Change is Inevitable and How to Foster a Healthy Culture

Last week I spoke of a few trends impacting our AEA system and how those are leading to changes in our work. This week, I want to say a few things about change in general and how it can impact our culture and climate. 

I learned years ago that there are two constants in organizational behavior. One is that nobody really likes change, and the other is that change is inevitable. Change is something that often impacts both culture and climate, and I want to remind everyone of the difference between the two. Culture is how an organization does things. It’s what we do, and every organization has a culture that exists on a continuum ranging from toxic to productive. Climate is how we feel about our culture. It correlates more closely with morale. So, culture is how we behave, and climate is how we feel. As a leader in the organization, I care about both culture and climate and want to briefly speak to both. 

Improving Culture is Still Important to Us 
First, regarding culture, Heartland AEA has placed a significant emphasis on culture over the past several years, and data would indicate this emphasis is paying dividends. Since deciding to use the Denison Survey to measure specific components of organizational culture, the organization’s metrics have steadily improved. I want to point out that we continue to strive to make improvements to our culture. One of the primary ways we continue to do this is by using the planning council and job-alike facilitator structures to identify potential issues and to address communication needs. It’s our desire that this structure gives people a voice in how we do things as much as possible. 

As a result of our improvement processes, two examples of issues that were identified that would help improve our culture are 1) the opportunity to invest more in our employees with a professional learning system and 2) increasing our staff capacity to continue to provide great service and support to our districts. 

• Professional Learning System: Our professional learning system has been redesigned to differentiate the learning needs of our employee groups and to make sure those learning needs are identified and defined by the professionals working within those groups. Early feedback on the redesign has been very positive. 
• Staffing: Our agency continues to be committed to adding as many new staff as possible to share the work and optimize service. We are analyzing both historical and projected staffing data and anticipate adding another 15-20 certified positions in 2019-20. We recognize that demographic shifts are taking place across the state and that we need to staff to not only keep up with, but stay ahead, of those shifts. Our leaders are looking at over 20 different data points in order to gain the best picture possible of how our current staffing patterns need to be adjusted going forward. This year Iowa's AEAs are again asking our legislature to restore the annual funding cut to the AEAs, which would allow us to significantly increase the number of staff available to do our very important work. 

As I shared last week, much is being expected from our system, and we will always have to make some tough decisions regarding organizational priorities, but I really do believe that Heartland AEA is an organization that strives to create a productive culture. 

Healthy vs. Toxic Culture
Finally, I want to give you a few thoughts on how you can identify the health of your specific sub-culture and climate. We know that 85% to 90% of our staff respond positively to questions about workplace culture, but we also know that within the overall culture of the organization are many smaller work teams, each with its own sub-culture and climate. Here is a way to measure the health of your sub-culture and climate. First of all, neither healthy nor toxic cultures are void of complaint. Identifying what is wrong in a system is important, and some amount of complaining is inevitable. The difference between healthy and toxic cultures lies in how we respond to complaints. Healthy cultures respond to challenges with clear communication about the nature of the problem and a collaborative response to identifying its causes and potential remedies. Healthy teams are collaborative and solution-focused. They say things like, “How can we…” and “why is it that…”and “what if we…”   

Toxic cultures also identify problems, but they quickly transition from problem identification to chronic and redundant problem description. The repetitive complaint is then inevitably followed by the phase of finding someone to blame. Toxic cultures, then, find the problem, fixate on it incessantly and finally place the blame. The problem with this type of cycle is that it never gets to solution-finding because the source of the problem is externalized. If the problem is someone else's fault, we can’t fix it. Research on school culture has confirmed this cycle and has also confirmed that people in this type of toxic environment can actually develop habits of thought that can be nearly impossible to break. 

This time of year, it’s easy to fall into the "problem admiration trap," and we can all do it. So by all means, let’s keep identifying problems, but let’s not get stuck on the problems. Instead, let’s work together to solve them. Above all, let’s avoid the blame game. When we instead communicate and collaborate, we can become empowered solution finders. Solution finders energize our organization and keep our culture moving forward, allowing us to continue to be the excellent organization that so many rely on to do so much. 

Stay warm! 
Jon