Naomi Stanford

On the flight home yesterday I listened to the podcast of the HBI Idea Cast on Why a Happy Brain Performs Better.

In this guest Guest: Shawn Achor, CEO of Aspirant and author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work talks about the principles of thanking people,

It's back to the field of positive psychology that I've talked about in previous posts. The book information tells us that

"Happiness fuels success, not the other way around. When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work. This isn't just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe."

So like the questions I asked on how many organizations want a culture of gratitude How many want a culture of happiness? A similar question was raised in a recent article in the Economist – The Joyless or the Jobless which asked: Should governments pursue happiness rather than economic growth?

The article notes that in the UK right now: The jobless now outnumber the joyless-there is nothing like a drop in GDP to remind everyone how much this much-maligned metric matters. But despite the economic gloom, economists and policymakers have not lost their interest in happiness. This month David Cameron, Britain's prime minister, asked the Office of National Statistics to measure the country's "general well-being", as part of his promise to focus on GWB (General Well Being) not just GDP.

At this point there are 27 comments on the article arguing various points on the connections between money and happiness that could equally be made at an organizational level.

In a Wall Street Journal (November 23) article there is a connection made between gratitude and happiness

"A growing body of research suggests that maintaining an attitude of gratitude can improve psychological, emotional and physical well-being.

Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not, according to studies conducted over the past decade. They're also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy or alcoholics. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly and have greater resistance to viral infections. "

This article mentions the Journal of Happiness Studies that I hadn't heard of and felt bound to look at . One of the articles in the current issue is titled The Connection Between Happiness and Service Businesses: A Preliminary Study. Its abstract reads:

Happiness may be one of the most important goals that many people pursue in the world. This study adopts a qualitative approach to investigate the determinants of happiness for Taiwanese/Chinese people. Further, we investigate related service opportunities for happiness via a field survey of 808 respondents. This study identifies four happiness segments for people in Taiwan/China: Influential & Outgoing, Adequately Settled, Pleasure Seeking, and Young & Restless. These four happiness segments differ markedly in terms of characteristics and potential service opportunities. The findings of this study have implications for researchers who are seeking to understand happiness in an Asian country.

An article in October's journal Well-Being and Trust in the Workplace also looks interesting – particularly in relation to one of my current pieces of work on teleworking. We already know that teleworking brings numerous benefits to employees. But we also know that one of the barriers to extending teleworking is manager trust in their employees who are teleworking. ("If I can't see you how do I know you're working?")

This paper uses life satisfaction regressions based on three surveys in two countries (Canada and the United States) to estimate the relative values of financial and non-financial job characteristics. The well-being results show strikingly large values for non-financial job characteristics, especially workplace trust and other measures of the quality of social capital in workplaces. For example, an increase of trust in management that is about one tenth of the scale has a value in terms of life satisfaction equivalent to an increase of more than 30% in monetary income. We find that these values differ significantly by gender and by union status. We consider the reasons for such large values, and explore their implications for employers, employees, and policy-makers.

So the links between gratitude, happiness, and higher performance are both researchable, and researched. I'm still wondering how to help the organization I'm working with develop more of a culture of gratitude and happiness with the outcome of increasing performance.

I was having a drink last night with a friend who mentioned the trust equation. We were talking about it in relation to doing consulting and collaborative work face to face and on-line. What we were both interested in was in the age of IBM Jams, Imaginatik collaborative software, and other forums for on-line crowdsourcing and/or problem solving. Do people need to meet face to face and if so when.

This question of face to face meetings is also pertinent to the questions I'm working on around teleworking. How often do managers need to meet with employees? What oils the wheels of relationships in the workplace? Do we need to suggest that teams meet face to face for social and business events at regular intervals? Are face to face meetings 'better' in the start up of a project or relationship than on-line, etc. etc.

Probably vast volumes of research exist on just this topic but since this was a social meeting we weren't about to get out our i-pads and take a look on who's written what on the topic.

So we were reliant on personal memory and experience. We started to talk about the necessary ingredient of relationships as being 'trust'. People had to feel confident that others they were working with could be trusted off-line and face to face. I suggested the Richard Sennett book which is not about trust but about respect The book by him that I was talking about is called Respect in an Age of Inequality but has a number of mentions on the necessity of trust.

My friend mentioned the trust equation. I'd not heard of this but wrote it on the napkin as he dictated it. Now I've looked it up I find an excellent explanation on the Trusted Advisor website in a downloadable pdf format.

Briefly, trust equals credibility, plus reliability, plus intimacy, divided by self-orientation. There follows a definition of each word and an explanation of how the equation works in practice. As follows:

Credibility has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence, we might say, "I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she is very credible on the subject.

By contrast, reliability has to do with actions. We might say, for example, "If he says he'll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he's dependable."

Intimacy refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, "I can trust her with that information; she's never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me."

Self-orientation refers to the focus of the person in question. In particular, whether the person's focus is primarily on himself or herself or on the other person. We might say, "I can't trust him on this deal-I don't think he cares enough about me, he's focused on what he gets out of the deal." Or-more commonly-"I don't trust him-I think he was too concerned about how he was appearing, so he wasn't really paying attention."

Increasing the value of the factors in the numerator increases the value of trust. Increasing the value of the denominator-that is, self-orientation-decreases the value of trust.

From the same website there's an ebook on the topic and a self diagnosis Trust Quotient Self Diagnosis test.

So something new learned over a face to face drink – now to find the answers to the question when is face to face needed in building successful working relationships versus when it is fine to start (and stick with) on-line.

One of the things I get asked a lot is about making organizations flexible and adaptable so that they can weather the forces that assail them from various directions. Looking out of my window this morning at the torrential rain and gusting winds I wondered if the weather would clear for my running training this evening and I consulted the weather forecast. It was accurate. The rain stopped.

It's much more difficult to get any accurate forecast for organizations to plan against but a couple of days ago I got an email from the University of Houston, reminding me that I'd previously shown interest in their Certificate in Strategic Foresight.

"This is a 5-day, project-based, face-to-face workshop. Participants learn to anticipate disruptive change and work towards the creation of transformational change, in order to influence the future of their organizations, companies and communities. Participants can obtain the Certificate if they complete a project within a given number of weeks."

This was true and I looked at the flyer about it again. In the footer of the flyer is the legend "College of Technology Futures, Preparing Foresight Professionals." Always curious and skeptical I googled 'foresight professionals' half expecting a lot of tarot card or palm readers. However, what came up first was Global Foresight (www.globalforesight.org). It has a list of foresight professionals by country and in the case of the US by state. Dr Peter Bishop, course director of the Houston program. is listed in Texas and his one liner tells us that he "runs the oldest MS program in futures in the world (started 1975)."

Peter Bishop's name is below Don Beck's. I'd not heard of Don Beck before last night, when over dinner with a friend I used to work with we were talking about Ken Wilber's book Integral Spirituality which the friend was reading. Somewhere in that discussion the name Don Beck came up. So now I've come across the name twice in two days when I'd not heard it previously.

Anyway, the connection between Wilber and Beck is lies in their interest in "The Integral Age". Beck tells us "He [Beck] has inspired thousands of people toward a new experience of organizational and personal empowerment through Spiral Dynamics (Spiral Dynamics Integral), his unique values-based model that charts the evolution and emergence of human nature."

While Wilber, apart from writing books, co-founded Source Integral not a mineral water but "a boutique management consulting firm" whose purpose is to

develop the organizational capacity to address global challenges before they become threats to the existence and further development of the human race. This requires nothing short of an evolution in how world leaders think and the kind of organizational structures, systems, and processes they create.

I have a rather short attention span/interest level on some of the Beck/Wilber type of writing. But even so, I began to read Beck's Human Capacity in the Integral Age which starts off

The focus on the role of productivity in enhancing competitiveness, while generating wealth and cultural well-being, has shifted over time from the micro (personal, team and "circles") to the meso (organizational design and performance) and now the macro (large scale and complex systems). Likewise, the essential thinking around productivity matters has emerged through systemic, strategic, humanistic and now integral patterns and organizing paradigms.

And after only a couple more paragraphs I found myself drifting off into remembering buying whole wheat bread in France "pain integral" and had to pull myself back to the color coding of "eight distinct worldviews or vMEMES" that both Beck and Wilber subscribe to.

Giving up on Bishop, Beck, and Wilber but still pursuing learning about future thinking I looked at the Said Business School's Scenario's Programme. In plain English I learned that

"Decisions made today assume a given future context; the objective of scenarios is to invite you to consider several alternative future environments to help improve the effectiveness (and robustness) of your understanding and decision."

But the program that really grabbed me was Strathclyde's Centre for Scenario Planning and Future Studies. Deputy director and general manager of the Centre, George Burt, said, "The Centre is about working with organisations that want to be pro-active in managing their future, whether it's in Scotland or elsewhere. It's about utilising human judgement and adopting a learning framework for the future."
Scenario planning is not about forecasting the future but looking at all the possibilities. It involves using and building on a key resource – the information already known by people within the organisation, but enriched with external non-traditional perspectives."

If you know of other programs based on future studies, scenarios, or foresight capability let me know.

Yesterday I listened to a webinar on Growing Better Talent Faster produced by Rypple. It was presented by Marc Effron, author of One Page Talent Management: Eliminating Complexity, Adding Value (Harvard Business Press) Growing Better Talent Faster!

You can see the slides and recording through this link: http://rypple.com/webinar/marc-effron. The key message of this (taken from the book) was that over engineered performance management systems don't work for anyone. Looking at the related Rypple blog site the report they mention 2010 Study on the State of Performance Management (by World at Work and Sibson Consulting)

58% of HR executives gave their performance management systems a grade of "C" or below. A grade of "C" or below means "not effective." And…only 3% of HR executives gave their performance management systems a grade of "A" (meaning "extremely effective at achieving desired results"). The result of this is that leaders are not 'grown' through the performance management system.

Last week I listened to another webinar. This one by Bill Pasmore of the Center for Creative Leadership. It had some overlaps in that it too tackled some questions around what leadership skills are needed to compete in an environment that is becoming increasingly more "volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous" It was offered through the Organization Design Forum and is available free to members or $49 to non members. Bill's point was that the organizations successful at growing leaders have certain characteristics. For example, they:

• Create attraction by making work fun and interesting
• Eliminate many of the barriers that exist in role-bound, hierarchical structures
• Embrace leaders with a love for what they do
• Hire and retain like-minded individuals
• Create constant challenge and welcome innovation
• Invent killer business models and products that generate revenue that sustains the energy and fun
• Build attractive places to work and attractive cultures to work in; a place that's a vessel for the human spirit
• Allow people to achieve their dreams

This means growing leaders who are capable of working in that style of environment. It seems a chicken and egg situation. Which comes first the leaders who develop that kind of culture or the culture in which that type of collaborative (rather than back stabbing, political, turf protector) leader can thrive?

So I was amused when a friend drew my attention to one of Lucy Kellaway's column in the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago Don't give hiring a moment's notice. Kellaway picks up the on the idea that 'Promoting people at random makes companies more efficient." She had found some research

developed by three Italians at the University of Catania who used mathematical simulations and game theory to make their point. If they are right, with one bound they have overturned everything we ever thought we knew about [performance] management.

She makes the point that the corporate world

has developed a raft of complex promotion systems, all based on merit. We compile long lists of "competencies" and draw matrices and give people scores. We do psychometric tests, give interviews, role plays, simulations. We have industries of HR people and headhunters to agonise about "skillsets" and "cultural fit". But even with the best will in the world, we often don't know what sort of merit we are looking for or recognise it when we see it.

A further trouble is that the people making decisions don't usually have the best will in the world. Instead we are swayed by all sorts of things we shouldn't be swayed by. How tall someone is, or how good looking they are. What school they went to. We compare them to ourselves and either hire people just like us or, under extreme duress from our chief diversity officer, we hire people because they are not like us at all.

She suggests that

"promotion and hard work aren't closely linked anyway. The random system would boost morale by eliminating petty politics and resentment. It would save acres of time. It would mean the dreaded word diversity was never heard again. It would be the end of HR and executive search.

Indeed the new system might even make the average person work harder. If I knew that I might suddenly become CEO tomorrow I would look sharp today, as I wouldn't want to disgrace myself. "

Just to confirm I looked up the research by Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda and Cesare Garofalo in it they show

by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable, but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization. Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.

I'm now waiting for the research that proves that any performance management system – simple or over engineered – is promoting people at random anyway, and no-one can predict until they're in position whether or not they will be capable of steering the organization successfully in the "volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous" world, and even if they can for a while they may not be able to in the longer term.

Last week I took a road trip by Greyhound bus. Since I'd also taken various other transport trips in the last month (2 different airlines to get me to Shanghai, Amtrak to New York, subways in DC, and Shanghai, buses in DC) the Greyhound experience was just another travel experience to enjoy or endure.

This Greyhound one started off with booking my ticket on-line. That was straightforward enough. Fortunately the day before I read the small print in the acknowledgement email and saw that seats were allocated on a 'first come' basis and if the bus got filled before you got on then you had to wait for the next one. I was traveling on the busiest travel day of the US travel year.

I got the bus to the Greyhound depot arriving 2 hours ahead of departure time. There were a lot of people there, and a very long line a) because the two machines for pre-booked tickets were not operational, b) because there were only two staff members dealing with non NY tickets (out of 8 available desks), and one dealing with solely NY tickets (short line). I stood in the long line as I wasn't going to NY and I couldn't get my pre-booked ticket from the machine.

Then I saw that there was a subsidiary notice above the NY ticket seller's head that said 'on-line pick up'. I decided to change line, knowing at that point I was dependent on the good will of the agent who might have refused to give me an on-line bought ticket that wasn't for NY. Fortunately she didn't she just wanted my confirmation number which I'd written down to hand to her. That wasn't what she wanted. She wanted me to read it out to her. OK.

Since I was now speaking with an agent I asked to change my ticket to an earlier return. That was not what this agent was going to do. Oh well.

Gate 8, 10:00 departure – well over 55 people in the line for the 55 person bus but by some fluke I was about 54 in the line. Getting on, I had the choice of sitting beside an extra large person or a truly enormous person in either case my seat space was diminished.

Operator Johnson (the driver) began her instructions. 'I want all cell phone on vibrate. I do not want to hear a cell phone ring. If I hear a cell phone ring there will be an accident. If I hear you speaking to a person on your phone in a voice louder than quiet there will be an accident. I cannot be distracted from driving. Do I make myself clear?'

What I enjoyed a lot was the refrain from the 54 passengers 'We hear you Operator Johnson' with loud laughter all around. (I didn't know I had to respond!)

Next instruction. 'Anyone with a soda can or plastic bottle must not let it drop to the floor. It will roll around. It will get under my accelerator pedal. There will be an accident. I cannot have drinks containers on the floor. Do I make myself clear?' Refrain 'We hear you Operator Johnson'. (55 passengers).

Next announcement with the bus now having left the depot. 'Since this bus is full it will be an express. No one can get off before Charlottesville. There will be no stops. I repeat this bus is an express. Do I make myself clear?' Refrain 'We hear you Operator Johnson'. I don't know if there were any people who wanted to get off at one of the normally scheduled stops before Charlottesville but if there were they weren't prepared to speak up. Operator Johnson was fierce and funny!

We got to Charlottesville and were instructed that this bus was terminating there. "The next bus is at 1:30. Do not wander out. If you wander out the bus will leave without you. There is no other bus today. Repeat the next bus is 1:30. Do I make myself clear?" Refrain: "We hear you Operator Johnson". The next bus finally arrived at 3:00 p.m. with no apology or explanation. People started to ask each other – maybe this is how rumors get started people supplying missing information? Finally, I did locate an agent to ask who said the bus would arrive 'soon'.

Settled on the next bus – the operator did not announce himself nor make any other announcements. I did wonder about the different customer experiences. Seat belts, for example, these are not even fitted to Greyhound buses let alone required to be worn (as in the UK). Operator consistency in announcing – is this needed? UK coaches like Greyhounds have a safety announcement, and then a certain amount of driver discretion on other commentary.

Does the non-working automated ticket pick up system indicate a lack of maintenance – does this extend to the buses? What does lack of schedule information mean? It could be chaos behind the scenes, inadequate tracking systems, lack of forecast of demand … What does inadequate staffing on the busiest travel day of the year mean? Possibly staff staying off suddenly sick to cook turkey, or inadequate rostering arrangements, or lack of forecasting of demand, or inflexible terms and conditions preventing additional staff being called on. What do surly , or unavailable, counter agents mean for the company?

However, it was certainly fun to have Operator Johnson in charge. Can one person change the impression of a company? One felt confident in someone so determined not to allow any distractions that might result in an accident. But what is the accident rate? Checking the Greyhound accident statistics was interesting. In the 24 months prior to 11/24/2010 they'd had 143 crashes and their safety rating was 'satisfactory'. (They record 2,735 drivers). Detailed accident data was not available for reasons given on the SafeStat online website

So here's a short case study I might present in my next organization design training program. A start point for assessing an organization – by observation, experience, data search, and seeking answers to a lot of open questions.

Well, over the weekend I've got hooked on organizational cultures of gratitude. I've now discovered an article by Charles Kerns at the Graziadio School of Business and Management. His article Counting your blessings will benefit yourself and your organization. has a good number of references to explore (including some from Robert Emmons whom I mentioned in my previous blog on this topic), and a second article by Kerns, Putting Performance and Happiness Together in the Workplace bears a strong likeness to the Harrison article I mentioned in my previous blog on Cultures of Gratitude. I'm not implying plagiarism here. It's just that Kerns suggests that 'Happy High Performers' exhibit the following characteristics:

These individuals:

1. Have a clear direction.
2. Find that direction motivating.
3. Focus on what is important and what they can influence.
4. Are linked to the resources necessary to execute key actions.
5. Talk and act in ways that promote performance and happiness.
6. Are significantly engaged in their work.
7. Find meaning and purpose in their work.
8. Have more positive experiences than negative experiences at work.
9. Are grateful about the past and do not carry grudges.
10. Are optimistic looking into the future.
11. Achieve agreed upon results.
12. Are happy about their workplace.

And Harrison suggests that high performing organizations share qualities such as these:

• The work situation engages the total person.
• The values that people experience in the work transcend personal advantage. The situation evokes altruism, which is satisfying to everyone involved. People feel they are working for something bigger than themselves.
• People give their all, working long hours without complaint.
• People supervise themselves, seeking out what needs to be done without direction from above.
• There is high morale, teamwork, and a sense of camaraderie. The group frequently feels itself to be elite or special.
• There is a sense of urgency; people live "on the edge," putting out high energy for long periods of time.
• There is a clearly understood mission that is articulated and supported at the highest level of the organization.

These lists seem to have a lot in common. What do they share with cultures of gratitude (were such a thing to exist)? I haven't got to the point of describing a culture of gratitude but a report called 'I didn't do it alone: society's contribution to individual wealth and success' has several lovely examples of people thanking the social systems that enabled them to generate wealth. For example,

At a 1996 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, [Warren] Buffett noted that the American system
"provides me with enormous rewards for what I bring to this society." In a television interview, Buffett stated: "I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I've earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you'll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil. I will be struggling 30 years later. I work in a market system that happens to reward what I do very well – disproportionately well."

And another example: Amy Domini the founder and president of the Domini Social Equity Fund points to a number of other public services that allowed her business to grow:

Getting my message out over the public airwaves has allowed me to be far more successful than if I had been born in another time and place. The mail runs on time, allowing me to communicate with existing and potential shareholders, and the rise of the publicly financed Internet has lowered the costs of these communications still further. I can fly safely – and most often conveniently – throughout the country, sharing my ideas and gaining new clients, again thanks to a publicly supported air travel system.

Acknowledging that one is supported, and examining ones role in interacting with the support seem to be central to a gratitude of culture, and these are both implied in the two lists of characteristics of high performance organizations shown.

Although there's a certain amount on 'happiness' in organizations. There's very little that I've found so far on the topic of gratitude as an organizational capability. One short piece I came across: The Effect of Gratitude on Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Customer Satisfaction, by Dora Schmit of Louisiana State University has a research propoal abstract that reads as follows:

This research proposes that management's expression of gratitude can influence employee state gratitude; in turn, this increases the likelihood of an employee engaging in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors directed at the customer … [these behaviors] directly increase customer satisfaction. … while also having indirect benefits for the organization and the employee.

But it's not clear whether the research did take place and I did not find any follow up work from her on the topic. (I've emailed and am waiting for a reply).

UPDATE: December 1 2010. Dora Schmit tells me that: "Yes, I published a copy of the abstract in the Society for Marketing Advances Conference Proceedings (2009). I presented my work there as well. I am actually still working on this project, and in fact, I am actually pursuing a dissertation on gratitude & marketing."

Any other research work that anyone knows of on creating organizational cultures of gratitude would be appreciated.

I haven't yet come across a CEO who says he/she wants to instill in their organization 'a culture of gratitude'. I've heard them ask for cultures of innovation, teamwork, collaboration, creativity, and customer service among others but not gratitude.

Yet organizations, thinking of them here as entities with personas, have a lot to feeling grateful for: that they have customers or clients willing to buy their products and service, that they have suppliers able to supply them with stuff to operate, that they have shareholders willing to invest money in them, (or in the case of non-profits volunteers willing to invest time in them), that they have employees willing to work for them, that they have regulations to help their competitive position (witness SAP just having to pay Oracle $1.3 billion this week in a copyright infringement lawsuit). I'm sure you can think of other aspects in where organizations could feel gratitude. Would having a 'culture of gratitude' make a difference to performance – preferably in the direction of high performance? Maybe, but probably only if gratitude was seen as a positive organizational attribute and not a credibility buster.

Years ago (1987) I remember Roger Harrison wrote a pamphlet called Organization Culture and Quality of Service: a strategy for releasing love in the workplace. I went to look for it online as I was writing this piece. I did not find the pamphlet there (though I have since found it in physical form on my bookshelf) but I did find an essay (2008) Accessing the Power of Love in the Workplace written by Harrison in which he says:

For most of my working life, love has not been an idea in good currency in organizations-to say the least. When, in the eighties, I first wrote about the importance of understanding love in the workplace and tapping into its power, I did so against the counsel of trusted colleagues who had my best interests at heart and were concerned that I maintain my credibility.

It's an interesting essay to read because 'love' in the workplace is like 'gratitude' in that neither is expressed as and organizational cultural attribute that could add value by being cultivated – though you sometimes see them voiced or evident at an individual level in organizations.

What set me down this path of thinking today (Thanksgiving Day) on gratitude was the article I'd just sent someone on Naikan called Reflecting on You, by Harris Salat. Naikan is a Japanese therapy that has gratitude (as well as guilt) at its core. Investigating this a bit further I found an interview with Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and author of two books on gratitude.

In the interview he says "It [gratitude] really becomes an attitude that we can choose that makes life better for ourselves and for other people." The Naikan approach mentioned in the Salat article suggests that by regularly asking yourself three questions: What have I received from (insert name)? What have I given (insert name)? What troubles or difficulties have I caused (insert name)? You will, over time, in Emmons words "acknowledge where things come from and the people to whom one is indebted. And this regular practice of working with the questions brings remarkable personal benefits in terms of happiness, and health benefits to people who practice it. "

Both the article and the interview intrigued me as I was already familiar with organizational techniques that focus not on trying to overcome barriers, obstacle, and hurdles to issues, but rather looking for what's going well in organizational life and aiming to extend or replicate it – Appreciative Inquiry, and 'Positive Deviance' are two approaches to this but neither is looking specifically at gratitude. My thought is that organizational cultures of gratitude could be beneficial to all stakeholders.

So are there any organizations interested in cultivating 'cultures of gratitude' and if not, would it be beneficial if they were? Any answers to this question would be much appreciated?

One of the nice things of organizational development consulting is the range of work that comes my way. This week it's been a new piece for me – community gardening. This started with the move to hoteling and hot desking when we issued an edict that personal potted plants would not be feasible in a situation where people did not have their 'own' desk. (The organization does not have a contract with a company to bring in and maintain plants).

Given that people are moving to a new building with all sorts of accolades for green-ness and sustainability there was, rightly, significant 'pushback' on the plant issue. We got a delightful email from one of the environmental experts that the organization employs giving all the benefits of plants in terms of mitigating the effects of chemical toxins and fume given off by new carpets, furnishings, and so on.

The net result has been a suggestion that we instigate a community plant scheme. The details need to be hammered out but there's a certain amount of information to draw on – mostly related to outdoor community gardens.

The New York Times ran an article on thistopic in May this year. Titled 'The rise of company gardens' it comments on the increasing number of companies (Pepsico included) whose employees are gardening in office time and space. The article reports:

As companies have less to spend on raises, health benefits and passes to the water park, a fashionable new perk is emerging: all the carrots and zucchini employees can grow.

Carved from rolling green office park turf or tucked into containers on rooftops and converted smoking areas, these corporate plots of dirt spring from growing attention to sustainability and a rising interest in gardening. But they also reflect an economy that calls for creative ways to build workers' morale and health.

Molly Mann's blog commenting on the NY Times article makes the point that:

Corporate gardens yield myriad benefits for employees and employers alike. Though it may not be feasible in all corporate settings, installing a patch of green amid a sea of cubicles is a great way to improve worker health and morale without digging too deeply into the company budget.

Our plan is to have indoor plants that are maintained by employees with guidance on the types of plants that would work in the amount of light that's available, where to site them, how to think about using them for internal 'landscaping', and similar.

Getting somewhat carried away we began to imagine herb gardens in planters in the kitchen areas – in fact the US Green Building Council does have this – with the notion that employees could enhance their lunch with office grown herbs.

Anyway that is somewhat in the future. The first step is to float the idea and see how many people are interested. Then work out the design of the scheme including methods of operating it – pilot, payment, committee, etc, etc? No doubt we'll have to run the gamut of barriers (health and safety, financial, compliance, etc) but its worth taking a shot at getting it up and running.

Last week I did a learning teleconf call with the Plexus Institute, It is "a not-for-profit organization that was formed in 2001 by a small group of people from diverse backgrounds who shared a vision of discovering the most beneficial uses for the insights from complexity science". Because as the site states "Clearly, we need a new way of looking at work and organizations of all types." And complexity science applications offer that new way.

The teleconf calls led by the Institute are described as follows:

PlexusCalls are designed to let you listen in to unrehearsed, spontaneous conversations among leading complexity scholars and practitioners from the comfort of your home or workplace. … The format is simple. The calls last an hour and are held on many Fridays on a conference line.

So the theme of my conference call was my new book Corporate Culture: Getting it Right and the topic was "Does Corporate Culture Exist." You can listen to the discussion by clicking on this link.

What was interesting for me was the questions. I didn't know in advance what they would be, so thinking on my feet around "What's the difference between a corporate persona and corporate culture?" or "why is it that people have to wield two swords?" was a good challenge. Not least because I realized that Sharon Benjamin, the interviewer had read my book closely and picked up on many of the pieces that I found most interesting to research and write about. The two swords question relates to an exercise in the book around cultural fluency adapted from Adapted from: Moran, R. , Harris, P. Moran, S. (2007) Managing Cultural Differences, Seventh Edition: Global Leadership Strategies for the 21st Century . Elsevier. It goes like this:

Miyamoto Musashi a seventeenth century Japanese Samurai, learned to handle two swords at one time. To be skillful, effective and successful in one's own culture by being assertive, quick, and to the point is one mode of behaviour. To be skillful, effective and successful in another culture by being unassertive, patient, and indirect is another mode entirely – like being able to handle two swords at one time. This exercise helps with such a situation.

Step 1: Ask individuals to read the list of adjectives, that could describe a manager, below and circle the ones that apply to them.

Assertive, energetic, decisive, ambitious, confident, quick, aggressive, competitive, impatient, impulsive, quick-tempered, intelligent, excitable, informal, versatile, persuasive, imaginative, witty, original, colourful, calm, easy-going, good-natured, tactful, forceful, unemotional, good listener, inhibited, shy, absent-minded, cautious, methodical, timid, lazy, procrastinator, enjoy responsibility, resourceful, individualist, broad interests, limited interests, good team worker, enjoy working alone, sociable, co-operative, quiet, easily distracted, serious, idealistic, sceptical, abrasive, cynical, conscientious, flexible, mature, dependable, honest, sincere, reliable, adaptable, curious.

Using these qualities skillfully is like handling one sword.

Step 2: Now ask individuals to think of a business trip to another country, or a meeting with a different department, and ask them to circle the qualities that they think the other people will be looking for in them.

Step 3: Discuss what individuals will have to do/learn to be able to wield the second sword successfully as they meet with people with different cultural expectations and norms.

When I've done the exercise with people it does open the discussion on the way culture and language are exhibited and interpreted. I'm not sure that this starts to answer the question 'does corporate culture exist' but it does illustrate the complexities involved in thinking of ways to 'change the culture' as so many leaders aspire to do.

Last week we were running a one day introduction to team based teleworking. It was a pilot program with two teams of staff plus their managers. It was a fun day – opening with an icebreaker using the go ask anyone cards which usually start people off laughing as they discover, for example, what their co-workers answer to a question like "what did you want to be when you grew up?" or "if you could trade places with someone for a week, whom would you choose and why?"

The day was in two parts. The morning of the workshop were focused exclusively on the team, the work it needs to produce and how they think/feel they need to work together when operating remotely.

The afternoon concentrated on the tools and software that most appropriately met the group's needs in terms of their work and the community they want to build, and getting their computers up and running for working on them away from the office.

To summarize the day looked like:

1. What type of work do we do, and how does play out day to day?
2. If we were working remotely from each other how would we retain a sense of community, stay in touch with each other, and demonstrate that we are being productive?
3. How do we tackle perceived barriers to teleworking including career development, performance management, integrating new joiners into a virtual team, and handling decision making and conflicts, etc
4. Given how we work and how we want to stay in touch what kind of technology and software makes the most sense? (We have 'tasters' of commonly used ones to demo in this slot)
5. Setting up and testing people's computers to work off-site via VPN or Citrix.

It worked very well on the whole – though we are making some amendments to parts of it. For example, because the two teams had been teleworking for a month or so they had some practical aspects they need to agree – like protocols for filing and accessing shared documents to make retrieval easy. We didn't have some of those practical things covered in the original design.

On that same day, November 18, the US Congress passed the Telework Enhancement Act OF 2010. The announcement I first saw read:

Today, the House of Representatives passed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. The Senate passed the final version of the legislation by unanimous consent on September 29 and the House passed it with a bipartisan vote of 254-152 on November 18. The legislation now proceeds to President Obama's desk for signature into law.

I then looked at a fuller story on Federal News Radio. Under the new law US Government agencies must:

• Establish a telework policy and determine employee eligibility within 180 days of the bill becoming law.
• Set up interactive training programs for teleworkers and telework managers.
• Include telework in business continuity plans.
• Appoint a telework managing officer who is a senior official with direct access to the agency head.
• Submit yearly progress reports to the Office of Personnel Management.

This was good news because the organization that I'm working with has been developing its teleworking policy and strategy over the last few months and is somewhat ahead of the game in meeting legislative requirements on this.

There's lots of material out there to help managers of telework schemes. One I've found useful is A Handbook for Managing Teleworkers, by Sandra Gurvis and Don Philpott, and the accompanying Toolkit -because they focus heavily on team telework rather than individual telework.

The handbook outlines a five step process for introducing and managing teleworking and teleworkers, (with the focus on the work team as the unit for management).

Step One gives you the tools you need to decide whether your organization needs teleworking. It looks at the jobs suitable for teleworking, the benefits and the technology needed to make it happen.

Step Two focuses on putting together a teleworking team. This includes successful strategies for telework programs, creating guidelines for managers and employees, writing telework agreements and selecting the right people. There are also important sections on safety, security and the legal rights of teleworkers.

Step Three is all about organization – getting together a winning game plan. In addition, there is information about training and setting up a continuity-of-operations plan to maintain essential functions in the event of a major disaster.

Step Four covers implementation – how you make it all happen. In addition, there is guidance on insurances, taxes and health care options and how they impact teleworkers.

Step Five discusses maintenance – now that you have set up your teleworking program what do you have to do to ensure it runs smoothly.

Next week we run the amended program with a second pilot group so I'm guessing we'll be making more adjustments after that.