My reflection blog this week is to review a common story within my organization and discuss its implication on the organization.  Does the story describe the organization by promoting goals and ideas, and how the story impacts the overall culture dynamics of the team.

The Story

The story being told by my leader occurs weekly at our team staff meeting. The meeting generally discusses corporate and program strategies and initiatives. Employees are given time to provide feedback about their projects, tools, or problems. The meetings have a open communicative forum where every employee is given an opportunity to communicate. During the last year, two major corporate initiatives have changed the attitude and the mood of the standard staff meetings. 

The first initiative is the merger of three major aircraft programs: C5, C-130, and P3. This merger is to reduce costs by consolidating resources and skills, and rid redundancy and waste. This initiative started about eight months ago and brought its own set of emotions, confusion, and level of employee complaining. The second initiative occurred within the last month as the company announced they needed to reduce the corporate footprint by reducing employee reduction by 1,000 employees. This initiative has set parameters around a certain level of grade employees and currently is a voluntary structure. Within three weeks if there is not 1,000 or more employees volunteer to retire, the company will initiate the involuntary efforts to ensure the meet their original intent. Once the reduction is completed, the companies next initiative is to re-level remaining employees to ensure their skills grade is commensurate with the work they are performing.  Due to the corporate merger and reduction initiatives, the weekly meetings have changed.

Implications and goals

Storytelling is a very good way for leaders to communicate with their teams by “sharing knowledge and information” (Denning S. , 2011). Our leader does storytelling by opening up the meetings with announcements or changes to the merger and downsizing efforts. The problem is that the leader is not providing any new information. As employees we know we will have to move buildings, which is located on a different campus about six miles down the road. As a planner, I am watching the employees that I support moving, and I am being told I will not be moving for a year. This creates an opportunity to working differently by creating and using different communication tools, however it takes away my opportunity to work with those I support, in person.

In a personal perspective, I find myself  “pseudo listening” during the staff meetings. (McKay, Davis, & Fanning, 2009) I feel like the storytelling is routine and is no longer offering value added information. I do contribute my pseudo listening due to a personal experience of a program merger that occurred less than five years ago. I was apart of a merger that moved a aircraft program to another state. Management announced if you wanted to keep your job, you had to relocate to Texas, and you only have three weeks to communicate with your families and make a decision. The decision was hard for me, as I had just moved to Georgia 11 month’s prior. There were lots of rules associated with the move and one that created a distrust with leadership was that you had to stay in Texas for a year before you could find another job. Six months later, the company lifted that criteria, leaving a lack of trust and faith in what leadership said.

A value leadership has to have in their storytelling, is telling the truth. Our leader is communicating in staff meetings, but there is a lack of trust in what is being said based on a personal experience with other leaders. I feel like our leader likes to keep us informed but it comes out as lack of confidence, and making excuses for other leaders. To me, this makes her look unprepared and too emotionally connected, creating a false sense of insecurity in her storytelling. (Denning S. , 2011)

When it comes to my leaders goals and objectives in meetings, I think her intention is positive, as she tells what she knows and requests viable feedback from everyone. The routine of the information is like a broken record, creating that “pseudo” listening environment. As an employee, I did reach out to her one-on-one to ask questions pertaining to my own position and expectations, basically should I be concerned about my job. The feedback was positive and she assured me as the only planner on the program, her confidence assured me that I should not be worried. (McKay, Davis, & Fanning, 2009)

Culture Impacts

The culture in our organization is comprised of four generations who have different views, emotions, beliefs and concerns regarding the merger and downsizing. The organization is top heavy with employees that plan to take the voluntary retirement package. There is a sense of a mass exodus of employees, which will create a void in the organization. There is the happiness of those retiring and the stress of those remaining, coping with how they will pick up the workload of those retiring.

The storytelling “reflects the values and actions” within the organization. The merger brought it own level of storytelling, which brought in its own level of behavior by employees. There wasn’t a big change in how business operated and the attitude appeared to be pretty normal. When the announcement of the downsizing was released, the actions of employees were more emotional based and actions or reactions to this announcement is mixed mode. Those that have been waiting for the retirement packages is excited and feel like they have dedicated years with the employer, so it’s earned. There are the newer employees stressing trying to figure out how to manage their work and the projected increase of work scope. Attitudes are still great, however they know they will have a job as their grade level is not affected by the announcement. There is the third group of employees that are in the middle. These employees fall into the involuntary based on their grade level, but age wise do not fall into the typical retirement element. The emotional element of all three types of employees is driving the actions of the employees. I think the culture behavior is being driven by too much emotional change at one time.

Accordingly to an online article by Kathy Kotz-Guest “How Internal Storytelling impacts Company Culture” to change culture and lead change, you much change the stories that people tell, which starts by changing the behavior. Guest also talks about how change takes time, and as leaders we have to foster the kind of culture we want and good credible stories will emerge. My manager is trying to keep the culture positive, but she can only lead the change and promote a positive experience if she is aware of the behavior within the organization. (Kotz-Guest, 2016)

Conclusion

Working for the company for almost twelve years, I am used to the change and the idea that leaders come and go very often.  Weekly staff meetings are used as a communication aide and storytelling is apparently available. The disadvantage of too much story telling is when the story is routine and does not lead good positive organizational behavior or employees who are not actively listening. The advantage, from my perspective, is seeing a leader taking the time to try to communicate with the organization.  As an aspiring leader, I am constantly watch leadership behavior and taking note of good and bad communication stories.

References:

Denning, S. (2011). The Leader's Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Kotz-Guest, K. (2016). How Internal Storytelling Impacts Company Culture. Retrieved March 25, 2016, from Convince & Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/storytelling/

McKay, M., Davis, M., & Fanning, P. (2009). Messages: The Communication Skills Book. Niew Harbinger Publications, Inc.