More than ever, collaboration is top of mind as companies ease out of the pandemic and build towards a new normal. The past few years showed us the challenges of collaborating amid changing COVID-19 restrictions and hybrid setups. However, they have also shown us the transformative potential that can be unlocked via technology, agility and a human-centered approach.  

In Southeast Asia in particular, effective collaboration is paramount to unite a diverse set of countries and strive towards a common goal. But this is not without its challenges. The region continues to struggle with heightened competition for talent, fluctuating COVID-19 policies and different development stages of hybrid work in an ever-competitive market landscape. Moreover, collaboration in SEA can be particularly challenging due to a number of characteristics unique to the region: varying cultural and language backgrounds of employees, different levels of economic development across the region, nascent stages of digital transformation and – for international corporations – a wider cultural difference between HQ and regional offices.  

Despite, or perhaps because of these challenges, our 2022 global research report, “Catalysts: The Collaborative Advantage”, shows that SEA companies value collaboration more than other regions (52% versus 44% globally).  

Diagram 1: Value of Cross-Organizational Collaboration 

However, only 28% of SEA respondents feel they are very effective at collaboration across their organization.  

Diagram 2: Effectiveness of Cross-Organizational Collaboration 

How can the region work to close the gap and reap the benefits of strong, cross-organization collaboration?  

The Collaboration Flywheel 

A key output of this year’s “Catalysts” report, Prophet’s annual global culture research study, is the Collaboration Flywheel, a model that reveals a path for leaders and organizations to prioritize and accelerate the efforts to build their collaborative muscle.  

The metaphor of a flywheel helps capture the inherent complexity of the adaptive system that is organizational culture. A flywheel works by reinforcing positive behaviors and outcomes while minimizing negative feedback loops, thus building and maintaining momentum over time. Most importantly, each specific action we’ve identified in the Collaboration Flywheel model helps deliver better, more impactful outcomes more quickly. 

Using this framework, we can understand how SEA can leverage its strengths and unique regional characteristics to drive greater organizational effectiveness.  

Diagram 3: The Collaboration Flywheel 

1. Coordination 

The first phase in the Collaboration Flywheel is Coordination. This is where many organizations begin their development journey by empowering groups to work horizontally rather than just in their vertical silos. Coordination centers on connecting an employee’s effort to the larger picture – the organization’s purpose – and modeling “what good looks like.”  

In our research, when compared to respondents in other regions, SEA respondents were more likely to emphasize the importance of connecting individual work to the organization’s purpose. In SEA, 75% of respondents believe it is important to be able to connect their work to the company’s business strategy, however, only 36% think they are able to effectively contribute to the organization’s purpose.  

Diagram 4: Value versus effectiveness When Connecting Employee Work to Business Strategy 

While many factors can inhibit an individual’s ability to contribute to the organization’s purpose, we see the three biggest factors in the region as top-down management styles, lack of understanding of “what good looks like” and early stages of digitalization. To overcome these hurdles, companies can enable cross-organization coordination by empowering decision-making at lower levels of the organization, showcasing best practices and pushing the digital transformation agenda forward.  

In 2017, MB Bank, one of the largest financial services groups in Vietnam, set up a new digital bank as an independent business unit, separate from its legacy bank. This radical approach to digital transformation helped MB Bank’s speed to market, but it also made coordination between the two BUs challenging. Employees knew the bank’s digital transformation goal, but those in the legacy bank couldn’t always contribute to it.  

MB Bank recognized this disconnect and saw the impact it had on employee coordination and how that translated into the customer experience. By leveraging digital transformation to instill agility and a more nimble way of working across the organization, MB Bank was able to transform its legacy bank, driving the efficiency of its operating model and increasing cross-organization coordination. To further create a culture of collaboration, the company focused on shifting the mindset of its people, encouraging an entrepreneurial and agile approach that embraces risks and a fail-fast new culture. This has propelled MB Bank today to become the fastest growing and most digital bank in Vietnam.  

2. Cooperation 

The next phase is Cooperation, which builds on coordination by adding trust and shared ways of working. It is characterized by clarity of objectives, capability building and incentive alignment. 

Relative to other regions, SEA respondents place more emphasis on aligned incentives as necessary means for collaboration. In our research, 78% believe incentive alignment is important to collaboration effectiveness, and a quarter believe incentive misalignment is also one of the biggest barriers to achieving this goal. 

Diagram 5: Value versus. Effectiveness When Aligning Incentives That Encourage Cross-Organizational Collaboration 

Keeping in mind SEA’s highly diverse workforce, the definition of a good incentive can vary widely.  

For example, companies in more developed countries such as Singapore, tend to consider soft incentives (benefits, training, recognition, etc.). However, companies in developing countries such as Vietnam, often prioritize hard monetary incentives. Beyond cultural differences, unrelated parts of the organization are often incentivized by siloed outcomes and metrics of success, making cooperation difficult. To solve this, companies can enable cross-organization cooperation by aligning incentives with relevant business outcomes that build towards a common goal, while taking cultural nuances into account. 

In 2020, HSBC merged its retail banking, wealth management and global private banking into a new global wealth and personal banking unit. This change in the organizational structure allowed for greater operational efficiency, reducing redundancies and combining related capabilities, talent and infrastructure resources. By breaking down silos and creating a shared mindset around collectively achieving goals, HSBC was able to reduce cooperation barriers to drive more effective client outcomes. 

3. Collaboration 

As cooperation builds interdependence and synergy between formerly independent groups, it creates the opportunity to pilot and embed new ways of working. In the Collaboration stage, leaders reward progress – not just outcomes – and there is a culture of evaluating both process and priorities within the context of the organization’s purpose. 

When compared to other regions, SEA is better at both recognizing and rewarding cross-organization progress. Almost half (41%) of SEA respondents believe their organization is good at recognizing and rewarding progress. However, to enable effective cross-organizational collaboration, organizations need to both recognize progress and be open to constructively challenging the ways things are done.  

Diagram 6: Value versus. Effectiveness When Recognizing and Rewarding Cross-Organizational Progress, Not Just Outcomes 

Many of the companies in the region tend to be more traditional in their approach to workplace organization and culture, emphasizing their top and bottom line over individual wellbeing. This is especially true for small and medium enterprises, which make up 97% of all businesses in the region. This conventional mindset often inhibits individuals from innovating new, more effective ways of working.  

To open the door for innovation, employers can empower employees to think critically about how they can better contribute to the organization’s purpose and be innovative in their ways of working. By allowing a more bottoms-up approach to organizational culture, employers will not only see more effective outcomes in the market but will also make their workplace more attractive to employees. This can be achieved through test-and-learn environments where employees can propose new ways of working and implement integrated planning processes where functions can share wins, risks and priorities. And if the organization is in the midst of a transformation, this is where setting up a Transformation Management Office (TMO) to connect different parts of the organization around a unified set of goals can take place.  

Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has adopted a flat, tech-like organizational structure that gives semi-autonomy to its sub-groups. This enables the agency to have not only speed to market, but also high levels of collaboration across the groups. In addition, when recruiting, GovTech specifically looks for a sense of learning agility in candidates, ensuring its employees are eager to adapt, pivot and stay ahead of the trends. This internal culture of collaboration helps GovTech stay competitive with other tech startups and incumbents that prospective employees might be considering. The results are astoundingly impactful: In 2021, 99% of citizens surveyed expressed satisfaction with the overall quality of Singapore’s government digital services.  

At Prophet, we believe that people are at the core of any organization. And people working together collaboratively is what drives change, delivers results and sets organizations apart. SEA faces unique challenges: from its uneven regional economic development to its early stages of digital transformation to the diversity in its workforce. However, these present an even more pressing need for organizations in the region to build towards a culture of collaboration. By using Prophet’s Collaboration Flywheel, organizations can work towards:  

• Coordination: Illustrate the linkage between an employee’s individual effort and the organization’s purpose. Guide individuals by showcasing “what good looks like” and giving decision-making authority to lower levels, while leveraging digital transformation as an enabler.
• Cooperation: Align incentives across the organization, balancing differing definitions of what a “good” incentive is. Take these cultural differences into account to create incentives as well as a shared mindset that collectively achieves unified goals.
• Collaboration: Focus on the process, not just outcomes to make room for more agile thinking which allows synergies and interdependences to form. Empower employees through a bottoms-up, test-and-learn approach that encourages them to challenge the status quo and implement new, fresh ways of thinking. 

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“Never let a good crisis go to waste” may be old advice, but it feels timelier than ever. While businesses are still struggling to distill the ongoing lessons of the pandemic, they now see inflation, interest rate hikes and an ongoing war pushing the economy closer to recession. If that wasn’t enough, supply chain issues continue to disrupt and consumer confidence is fading. 

Companies are also challenged as they try to figure out if we are in the great resignation or the great retirement, and what that all might mean for the great hybrid experiment.  

A new norm has emerged: The only true business constant is continuous business disruption. 

Predictably, many businesses are already fearful, cutting budgets, freezing new hires and even laying off staff.  We are seeing this in our clients. Governments are getting involved in companies’ marketing spend. And chief sustainability officers wonder how best to pay for the commitments they’ve made over the past two years. 

All these issues are real and complex, and in some ways, it’s good to be on high alert. But businesses have a choice in how they respond, as they did in the economic crises of 2001, 2008 or 2020.   

Each downturn has produced new economies that did not exist before, from e-commerce to the sharing economy to the experience economy to the world of subscriptions and crypto. There’s a long list of companies that have been created by these downturns including Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, AbbVie, Spotify, Instagram, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Others, such as Samsung, GM, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Bank of America have been reimagined in ways that would be hard “to imagine” before these downturns. 

So, instead of talking about crises, cutbacks and retrenching, we are choosing to use words like resiliency, durability, agility and radical innovation, as we guide clients through this latest challenge. We know growth can’t happen amidst panicky cost-cutting or short-sighted pivots. 

No one enjoys downturns. But we can see how our clients in the past have channeled anxiety into strength and resiliency. They evolve. They make intelligent choices and emerge stronger than the competition. This is a moment to leapfrog and discover ways to accelerate, creating an opportunity to differentiate companies from competitors and create net-new businesses and categories, customer experiences and offerings. 

To this end, here are five ways we are advising clients as they strive to build their own versions of relentless resiliency. 

Accelerate Purposeful Leadership 

In the last two years, purpose-driven companies have become the norm. COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented number of companies to go out, find their North Star and align to a higher-order purpose. These past few years have shown leaders that doing good in the world, doing right by employees and customers and making money can all work in concert. Now is not the time to throw all of that goodwill and equity away.    

Purpose-driven companies are forcing leaders to become more agile, transparent and even a little vulnerable. The radical communications door that opened during COVID-19 needs to stay that way. The entrepreneurial spirit that allowed companies to reinvent how they did business has to continue to thrive. The agile strategies that respond to a changing environment must become the norm.  And, importantly, with a strong purpose in place, they can make hard decisions through a values-based filter. Steps to take now: 

1. Invest in purpose-driven growth moves. Remind teams that downturns always open white space opportunities for those that are looking “between the cracks.” Encourage teams to continuously search for the next big thing. What will be the crypto or sharing economy of 2023? How might it align with your purpose? How will it move you forward? And, importantly, how does it pay off your purpose? Assume your competition is doing the exact opposite. 
2. Be ruthlessly transparent. Agility is important, but moving too fast can cause whiplash, confusing employees rather than inspiring them. A change in direction and purpose alignment can’t just be clear to leadership–it must be evident to all teams and employees, as well as customers, shareholders and other stakeholders.  Be vigilant, strong and consistent in your communication approach. 
3. Accelerate brand, demand and innovation efforts. Discretionary spending is generally first to go, yet, we have seen in the last three recessions that companies that kept their foot on all of these pedals have come out stronger on the other side. On the innovation side, widen the acquisition aperture. Start-ups and small companies might currently be more open to acquisition discussion, and can immediately fill in offering and experience gaps at a lower price point. On the brand and demand side, it’s easy to fall into the false dichotomy that companies must tradeoff between brand or demand marketing. However, you need both. And there must be a real partnership between the two disciplines often most at odds—sales and marketing–to figure out the right mix today and tomorrow. 

Leverage Employees as Your Greatest Competitive Advantage  

There are many reasons the employee base is so fragile right now. The great resignation, the great retirement and many of the experiments coming out of COVID-19 are still in motion. Many companies will use recession nerves to back off employee engagement efforts. If they haven’t yet focused on their employee value proposition (EVP), they may think they can let it slide.  

This is a big mistake. Like many other companies, Prophet just went through a talent war like few others we have seen. There is no reason to think that will change on the other side of this downturn. 

The current economy is making employees increasingly uncertain about the company-employee contract, despite all the employee engagement skills businesses have built through COVID-19. The EVPs just re-launched at many companies will be thrown into disarray. Pragmatically, if personnel cuts need to be made, it must be done through a strategic lens, tying back to the company purpose. Steps to take now: 

1. Choose programmatic and initiative cuts over personnel reduction. We are still in the early days. And just as the pandemic sparked supply chain issues and are still causing mayhem (just peek in a Target or Walmart warehouse), so too will the labor shortages many are experiencing on a daily basis. 
2. Encourage cross-functional teams. New research from Prophet finds that 63% of companies with higher cross-functional collaboration skills say it increases employee satisfaction scores, and 54% say it boosts retention. People want to work with one another. 
3. Poke at pain points. Hybrid workforces are in their infancy, and there is much to be done to make the experience more fulfilling. Is commuting grinding people down? Are they stressed by after-hours e-mail? Do they have Slack or Zoom fatigue, and are there other tech solutions that might help? 

Make Budget Decisions Through the Experience Lens, not Just Organizational Constructions and Functions 

As mentioned, it’s natural for companies to consider cuts across the organization– in each function and business unit. In tough times, this often feels “fair”. Instead, decisions should be made using the experience point of view: What allows for the best customer and employee experience? 

Companies should take this opportunity to understand what is required across the functions to create differentiated experiences for customers and employees. This may require more granular cuts. And in every company, there are pockets within the budget that will always be spent, often in procedural and programmatic ways. That money may well be redirected to experience investments. Paused programs can always be restarted. Steps to take now: 

1. Create agility through experience pods. Many companies have already put smaller pods into place to boost agility. Put these newer teams to work differently, across functions and in ways that build customer or employee experiences. Create assignments that build connective tissue. 
2. Enhance collaboration. Break down silos and optimize spending by developing a more collaborative working model. Our recent research shows that while 80% of leaders believe collaboration leads to better outcomes, only 28% of hybrid workplaces effectively support it. And only 50% of respondents believe their teams collaborate effectively, even when they’re all in the same room. What are new ways to rewire traditional methods of working including budgeting, resourcing and product development? 

Harness the Investments Made in Technology  

Digital thinking continues to be the lifeblood of business. It drives everything from manufacturing to delivery to remote work. And technology accounts for trillions in business spending, including ongoing investments that can’t be reduced. The problem is that in most companies, this tech exists in ponds and lakes, with little ability to pull it all together.  

And in many, that single view of a customer–the dashboard we’ve all dreamed of–still doesn’t exist.  

If possible, it’s a good time to pause or slow new tech investments, reevaluating digital priorities. Any spending that improves customer experience should move to the top of the list. Steps to take now: 

1. Clarify customer journeys. Use the point of view of each customer segment to ensure existing technology adds value, eliminates friction and provides the right data for future decision-making. This includes mapping the tech to each existing critical process. Encourage teams to find greater optimization. 
2. Reconsider the employee experience. The right digital tools increase employee productivity and satisfaction, enabling the kind of collaboration that drives growth. 

Knowledge of Customers, Competitors and the Market Is the Only Superpower 

Stop guessing. When no one knows what lies ahead (and no one does), it’s critical to understand how customers think, behave and buy in real-time. And it’s just as essential to know exactly what the competition is doing. Amid so many economic changes, the rules of many categories are being rewritten as people and businesses alter their spending patterns. 

What’s required is a set of processes and mechanisms to gather as many insights as possible. This needs to be combined with a mindset that accepts the insights readily, with the willingness to adapt accordingly. No one knows exactly what is going to happen six months from now, but we need the skillset to collect and discern as much about the changing environment as possible. Steps to take now: 

1. Pulse the market. Invest in pulsing capabilities, then embed findings into practices and processes. This constantly feeds into new products, services, experiences and go-to-market approaches. 
2. Use insights to prioritize new investments. These insights may tell you that you do not have what it takes to be successful in an ever-changing world. Don’t be afraid to test and learn as a result, shifting investments as needed. 
3. Challenge team behavior. The hardest part of integrating insights into your business may be changing the behavior of team members to act on the insights. This kind of cultural shift isn’t easy, especially when people are frightened. While you may be cost-cutting, invest in the change required in your culture to drive agility in the organization. 

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As businesses work toward transformation, many find themselves trapped in a structural paradox. The Collaborative Advantage, the latest global research report from Prophet’s Organization & Culture practice, finds 80% of business leaders recognize that collaboration throughout the enterprise is essential. Yet, 50% are struggling to achieve it. And hybrid working compounds this challenge further with only 28% saying they believe their organization effectively supports collaboration in this environment.  

The most successful transformers? They have worked to break down silos and build collaborative muscles by progressing through three essential phases, which we have encapsulated in a new model: Collaboration Flywheel. It’s a virtuous cycle of interdepartmental breakthroughs that reveals a path for leaders to more impactful outcomes and faster growth.  

Prophet’s Collaboration Flywheel

The Flywheel provides a perfect metaphor for organizational culture. Taking a holistic, human-centered approach, it works by reinforcing positive behaviors and outcomes and minimizing negative feedback loops. It builds momentum over time. Each time the wheel turns, it generates more power and benefits for both the business and individuals.  

Phase One: Coordination

This is where many organizations begin and end their development journey. Different groups, traditionally siloed, recognize the need to align horizontally rather than vertically. When leaders promote a broader strategic goal, teams understand that working together is beneficial. And they also understand when it makes more sense to continue with traditional, business-as-usual approaches. To create clarity, organizations need to define the goal and role model the desired collaborative work.  

An example of this in practice might be helping employees to invest time in understanding how different parts of the organization work and identify connection points (e.g., shadow a colleague in another function) or creating a shared vocabulary – even just a few key terms – to use consistently in cross-organizational efforts.  

Phase Two: Cooperation

As each group gains experience in coordination, they get a clearer understanding of how their work fits into the bigger picture. Trust, shared ways of working and incentives become more explicit, making it easier for groups to proactively call on collective capabilities. They move into the who and how of the collaborative effort. They start to define roles and decision-making responsibilities. 

They see the value of shared effort more quickly. They’re informed by a common ambition, a central fact base and well-articulated ways of working. They will also have the right tools to navigate the complexity of their growing interdependence. All of this means cooperation is far more likely to have a greater collective impact than straightforward coordination might produce and depend less on the day-to-day involvement of leadership.  

Phase Three: Collaboration

As this proactive cooperation builds a shared context across independent groups, interdependence and synergy increase. At this point, the organization can celebrate the visible progress of piloting and embedding new ways of working. Cross-organizational teams see an increase in quality, with a healthy mix of synchronous and asynchronous work. Synchronously working teammates often generate new ideas together. Asynchronously working colleagues bring objectivity and clarity.  

Working together becomes the norm, not the exception. And so, the Flywheel spins. When combined with our human-centered approach to transformation, this new organizational muscle of collaboration taps into the enterprise’s DNA, Body, Mind and Soul.  

With collaboration now a default behavior, it becomes sustainable. Innovation and disruption replace old and ineffective ways of working, which in turn leads to accelerated transformation and results for the enterprise.  

Better Outcomes – For the Business and Individuals

The research shows that higher levels of teamwork enrich individuals, building new skills that increase engagement and job satisfaction – a critical lever in today’s dynamic talent landscape. Of the 1,000+ people we spoke to across the U.S., Europe and Asia, 77% say the organizational emphasis on collaboration enables higher productivity. 

As evidence of its ROI increases, it’s clear that collaboration has moved from a buzzword to a core business strategy. Organizations no longer need to be sold on the benefits and importance of collaboration. Leaders and managers worldwide understand that practical cross-organizational efforts lead to greater success.  

This is especially true as companies step up their efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion, and environmental, social and governance issues. By definition, this work needs to permeate every part of the company and be understood by each employee. Often, it even requires reaching out beyond the organization’s borders and interacting with external stakeholders that may include government, NGOs and communities.  

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Veni, Vidi…VUCA: Time to Embrace the New Reality

In the New Year, the Economic Glass is Half Full

As 2022 kicks into full swing, many sectors of the economy have been reflecting on a remarkably strong performance through the second year of pandemic mayhem. While we continue to actively learn to navigate the constant shifting sands of the pandemic, albeit easier for some sectors than others, the global economy has – thus far – proven resilient and not ground to a halt.

But our Workforce Glass? Very Much Half Empty

And yet, 2021 brought progressive waves of challenges that will still require significant attention in the years to come. Consumers and communities demand that businesses take a more active role in broader societal issues. Employees and investors express the same.

Employees worldwide are actively reprioritizing their lives, questioning the role and purpose of their work. They’re also questioning the role of the office in their lives, creating significant tension in hierarchical cultures where daily office presence has historically been expected and leaders continue to cling on to established norms. The newly christened category of “front-line, essential workers” are asking similarly existential questions about their work: when is the risk of service too high? Is our service valued by society? And thus, the so-called Great Resignation is impacting nearly all generations and “collars” of the workforce.

Welcome to VUCA

Leaders are facing the reality that nothing will return to normal and that there isn’t even a “new normal” one might reliably anticipate. Years ago, military leaders coined the acronym VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. In a post-pandemic business world, it’s time for the rest of us to embrace VUCA as our new reality.

VUCA means that many of our most popular models of management have literally lost their relevance. 5-year strategic plans, 3-year ROI models, Gantt chart project management, hierarchical management structures, siloed work, narrow expertise and fixed annual cycles of performance management were all already being seriously questioned in 2019.

“VUCA means that many of our most popular models of management have literally lost their relevance.”

In 2021, we found in our annual global research that the firms that truly thrived in the confusion of 2020, those that met or exceeded their objectives, had higher change fitness because they had abandoned those waning operating models, structures, rituals, mindsets and tools wholesale.

What to Do in 2022

As we look backward on what we’ve learned over the last two years and then picture ahead to the coming year, what might make your organization more fit for change? Better yet, what ideas might propel you ahead of your current and future competitors?

Three Ideas to Help Your Organization Thrive in The VUCA Reality

1. Actively Balance the Urgent with the Strategic

All sizes of organizations worldwide had to move quickly to set up projects, programs and initiatives to address the pandemic-driven issues in their business and not just once, but on multiple occasions as the different variants struck. Simultaneously, many firms recognized that a lot of their actions were addressing long-known and long-ignored issues. Wise leaders consciously used the momentum of the moment to slingshot their organization to a more resilient future, desperately looking to accelerate fundamental transformations of their operating model, customer relationships, technology enablement and culture.

Entering 2021, we observed that our most progressive clients began changing their strategy development processes. Even as they adopted agile and design thinking to maintain a sharp market focus, they also began working future-back into their strategy so as not to get caught so badly flat-footed again. In 2022, there are inevitably a host of urgent needs. Make sure that you’re also making space (and dedicating resources!) for the strategic.

2. Seek to Forge a Unified Customer and Employee Experience

All successful organizations today have embraced the philosophy of customer experience. Some organizations have also come to embrace the idea that employee experience is something that can be actively designed and managed.

A missing connection you might address in the coming year is how to make those two experiences one. What kind of transformational effort might be required for those internal and external experience designs to be crafted, managed and measured together?

3. Build a Leadership Coalition for Transformation

The ineffectiveness of organizational structures and the challenge of silos remains a constant challenge to transformation – our 2021 global research yet again highlighted this barrier. Addressing this does not begin with some re-engineering blueprint but rather with the recognition that key functions and areas need to work together differently for a different and/or new outcome. Put another way, the “new advantage” is collaboration.

We might think about the EX/CX opportunity described above to build and amplify them for mutual success. Achieving that kind of business outcome means that a unified EX-CX initiative cannot sit simply with HR nor simply with Marketing. In fact, it is more than likely to also need the buy-in from the CIO let alone operational leaders.

The bottom line is that sustainable transformation fitness and effectiveness is only sustainable with a leadership team that operates beyond individual representation and is prepared to be accountable to one holistic agenda. Organizational resilience in a VUCA environment requires alignment on that agenda now – if you haven’t already.

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Everywhere you look organizations are trying to figure out how to future-proof themselves. Organizations are grappling with how their flexible, hybrid working model might look and how to cope with the diversity of employee preferences created by the pandemic.

The role of leadership has never been more important to the health of employees and the success of the organization as business leaders across the globe manage through this uncertainty. What was considered effective leadership pre-pandemic (coaching, feedback, empathy, trust) is now a basic leadership requirement. And as the war for talent intensifies, the quality and empathy of leadership will be an important differentiator for current and prospective employees.

“As the war for talent intensifies, the quality and empathy of leadership will be an important differentiator for current and prospective employees.”

Therein lies the problem. The general quality of leadership is not where it needs to be. In 2020, MIT global research with c5000 Executives found that less than 10% of employees strongly believed that their organizations had leaders with the right skills to thrive in the digital economy. But the pandemic turned every leader’s world fully digital overnight.

At Prophet, we have developed a Human-Centred Transformation Model that guides holistic cultural change and identifies organizations as macrocosms of an individual with DNA (strategy, values, purpose, Mind (talent, skills, capabilities), Body (structures, processes, tools) and Soul (mindsets, behaviors, rituals). Through the lens of the model and our client work, we have identified three steps that will help you raise the floor of your leadership capability and take a human-centered leadership approach in a hybrid and digital world.

Step 1: Co-create a leadership philosophy (DNA)

Leadership is a term that everyone understands or thinks they do. We all have our own view of what a strong leader looks like and who we want to emulate. However, individual perspectives don’t breed quality or consistency. It’s critical for your leadership (and your employees) to co-create and align on the version of leadership that’s right for your strategy, your people and your culture, particularly in your new hybrid context.

In addition, the remit of leadership has changed. With societal trends coming to the forefront of daily organizational life, leaders can’t lead without acknowledging and supporting their people during uncertain times. Leading with values and purpose is a prerequisite now; leaders cannot focus solely on strategic or operational topics to get them through.

Allied to that point, leadership roles should include a tangible set of leadership responsibilities and objectives. For example, leaders need to be leading, not just doing tasks or making decisions. They must be empowering, nurturing and guiding their teams. It takes time, effort and skill to adopt a human-centered approach to leadership and to do it well. Ensuring your leaders adopt the mindset that human-centered leadership is critical to the organization’s performance, will provide a strong platform to develop your leadership capabilities.

Step 2: Build agility into your leadership development framework to align with your culture and strategic priorities (MIND)

Traditionally, many organizations use prescriptive models of what good leadership looks like, developed directly from theory. However, they were never especially applicable in your organizational context and – rigid by design – they are now out of touch with what’s required in an ever-changing, hybrid world.

The shift to hybrid working provides a reset opportunity and there are some improvements that will help you make your leadership development investment more impactful going forward:

• Revisit your leadership development approach regularly – now that we are in a hybrid world, tailor your approach to your new context and your strategic priorities. Measure progress and adopt an agile approach that keeps it simple and focuses on only a few priority areas at a time
• Over-index on purpose, values and the human, empathetic elements of leadership – your employees need more meaningful communication and an increase in the level of emotional and personal support in a hybrid environment
• Prioritize collaboration and compromise as central tenets of your leadership framework – the days of heroic individual leaders are long gone. Leadership needs to come together and zero in on what’s best for the organization and the people, rather than protecting their specific domain
• Bring new capabilities to life on the job – set expectations and challenges, create a safe environment to experiment with new leadership ways outside of the development space

A refocus away from the traditional approaches will increase your chances of moving the needle on leadership significantly. In parallel, it’s important to make leadership development accessible to more than just an elite, senior group – take a youth development policy in order to build leadership as a strategic advantage over time.

Step 3: Create an aligned leadership ecosystem (BODY & SOUL)

One of the biggest complaints Harvard Business Review hears about executive education is that the skills and capabilities developed don’t get applied on the job. A note of warning: your leadership ecosystem will make or break your effort. This is the area that most organizations don’t realize they need to address. The most important step you can take to support consistent and effective leadership in action is to analyze how your culture and operating model are impacting your leadership practices and behaviors. Then you can align the critical levers to incentivize, rather than deter, the desired approach.

Additionally, all the development activities in the world won’t create the leadership you want ‘on the job’ unless your organizational ecosystem supports and rewards the desired leadership approach. The latest global research from Prophet’s Organization and Culture practice identified the fundamentals and accelerators for cultural change (e.g., ambition, roadmap, role modeling, decision making, incentives and rewards, mechanisms to experiment) and it’s important to address these to create the environment and the enablers that will embed the new leadership behaviors.

Releasing leaders from a development environment back into their day jobs without adaptive mechanisms and expecting them to change their behavior when all the rituals, processes and incentives encourage them to lead in the same way they always have done is a mistake. This instantly erodes all the value and effort of your investment in leadership development activity. Sadly, this is still all too common in organizations today.

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Growing up as an Asian American in a predominately white, Catholic community, I became used to being the “other” at an early age. I was the one that didn’t fit in, the one picked last for a gym activity, the one not invited to birthday parties.

In sixth grade, I remember being particularly excited because I was invited to a birthday party. However, this wasn’t just any birthday party, it was the party of a girl who was considered popular. “Did I finally make it? Had I finally been accepted?” When I arrived, to my dismay, the birthday activities in the garden required the birthday girl and her designated team captains to hand-select members for their teams. The goal of the birthday activity was to finish one or more tasks at different stations and each of the teams got to compete against each other. When I was finally the last one to be “picked”, I didn’t feel very picked at all. I wanted to run, hide and disappear. I didn’t want to go back to school. When my parents forced me to go back that Monday, my performance was negatively impacted because I was distracted by thoughts of self-doubt, humiliation and embarrassment. All I so desperately wanted was to fit in.

What might have been more inclusive, in this situation, was if the team members were thoughtfully pre-selected in advance of the party, with varying levels of athletic aptitude and experience. To create an equitable environment, intention is paramount. To me, it would have made a world of difference.

Fast forward almost 30 years, I’ve now worked in various leadership roles at over seven organizations, and I still see this happening. You see, the problem with not including others isn’t an intention issue, the problem is more of an invisible one. We all have had different experiences and learned habits that are both conscious and unconscious. There’s often the challenge of not acknowledging the issues and/or being unsure how to effectively surface the realities. It can be very difficult to know where to start and what to do.

“To create an equitable environment, intention is paramount.”

I believe a leader is defined by how he or she chooses to use responsibility, not by his or her title. Part of that responsibility is a business leader’s obligation to embed “inclusion” into the systems, processes, rituals and symbols of an organization. Inclusion increases employee engagement, belonging and helps create an environment where people can show up as their authentic selves.

When people have the psychological safety to fully express who they are, they do better work, they come up with better ideas, they work better together and cross-functionally. This ultimately drives improved business performance. For organizations to prevail in the future, company leadership will need human judgment, empathy and inclusivity to achieve their full potential amidst new technologies, increased demands and competition, constant changes in customer needs and the expectations to do this all faster and better.

At Prophet, we leverage our Human-Centered Transformation Model to do just this.

Four tips on how to embed inclusion at your firm and with your clients:

1. DNA represents the Purpose, Values, Brand, Strategy and EVP that should direct the organization. Each one of should work to support inclusion. Many organizations have started to weave diversity into their purpose statements, for instance. You might spend a lot of time and money on diversity, but if you don’t have the “inclusion” part right, that diversity goes out the door, literally.

2. MIND is about having the right skills, talent and capabilities to drive the change. To do this internally, ask yourself: Do we have the right set of diverse skills, gender and talent in our pursuit team? Do we have a good balance of shared experiences and perspectives on our account? We should be investing the same amount of time matching talent and skills with including people from various backgrounds, experiences and cultures. If you look at your organization’s talent strategy and notice in the data that there might be certain groups of people leaving the organization at a faster rate than others, you should ask yourself and your clients: Do they have the right tools and opportunities in place to be successful here? Have they been invited to have a voice and decision-making authority in visible ways?

3. BODY is the processes, systems and tools in place. As a seasoned management consultant, we get the opportunity and privilege to solve complex business problems including re-designing systems that don’t incorporate inclusion at the heart of it. For example, Prophet has created a change champion program as part of our strategy to revamp the culture of a tech client. As advisors to the organization’s top leadership, we ensured that our team was mindful and intentional about including representation not only from each global business unit but also from the organization’s employee geography, race, tenure and gender. We also set about improving performance management and career development processes ensuring that it is more than “what you do” but “how you do it” while also linking it back to the organizations’ DNA.

4. SOUL is the mindsets, beliefs, rituals and symbols that ignite motivation and belief. Inclusion efforts must show up in a company’s daily routines and rituals. Some steps are simple, such as using preferred gender pronouns in LinkedIn and Zoom handles and during introductions at internal and client meetings. Others take more thought and require questions like: How representative is the group pitching new business, for example, or meeting with vendors?

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Great leadership and great communication go hand in hand. Just look at the greats—from Martin Luther King Jr. to Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela to Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Leaders who respect language as a force for change have transformed cultures, systems and policies. 

But how exactly do impactful leaders approach language to initiate such meaningful change? And how can leaders communicate to guide their organizations to success?  

Right now, we find ourselves in a reality that’s both ripe for change and steeped in the minutiae of the moment — where every word can be recorded, shared, scrutinized and misconstrued. For that reason, thoughtful and intentional communication from leaders is more important than ever before.  

To Guide Meaningful Change, Leaders Must Communicate with Purpose  

Organizations are changing at a deeper, structural level in response to the storm of urgent external forces like systemic inequality, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, the mental health crisis and the shift to hybrid working – with many having to respond to a number of these factors all at once. The result? A huge emphasis on organizational culture and change at a rapid pace.   

But we can’t talk about organizational culture transformation without talking about language. Language is one of the most powerful tools for inspiring focused action and influencing culture.   

The Anatomy of Effective Language  

The role of language is to connect—and intentionality is essential to connect effectively. When Aristotle spoke about language in his theory of language and meaning, he defined three ways to effectively connect with another individual or team: to open their mind through reason (logos), to open their heart with emotion and vulnerability (pathos) and to find common ground through a shared truth or values (ethos). Through these elements of language, leaders can connect, persuade and build trust more effectively.    

Language is a system that defines and pervades all other organizational systems and it’s both fueled and forged by your culture. It only makes sense then, that when your organization evolves, language must evolve along with it.   

Approaching Language During Transformation   

With companies going digital, organizational communication has a host of new challenges. How do you pick up the vibe on a Zoom call? How do you make one-on-one calls feel as natural and spontaneous as passing a colleague in the hall? It’s hard work, which is why so many leaders are eager to bring people back to the workplace. While it’s tempting to cling to the systems that have kept our workplace cultures humming for decades, we have been jettisoned into a hybrid, hyper-speed era—one that demands more dynamic, adaptable cultures. Language acts as both the cultural catalyst and the glue holding an organizational culture together.   

At Prophet, we think of the organization as a macrocosm of an individual. Like an individual, an organization has DNA, a Mind, Body and Soul — and when we are looking to effect transformation, it has to be human-centered across all these elements. Why? Because businesses don’t change. Humans change and then they change the business.  

Let’s look more closely at these four areas and the role that language plays:   

• DNA: How an organization defines their shared vision, values, purpose and ambition  
• Mind: Enabling the workforce to adopt new skills and drive change   
• Body: Language helps teams understand the systems needed to direct their transformation   
• Soul: Motivating employees and other stakeholders to contribute to the change  

By thinking about language through the lens of Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™, leaders can more effectively communicate throughout the transformation process.   

DNA | Defining the Change   

Language literally builds an organization’s DNA. That’s why crafting the DNA involves a careful thought-through, strategic, iterative process that captures data-driven insights and diverse perspectives from across the organization. The idea is to define and then express the new ethos in an authentic way.   

Recently, we worked with Thrivent, a major U.S. financial services organization, to transform its business and brand. Thrivent wanted to innovate its offerings and expand its reach to new markets while maintaining its loyal membership base and values.  

Defining the ambition with a team of data scientists, strategists and writers allowed for the team to take a more critical lens to the language used in the DNA of the organization. From this work, we defined a shared purpose that reflected Thrivent’s heritage and enabled everyone to align with the modern organization it was ready to become: Thrive with Purpose.  

We like to think of leaders as the carriers of this DNA, modeling shared values and purpose in both their words and actions, so we worked with Thrivent’s senior leaders and managers to create a launch video that introduced the new ambition and shared purpose to the whole organization. From there, we helped them roll out the new strategy, consulting on their communications and providing exact language — including a new brand voice and messaging — so managers and senior leaders could confidently share the new ambition and brand with their teams. Together, our work received the 2020 Transform award for tone of voice.  

Body | Directing the Change   

Embodying and directing any change requires a clear roadmap and reliable systems that give the DNA a place to materialize. We use language to set and measure clear goals and achieve them together (i.e., KPIs). Word choice in KPI development is critical because they must be clear, tangible, and directional.  

To develop these KPIs leaders should ensure they should:   

1. Ladder up to one of two key business drivers  
2. Be linked to the ambition and meaningful milestone on a roadmap  
3. Be aligned at a business or functional level before translating into team or individual goals   
4. Be shared and transparent  

Talent and performance development is a great example of this. A while back, we worked with a newly formed but significant global bio-pharmaceutical player with an ambition to create a more decisive, agile and performance-driven culture. To achieve this, the organization wanted to take a fresh approach to recognizing employee performance — including how it rewarded individuals and teams that truly made a difference.  

So, we set out to first clarify what “good” performance looked like. Then, we translated that new definition into a purpose-driven method of goal setting and performance conversations. We helped its team choose language more thoughtfully, which enabled managers to respond to this shifting performance criteria by having the right conversations.   

Mind | Enabling the Change   

To enable change, leaders must appeal to people through reason (logos) to help them adapt to the new set of values (ethos). If employees are clear on their roles and know exactly how to upskill to align with the ambition, you can establish capabilities built on trust and progress.   

For Thrivent, activating the new DNA proved challenging for their financial professionals because they run their own businesses around their personal philosophies. So, we found common ground, showing the connection between their values and the new brand purpose, promise and principles.   

Then we gave their professionals the tools — scripts, talking points, and educational resources that gave them the language to bring the brand DNA to life in their daily work. We also recorded interviews with them where they shared their financial philosophy through the language of the new brand promise. This helped them co-create accessible, on-brand language to share with clients.   

Soul | Motivating the Change   

The most enduring and dangerous myth about leadership is that you must have all the answers — and if you don’t have them, pretend you do. A leader who can admit when they don’t have all the answers gains trust. And when combined with that trust, a leader who makes space for employees to be seen, heard and understood helps to take people on a change journey.   

For a culture to flourish through a transformation, it’s vital for leaders across an organization to reinforce shared values, celebrate wins and share learnings as often as possible. In the Human-Centered Transformation Model™, we call this Soul. By motivating small wins throughout the organization transformation journey, employees feel recognized for their efforts and connected to something bigger than themselves.   

In addition to a regular and genuine celebration of small successes and learning moments, the single most powerful way a leader can motivate change is by showing vulnerability.  

When the pandemic hit, Prophet was among many organizations that closed the offices. We prepared to close for two weeks and were instructed to work from home. Those two weeks stretched to nearly two years. During this time, our CEO Michael Dunn, along with the Exco team, created a Global Pulse call, a bi-weekly check-in that connects all the firm for 45 minutes to meditate, share stories, talk about recent events and be “together”. While the Global Pulse calls were a direct response to the missing connections we had in the office, they have created a ritual that has given us all a sense of unity as well as opportunities to make space for the difficult experiences we were and are all facing.  

Michael Dunn starts every Global Pulse call with a guided meditation—a simple and gracious use of language that, over time, introduced new behaviors and cultural norms to the firm. To experience a guided meditation on that scale with fellow colleagues spoke directly to hearts and minds, and for many, became a ritual we relied on.  

“The single most powerful way a leader can motivate change is by showing vulnerability.”

What is also subtly powerful about this ritual is the name: Global Pulse. Alone these words are impactful, but together even more so. The invitation to “check the pulse” of our global culture serves as a warm reminder that our culture is a living, evolving aspect of our co-existence — and it influences all we do. 

We spoke with Michael about his reflections on the Global Pulse and use of language over the past 18 months. He noted, “For the first few months, and even up until now, I feel so much pressure to get the tone and experience just right. But I started to see that using the mindfulness exercise to open the forum, which I do along with everyone else who participates, helped create space for me to feel more present, more connected, more curious and more vulnerable, which then rippled across the globe for everyone who was participating. It helped to elevate the experience for everyone as we invited teams to offer gratitude, spotlight work or have hard conversations about the world around us and Prophet’s way forward.”  

The Global Pulse gave the firm both the space and the language to connect and speak on behalf of our needs. Some pulse calls are filled with photo sharing and stories about working from home. Others are set aside for difficult conversations or empathizing with those who are grieving. We had agendas, but oftentimes we led with our hearts. Because sometimes intentional language doesn’t always require polish. It can simply be about admitting what you don’t know, what you dare to believe and what you need.   

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