Getting Back to Basics: Post-COVID Lessons for CTOs or Any Leader

Several recent articles on CIO.com and other tech sites have highlighted the importance that IT leaders are placing in 2023 to get back to some level of new normality. Force reductions and freezes in Big Tech may have helped ease the talent crunch a little but market salaries continue to climb. Remote work is here to stay. There is a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace and economy but many organizations are focusing on growth. Amongst all this turmoil, a central question we are getting from IT (and other) leaders is how to sustain or make positive improvements to workplace culture to sustain the organization post-COVID.

In a previous TEQ article we highlighted what we learned about organizational culture and its relationship to a firm’s ability to handle the multitude of challenges brought on by COVID and social unrest. The answer was very clear-cut. Organizations that had intentionally focused on building clear and aligned cultures prior to 2020 were much more resilient; they were able to not just quickly bounce back from adversity but to also bounce forward. As one client CEO stated, “Thank God that we invested in our culture bank because that’s what’s getting us through this.”

Based on research just released by our colleagues at Denison Consulting, we now have a clear-cut picture of how different aspects of culture fared during COVID, what culture looks like now that we are shifting post-COVID and the culture challenges facing leaders moving forward.

At the onset of the pandemic, the culture tracking data from 140 companies showed that organizations leaned into their cultures and showed significant improvements in several cultural factors, areas particularly related to change.

• Organizations were effective at reading the external environment and constantly looking for ways to improve.
• Leaders kept employees informed and highlighted where people were making an impact.
• Companies worked to break down silos and to improve coordination across the enterprise. 
• Teamwork was emphasized and there was an increased focus on common, mutually accountable goals.

The result of this initial surge was an increase in productivity and significant bouts of innovation. A CEO of a large non-profit pointed out that they were able to pull together multiple functions and external partners at the start of the pandemic to solve a key client challenge in just 6 days, an effort she felt would have taken months at any other time.

Unfortunately, post-pandemic trends are showing that the cultural growth in some areas has not been sustained. The “pandemic bumps” that were temporary gains and have returned to pre-COVID levels are particularly related to investing in employees’ skills, meeting shortterm demands without sacrificing the longterm vision, and decision making occurring where the best information is available.

On the plus side of the column, the Denison research captured some cultural trends that have persisted above pre-pandemic levels. The trends were associated with the culture factors again related to creating change (the way we do things is very flexible, responding effectively to competitors and changes in the business environment, adopting new and improved ways to do work) and empowering employees (employees believe they can have a positive impact). It seems the benefits from these new change habits have gained some traction.

However, the research data also shows that the pandemic had some harmful cultural consequences. One critical component of culture plateaued and then declined at the start of the pandemic – team orientation. The initial bump was driven by cooperation across different parts of the organization, perceptions of working as part of a team and using teamwork rather than hierarchy to get things done. However, the team orientation bump was not sustained and is showing a declining trend post-pandemic. This result matches the broad research conducted mid-pandemic by Amazon Web Services. Their network analysis showed that teams “leaned-in” at the start of the pandemic, driving an increase in productivity. Those connections within teams and across teams eventually began to suffer in remote work. As soon as a team composition changed or a new member joined, “close-in” teams suffered. Working remotely also made it difficult for different teams to connect and to coordinate their work.

For leaders, getting back to basics first involves sustaining the gains made on creating change, especially understanding and adapting to the marketplace and competitors. What new priorities and habits did you create during the pandemic that made a difference and how can you build systems that will sustain those habits overtime?

Second, getting back to basics requires leaders to be very intentional about the teaming structure of their organizations. Remote and hybrid work are here to stay but pose a challenge to effective teaming. It is yet to be seen if a clear and aligned culture can be sustained after a switch to remote work. Some lessons can be learned from those organizations that have always been remote, such as assuring that “culture carriers” are front and center in all forms of company communications. In hybrid work, employees should be encouraged not to do asynchronous work in the office that they could do from home. When folks are in the office, time is best spent working and building relationships within teams and connectingwith other teams to learn about and advance project work.

On a closing note, this will be the last contribution in our Effective Leader series for TEQ. We’ve enjoyed being part of a valuable and vibrant publication and we look forward to continuing to contribute in other ways to the PTC community.