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2.4 | How would you define and characterize your organizational culture? What are the gaps between what is and a more values-aligned, resilient, and compassionate culture?
Below, you will see the Session #2 reflection questions. Please answer these questions at the bottom of the screen.
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47 Replies
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I work for a very large federal bureaucracy; however, due to its mission (protecting public health & environment), we have a workforce of committed, skillful, and creative thinkers who tend to “buck” the system when needed. The gaps that exist are related to employee self care and burnout during a pandemic, while being tasked to protect public health. One cannot pour from an empty cup, which is why I’ve been asked to develop the Agency’s first mindfulness program- this is already showing progress in increasing behaviors that are compassionate, engaged, and mindful.
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We are an organization that supports minorities and advocates for their representation within the media arts community in New York. Our culture is not yet informed of mindfulness practices, but we use principles such as equality, care and social justice to serve our community. There are practices that could enhance our response to the needs of educators and other members of our organization. We could benefit for instance teaching more self-care practices to educators and students. We could also host circles to listen deeply to learn more from each other and inform our practices from different perspectives as we do here in the Wisdom Circle.
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I have been working as an independent contractor, which means I do not have a formal manager or peers that I work with daily. My current situation inadvertently left me without a “team culture” to participate in. I recently accepted a new role and looked forward to co-creating a values-aligned, resilient, and compassionate team culture!
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I am new to the Board of Directors of an organization dedicated to provide educational, vocational, academic, and environmental services to children and youth in a small town on the Mexican Pacific coast. Before Covid the staff numbered 50, and presently it is around 25. The center has been mostly closed, so services are seriously curtailed. The Board members are all, except for me, monolingual American (EstadoUnidenses). I would say that the organization is very traditional in terms of chain of command from the ED through each layer of administration and function. I think it is values-aligned, resilient, and compassionate. What is missing is a greater demand of results-based interventions, and it appears to be content with the status quo. I think it’s potential is greater but in these times of Covid expansion and innovation may not be appropriate.
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We are a very small non-profit that has experienced a lot of change as of late. People have left and new people have come on. Currently our culture is compassionate and resilient but I am starting to see difficulties between some of the new team members. I try to mediate the best I can through careful listening and asking questions rather than giving advice. I definitely helps keep me centered and it helps them too.
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I work at a large, government funded research organization, but I’m lucky to work on our diversity, equity, and inclusion team. We have the support of the leadership there are a lot of grassroots efforts throughout the divisions to bring DEI into people’s daily working lives. As with many things, the pandemic shifted our focus somewhat, and we’re just now looking at how to refocus on the DEI concepts at large. And there are always gaps. Wellness and self-care is an area that needs wider attention and mindfulness and compassion are not part of our vocabulary yet. I’ve also been aware of the values and culture of the larger organization and the culture on my small team. My former manager left several months ago and although I like my new manager very much, her style is very different and we need to do a little rebuilding our sense of being a team and spend sometime defining what our culture will be.
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I work in a very small (3 person) startup with no physical office. Two of us are in the Bay Area, the third in Chile. We have a daily meeting that ranges from 30 minutes to 2 1/2 hours depending on the needs/phase of the project, but virtually all of our conversation is project-focused. I’m badly burned out, and operating well below peak efficiency. There has been the oft-implied promise that things will get better when we progress to the next stage (of funding, product maturity, user traction, employee growth…) and I feel that the carrot has been yanked away a few times. I *do* like my co-workers, but it has been very hard, and change, even when more resources are available will probably be difficult. I feel stuck between a loyalty to the team and a sense that the situation is not serving me well.
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I work in a small private University. I find my organizational culture disjointed and unaligned – we do not walk our institutional talk, at least not consistently nor closely, yet celebrate having done it nevertheless. I do believe that practice itself is the goal, but there is a fine yet clear distinction between genuinely engaging in the practice of stated values, and simply parroting those values back (with words or actions), without concretely embedding them into the systemic fabric of the institution, even if imperfectly. In my view, a compassionate holistic view of the institution (as an embodiment of its mission) and its parts (people, culture and material resources) is the necessary foundation that my organization so far has failed to acknowledge and build upon – I also think because often compassion is misrepresented as pity, charity or as a “giving in to weakness” (how very un-American and anti-progress), it is discarded as a potential asset for an organization’s growth.
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The organization has a creed, a set of beliefs which guide employee’s actions and binds us together as a group. The creed is a culmination of values that supports the achievement of the organization’s mission by empowering our people to achieve their full potential and by providing the guardrails by which decision making is guided. The gap or opportunity is for the organization to fully operationalize the creed/values into the operating system of the organization. Our people, processes and systems need to be built with intentionality to support and reinforce these values. The organization is going through a significant amount of change after evolving the vision and mission. Change will be the only constant and as a result resilience and compassion will be integral to progress. Slowing down to build the framework and provide the thought leadership and space for discussion in these areas is needed.
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My organization is deeply mission-driven. We are human-first, kindness-first, believe in second-chances and the potential in people. We have really tried to support staff through the pandemic by offering support (financial and time off) and are doing as much as we possibly can for our clients. We are also on our way in our racial equity journey. We have a staff led taskforce that will help us tackle organizational equity priorities surrounding power and shared decision making. I feel very aligned in my values with the organization – AND I would love to push us to be more transparent and lean into our areas of discomfort.
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Our organizational culture is strong and the best I’ve experienced, well-codified, acted upon, purpose-driven and with a lot of compassion. Having said that it has been very stretched by the pandemic with everyone being apart, and increasingly seems to vary by team and leader as there is less time and place that is “together”. One gap that needs to be continually worked on is being even more transparent at an organizational level about how difficult things continue to be for individuals even if the company is doing well. And encouraging everyone to ask for help and show their vulnerabilities so that they can be supported and know that they belong– even more at a premium now that things are virtual.
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I work for a large mental health plan…a county operated mental health plan for adults and older adults.
it has good values and vision and is motivated by these human compassionate values…because it is bureaucracy, it is saddled with many problems that create stress for staff to do their jobs with ease…we are a trauma informed system and have been working on infusing trauma informed, compassionate attitudes towards all in the organziation -
I see my organization as value-aligned and driven by people with a lot of compassion. Our services our directly tied to our organization’s mission and we fill a big need in our community. All the people who work here are very well aligned with this. Leadership also supports compassion towards employees which resonates throughout our organization.
We are growing and this brings along challenges in staffing and people adjusting to constant change. There are some who are more resilient than others when it comes to managing change, and art of my responsibility is to learn this about the people and build upon those areas. The shared values certainly fosters more resilience, we have very low turnover and overall employee and client satisfaction. -
I’ve never worked with an organization that actively practices and cares about resilience and the wellbeing of those within it as much as where I have been working recently. Having seen the “other side” in past jobs, I see and cherish this. That said, I see some tension between team members’ desires to support each other and certain rigid policies that are intended to protect the organization. The authentic desire and willingness to critically self-reflect, however, gives me confidence that we will strive to continually move towards alignment.
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upon more reflection on this topic, I become aware that it is the hearts of the participants in the organization that keep it going and moving in the compassionate trauma informed direction/commitment to the well being of those we serve….it is the nature of systems to fall into entropy…entropy is analagous to “impermanence” that the Buddha teaches – part of leading in a system is helping folks work with this impermanence – flexibility of thinking and openness to other perspectives always needs to take the stage because impermanence and change are inevitable. As soon as we have a process/structure that works, it is time to “re-invent”; to work with the flow of things….
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