Business culture: tech led, people centric

Duena Blomstrom at PeopleNotTech describes how to overcome the four organisational crises in today’s business world by “turning it up to 11”

We live in an age of fast technology, AI, high uncertainty, rapid advancements, and simultaneous deterioration of society. However, only some people recognise the pressing need for businesses to promptly develop sustainable organisational cultures that are tech-led but people-centric. 

For the past 15 years, I’ve advised organisations on creating high performance, value and respect, structure and clarity, and above all, psychological safety. I describe myself as a reluctant social entrepreneur because I initially only intended to speed up businesses that needed higher performance by improving people’s work interactions.

I soon found that the organisation must first clear up what I call their ’Human Debt’. This concept mirrors technical debt, which focuses on shortcuts in software development that can lead to costly long-term fixes. 

Human debt accumulates when short-term HR decisions - be it hasty recruitment, inadequate training, lack of transparency, no structure and clarity, wishy-washy lip service to societal and workplace DEI topics, or neglect of employees’ overall well-being and the topics connected to the necessary emotional and human work – are seen as being less of a priority and only nice to haves “fluffy” things in lieu of business imperatives.

While these decisions might bring temporary gains, the eventual costs reflect in low morale, diminished productivity, unsafe work environments, and high turnover and add to the four crises we consistently see in the workplace post-pandemic.

Navigating these issues is crucial for future-oriented businesses, so let’s first look at what they are:

1. The leadership crisis: The new work paradigm demands leaders to be more than just visionaries. Having a high EQ, an adaptive and empathetic approach, open and authentic communication, and creating empowerment and growth for others while removing blockers from their way, all of these underscore leadership excellence. Still, these attributes are consistently shown by survey data from Gallup and the WHO to be overwhelmingly absent in the workplace today.

2. A generalized crisis of EQ (Emotional Intelligence): A previously underestimated trait, EQ is now becoming central to organisational success. Emotionally astute leaders who understand team dynamics and champion empathy aren’t just desirable but indispensable. They cultivate trust, inspire loyalty, and are often at the forefront of innovative thinking.

Companies that will not quickly transform their previous “command and control” ways into modern, adaptive and servant leadership that is based chiefly on the amount of Human Work they consistently perform on their own emotions and behaviours with the help of coaches, software and education will likely not stand the test of time in this age of AI where our humanity will become our sole remaining USP eventually.

3. The effects of the wider society mental health crisis at work: The importance of mental health in the workplace has recently been magnified at long last. Addressing it involves eradicating any attached stigma and, second, offering tangible support—whether through counselling services, mental health days, or a holistically nurturing work environment alongside normalising it as part of the human experience of a substantial minority of all workers.

4. The crisis of lack of engagement: Disengaged employees signal trouble because they end up costing you dearly one way or another. Adopting a tech-led culture means utilising personalisation, strong feedback mechanisms, and real-time analytics that employees are invested in and use to improve their performance.

Furthermore, harnessing technology to discern employee needs and aspirations and offer them better-suited and more enjoyable work experiences enables businesses to craft tailored engagement strategies. Engagement isn’t static; it demands consistent nurturing and forms part of the “human work”. 

So what is there to do? How do we overcome any one of these crises and start thriving instead?

The answer is simple: Rethink work and lower your Human Debt to create tech-led cultures that are human-centric.

It sounds grandiose and lofty perhaps, but we need more than cursory solutions to address these organisational crises. It necessitates a profound shift in perspective—transcending the view of employees as mere assets to cherishing them as the very essence of business success. As technology becomes more pervasive, our strategy must be tech-forward but perennially people-centric.

That said, here are not ten but ELEVEN things you can do right away at any level of any enterprise that has any amount of Human Debt:

1. Accept that in your role as Fighter and Preventer of Human Debt -be it that you’re a CEO, a manager of teams, or simply a professional who saw this organisational phenomenon first hand and decided to do something about it.  You will have to actively combat your own tendency to burnout, doubt yourself, listen to the inner Impostor or want to succumb to your own need for solitary heroics where you “go at it” alone in the absence of a team;

2. Get a bit up to speed - learn about emotions, triggers, trauma, neurodivergence, etc. Not at PhD level, TikTok-level is enough - better yet, do this as shared learning with the team;

3. Hold the space, both physically, software and tools wise, and mentally, for the Human Work and see to it that it becomes a habit in the life of the team and individuals;

4. Become a genuinely authentic leader - choose a digital creator role model and watch them for authenticity together with your team to reinforce accountability - vulnerable, real, honest, human and flawed - a brave authentic leader people can enjoy working with;

5. Learn to understand and combat Impression Management (the fear of speaking up for fear of appearing incompetent/ignorant/negative or intrusive to one’s teammates) as that is the greatest Psychological Safety destabilizer there can be; 

6. Shake any trace of command and control, try learning to trust your team;

7. Advocate for flexibility at work relentlessly regarding the “where” and the “how” of work as long as the enterprise can be assured of the “what” being excelled at;

8. Understand that “soft skills” are now essential, and they need to be worked on regularly by yourself and the team - Read, learn and experiment with enough people-centric methods, frameworks and software products that you find the ones which may be serving your self-care and the team’s work on their behaviour;

9. Curate, support, mandate and then reward any Human Work done, be it on the emotions and behaviours of the individuals, or those of the team for those that do it;

10. Obsess with the team and increase their Psychological Safety but also always remain focused on being a firm part of at least one team yourself;

11. Remain relentlessly focused on an open cultural environment where blame, fear and disengagement cannot breed - ask and ask again in emotionally invested ways how people are and what people think and feel in your teams. Make it safe for them to tell you.

Let us always remember the human essence behind every digital interaction. It’s a call to action that modern businesses must heed in order to succeed in this new era of tech-led, people centric cultures.

Duena Blomstrom is the CEO of PeopleNotTech, and author of Tech-Led Culture: Unlock the Full Potential of Your Business and People, published by Kogan Page, out on 03 October 2023

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com