on productivity. You took on new responsibilities like tough decision-making during the crisis to help ease your staff’s workloads and stress, but you’ve yet to return to regular delegating (including sharing in how decisions are made). |
Your pace is frenetic and unpredictable. |
|
Space strategy
|
You are convinced that workforces will never return to offices and that this is the right time to start reducing your real estate footprint to save money. |
Your pace reflects a desire to take immediate action on changing data. |
Figure 1. The leadership cycle.
When in doubt about what’s next, don’t forget to consider pace
To find the normal that comes after crisis, leaders have to (re)learn how to relax control, resume more regular and sustainable behaviours and patterns, and take the time they need to work through their own fatigue. Pace is a critical leadership lever that can help with this, and its scope of impact will reach across an organization’s careers, people, and space.
Now, more than ever, is the time to recognize that careers, people, and space strategies form your organization’s unique Culture Blueprint. Big changes are afoot that affect how people relate to their work, the teams you need, and where you will work, together. One of the key indicators that you are no longer recovering and have instead reached the next normal is that your pace is controlled and responsive, rather than frenetic and reactive.
As we explain in the Space Reimagined issue of Workforce Architecture, “Mapping your Culture Blueprint with intention and honesty allows you to critically examine if your organization is on the right track with a solid foundation, if it needs repair and adjustment, or if it requires a massive overhaul to remain viable.” With a Culture Blueprint in hand, you can evaluate the trade-offs of pushing for fast change versus playing the long game.
To reset your organization’s pace, follow these five steps:
Step 1: Imagine you are five years past the end of the crisis and your organization has the culture, strategies, and success that you’ve always hoped it would.
Step 2: Write down what’s different about how you lead, careers are managed, people are treated, and space is allocated in your organization compared to today.
Step 3: For each point, consider what might happen if you set a near-term deadline for change to happen. Next, consider what might happen if you slow change down over a longer period of time.
Step 4: Determine the pace you need your organization to operate at over the next six months, and how you can communicate priorities, timelines, and targets. If this is not clear, list out the following:
-
- What is holding you back
- Who you need to speak or connect with
- What resources (including contacts, information, permission, etc.) you are missing
Step 5: To begin setting a sustainable pace of work in your organization, while still achieving ambitious goals, make a new list of how you might secure any missing resources. …And start taking action!
Want to learn more or explore how Challenge Factory can help you set a sustainable pace in your organization and better understand your Culture Blueprint? Contact us at Consulting@ChallengeFactory.ca.