What If Corporate Culture Is Perfect, But I’m Not?
Robert Fuchs is a culture architect and creative design leader with a background in systemic psychotherapy. He leads the research of the HappinessGroup.eu on highly effective teams and corporate culture transformation. The HappinessGroup.eu develops meta-frameworks, methods, and tools for decision-making and problem-solving by integrating the latest insights from consciousness science and quantum mechanics with philosophical schools of thought.
I connected with Robert after he commented on one of my posts on LinkedIn. A conversation followed where we discovered the fascinating and groundbreaking research he was leading at the Happiness Group, in Munich, Germany. Robert’s work is a far-reaching project that is collecting, evaluating, and integrating state-of-the-art models from natural and social sciences to provide more people access to this collected knowledge.
Bill Fox: How can we create workplaces where every voice matters, everyone thrives and finds meaning, and change and innovation happen naturally?
Robert Fuchs: Change and innovation happen naturally in environments that foster learning and growth, which naturally leads to transformation and is the same as innovation.
Now comes the tricky part because the environment or the corporate culture is only partly visible through explicit values and value priorities. And at the same time partly invisible through our own constructions of this reality. This means that a culture can be perfect, but because of flaws in my consciousness, perception, and mindfulness of this reality, I can’t see the possibilities I have within this culture.
A culture can be perfect, but because of flaws in my consciousness, perception, and mindfulness of this reality, I can’t see the possibilities I have within this culture.
From a leadership perspective , I have to ensure that every voice is heard and relevance is seen in the diverse voices. From an individual perspective , I have to find a function within the organization that I can give meaning to. Meaning is not something external, but only I can give meaning to the things that happen in my life. Life by itself is meaningless unless I give it meaning. Function in combination with meaning results in purpose, so this is the personal task of every employee, which happens best in collaboration with the rest of the team. Only in interaction and collaboration with others can I find the sweet spot where purpose for the team and purpose for me personally intersect.
Because today roles and responsibilities change as fast as the business models they are grounded on, we have to regularly evaluate these tasks and refactor or reintegrate ourselves as we do with software.
Bill: What does it take to get an employee’s full attention and best performance?
Robert: The conditions for best performance are peace, love, and happiness. However, since these conditions are usually at least partially fake in hierarchical structures of organizations, we therefore need a truthful way to assess the state of attention or mindfulness.
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Self-determination.
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Psychological safety.
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Certainty about an information.
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Is the employee experiencing pressure to act or is it possible to act freely?
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Is the employee not able or not willing to perform at best?
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Is the employee mentally and emotionally present (or still in the past or already in the future)?
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Is the employee ready to learn something new?
Only if all four answers are “yes” we can assume the best conditions for successful information transformation. This applies of course to both agents in an interacting system. All other answers indicate a distorted reality construct and require change first.
To make this more tangible, we have to look at two aspects.
An employee’s attention depends on internal and external factors, so let’s look at the external factors first. Our brain works perfectly when we have to process the right amount of information with the right level of abstraction and complexity. If there is too much information, our brain produces misunderstandings. If there is too little information, our brain produces false assumptions. Both produce human error and are the sign of the absence of attention.
In other words, lack of attention can be a direct result of useless information input. Our internal resources are limited by our capacity, utilization, and availability to process new information. The smaller our capacity and the higher the utilization, the smaller is the availability—in this case, our attention to process new information. We have to be aware that our brain is in constant problem-solving mode as long as we have problems to solve. The more problems we concurrently have to process, the less we are able to focus on the problems at hand. In other words, the more private or personal problems we have, the more of our capacity is utilized, which results in less availability for new problems. In this case, the employee is not able to perform better until other problems, which rank higher, are solved. For example, if a child is sick or the employee has to look for a new apartment, then the new branding guideline of corporate marketing ranks a lot lower on my internal priority list.
The second dimension of attention lies with our talent and fitness or with our skills and abilities. The more skill in pattern recognition the employee has, the easier it is to make sense out of information and to derive meaning. In addition, the greater one’s fitness or level of pattern integration, the easier it is for employees to stay attentive. In other words, I would say that performance is based about 1/3 on the pattern recognition ability, 1/3 on the integration ability of new with existing knowledge, and 1/3 with physical fitness. Everybody has firsthand experience with attention when we have sleep deficits. Some companies even pay their workforce bonuses for sleeping 8 hours at night. Just look around during your next meeting and check how many of your coworkers are well rested. Then imagine the impact on their decision-making and problem-solving abilities.
Enough sleep, healthy diet, and regular exercise probably reduce most attention problems. The rest can be dealt with through clear and meaningful communication and with more consciousness in reflecting on personal issues—that keep us from paying full attention to a situation.
Bill: What do people really lack and long for at work?
Robert: From a philosophical perspective , people lack function, meaning, and purpose; and they long for peace, love, and happiness. If employees believe that the role and responsibilities they have serve a good purpose, they are happy at work. This leads to theoretical and practical implications.
The theoretical aspects can be derived from our understanding of living beings. The function, meaning, and purpose of living beings are learning, growth, and transformation (to who we truly are). This means that in order to learn, grow, and transform, we need liberty to explore new solutions, equality to perceive and communicate information on the same eye level, and fraternity for collaboration.
The practical aspects of performance can be derived from our understanding of decision-making and problem-solving processes. People perform at their best level if they are at peace with themselves and if they work in a peaceful environment. They also perform at their best when they can share love and empathy and feel loved themselves. Interactions with coworkers that make them feel happy are important too. The absence of any of those three aspects results in mental, emotional, and/or behavioral stress. When this occurs, performance drops sharply.
Now we come to the problem. We have to differentiate between what people “want” and what they “need” because those two are regularly different. People themselves have a hard time distinguishing those two from each other. The “wants” that people have are the short-term happiness factors. What people need are the long-term happiness factors. The problem with fulfilling short-term wants is that people need more and more to get the same positive experience. Whereas if a company focuses on the long-term needs, employees will become satisfied sustainably.
Having said all this, let’s take a look at a more global perspective and then think about the consequences for individual companies and employees. We know that we use up 1.5 times the resources of our planet within 1 year. This means that we are producing 50% more stuff than would be good for humanity as a whole. This means that the output of every second employee is harmful to humanity and therefore cannot be meaningful per se. The logical consequence is that no leadership or coaching initiative can seriously support employees in their journey to find meaning in what they are currently doing—unless it changes the business model of the company as well.
If employees complain about a lack of meaning in their work, chances are that their work is, in fact, meaningless, and they should quickly start looking for alternatives before they are replaced with an algorithm.
My advice would be to look for companies that focus on social change because only products and services that support social change will be sustainable in the future.
Bill: What is the most important question leaders should ask employees?
Robert: For me the key issues here are engagement and fulfillment, because they are root causes of happiness. Considering that 85% of the global workforce is disengaged (66% in the United States)1 and 50% would quit their job if they had a slightly better offer,2 they are together with the overall employee experience the most critical questions for any organization.
Disengaged means not integrated and unfulfilled means disbalanced. No system can function if its parts are not integrated and balanced with each other.
The most important question management should be asking employees is, “Are you happy?” Now this question, however, opens a huge can of worms because unhappiness can come from personal issues, organizational issues, or both. It is hard for management to differentiate those from each other due to their interconnected nature. However, it reflects the paradigm shift in leadership we see happening. Leaders will only have value in future organizations if they transform into coaches for their teams. Only if management is able to help and train employees to become better at understanding themselves and become better at decision-making and problem-solving. Hence, when employees are learning and growing, they will stay engaged, fulfilled, and happy.
What we see in employees a lot is “learned helplessness” behavior, which leads to burnout or bore-out.
Employees start at a company engaged and motivated only to realize some weeks later that whatever they suggest to make the company better or more effective—either structures or processes or both—isn’t acted upon. After about three times of fruitless engagement, people resort to the mode of “Just tell me what to do,” or “I don’t question anymore whether it makes sense or not.” This mental, emotional, and behavioral checkout is the worst that can happen to management because you can’t manage a dysfunctional and therefore unpredictable system.
Bill: What is the most important question employees should ask leaders?
Robert: I think the current view on employee engagement is too shortsighted. The future of work will change dramatically, so the focus of employees should not be on the present and how a company can fulfill my dreams and wishes today but in the future. Fifty percent of jobs will disappear due to digitalization and automatization within the next 20 years, and so will many business models and companies. The most important questions for employees should, therefore, be “What do I need to learn? How can I grow to still be more valuable than an algorithm in 5 years?” The point is that humans are in a race against algorithms. Only if we can do things bots can’t do will we have a job in the future. Only if we are more effective in learning, change, and transformation than AI, we as humanity will have a future.
The current view on employee engagement is too shortsighted. The future of work will change dramatically.
On a personal level, employees should, therefore, be asking management how they ensure continuous learning and growth, so they are prepared when they have to leave the company.
On a corporate level, employees should be asking management how they are ensuring adaptability and resilience of the company’s business model, structures, processes, products, and services to be sustainable, so they won’t have to leave the company sooner or later.
Bill: What is the most important question we should ask ourselves?
Robert: The most important question we can ask ourselves relates to our identity and is: Who am I? Only if we know who we are, can we accurately determine the possibilities and probabilities of our life.
Who we are consists of the three questions: What am I, how am I, and why am I? On the one hand, these questions either limit or open up possibilities and probabilities. On the other hand, these answers also show us our level of integration. Only if we can answer all three questions for every facet of our life are we integrated or have integrity. Only integrated systems can function properly. In other words, misunderstandings and false assumptions are the result of errors in our reality construct.
Fragmentation and disbalance give us the illusion of knowing when in fact we only believe to know.
On a personal level, the goal is always sustainable happiness which requires the integration and balance of our fragmented self. Like a fragmented hard disk, our brain, heart, and body become fragmented and disbalanced simply through usage. Fragmentation is a natural consequence when we are quicker to learn new information than we are able to integrate this new knowledge with our existing knowledge. Disbalance is the natural result if we get more of what we want up to a point when something good becomes bad. Fragmented and disbalanced knowledge cannot be applied to other areas and becomes not only useless, but it can cause consciousness, perception, and attention problems. Fragmentation and disbalance give us the illusion of knowing when in fact we only believe to know . Hence the common term of “dangerous half knowledge.”
If there are gaps and contradictions inside of me, I cannot create true peace outside of me and cannot perceive goodwill toward me.
If I don’t like myself, I cannot be empathic toward others and cannot perceive good deeds toward me.
If I am unhappy inside, no amount of fun culture around me can sustainably change that.
The only effective way to increase performance is therefore to start with understanding ourselves first, before judging other’s performance. Indicators of the fragmented and disbalanced self or cultures are “blame and alienation” which cause shame and guilt, arrogance and ignorance, pride and prejudice toward self and others. These distortions of the reality construct are the barriers to high performance. These barriers can be overcome with “forgiveness” and “reconciliation,” which lead to identity and intimacy, dignity and worth, humbleness and gratitude toward self and others.
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Adaptability and resilience
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Alignment and resonance
These skills and abilities automatically transform us to be engaged and fulfilled, prevent burnout and bore-out, and result in sustainable happiness—regardless of the cultural conditions around.
Key Takeaways
Change and innovation happen naturally when learning, growth, and transformation are fostered.
Flaws in personal perceptions of reality limit possibilities.
It’s the job of every employee to discover what has meaning for them.
Lack of attention can be a direct result of useless information.
Restful sleep, healthy diet, regular exercise, clear and meaningful communication, and conscious reflection are all important.
We need liberty to explore, equality to perceive, and fraternity for collaboration.
Companies should focus on long-term needs.
Leaders should ask their employees, “Are you happy?”
Employee ideas must be acted upon to avoid “learned helplessness.”
What do I need to learn to remain relevant to this company’s future?
We must know who we are to determine the possibilities and probabilities of our life.
Integration of our fragmented self gives us the illusion of knowing when in fact we only believe to know.
Indicators of the dysfunctional and disabled self are “blame” and “alienation,” which cause shame and guilt, arrogance and ignorance, pride and prejudice. In the presence of those distortions of the reality construct, high performance is not possible.
Indicators of the functional and enabled self are “forgiveness” and “reconciliation,” which lead to identity and intimacy, dignity and worth, humbleness and gratitude.
Learn and train the following skills and abilities: adaptability and resilience, alignment and resonance. The result is engagement and fulfillment or happiness under any condition.