Organizational culture, remote teams and project management

Dear Kiron
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion

You just gave me the highest compliment by writing: "you just inspired me on my next weekend's blog article :-)"

That is my purpose. Contribute so that people think about the themes and share their perspective with us.

Thanks again

Honestly, I would very much like it to become a topic for reflection in our community

Does the culture of project teams need to have organizational culture as an umbrella?

Hi Luis,

you ask "Should the culture of teams working online be integrated into the organizational culture?"

Short reply is no.

The culture of a team (virtual or co-located) has to support the team's purpose or goals. These are often not the same as those of the whole organization. Even if they are the same, the internal team cohesion has to be supported and the team's identity to be built. This is not so easy if you just copy or even are forced to follow the organization culture.

Ask team members: are you feeling more as an employee of the company or as a member of this high performing team. Teams tend to have a higher performance than the whole organizations (at least team members perceive so), and your status in a team tends to be better than in the wider pool.

Some projects, especially culture transformations, demand that the team develops a sense of exceptionalism and entitlement, and sees the rest of the company as their target and their current culture to be modified (e.g. introducing agile).

A second argument for my answer is 'no' for 'online' teams is that the organization probably has no means to set the behaviors for the many diverse teams that are now forced to work virtually. Online teams now support the culture development bottom-up, in a network for teams and project managers. Good local behaviors will be copied by other teams, the role of the organizations is not commanding behaviors but supporting the development of cultures and setting wide handrails (like a code of ethics, security precautions).

Just attended a local Chapter group meeting in Germany, they normally have 10-15 attendees. The zoom session was managed well and had over 60 people, a good discussion. It was the 5th online Chapter meeting they held, and they are doing it every week instead of every second month.

If you put a stick in a hive, the humming of the bees will increase dramatically.

This is growth out of the disruption. The culture of the meetings changed (and is more adaptive).

I am now invited to present at 8 webinars across the globe over April/May, each with 300+ attendees. Last year in total I had 9 keynote speeches traveling. What is more effective in terms of reaching people?

Dear Stéphane
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinion

What you are saying is that it is only possible to create an organizational culture when people interact physically? I would like to better understand your perspective

Dear Thomas
Thank you for sharing your opinions with us

He mentioned that they are holding chapter meetings in Germany on a weekly basis.

When they were face-to-face meetings, 15 people participated and now 60 or more people are currently participating

Does this invalidate the fact that they work under the umbrella of PMI with regard to the organization's culture? (Let's face it, PMI is losing identity, but that's another topic)

Or when we are talking about organizational culture do we have different interpretations of the meaning of the concept?

It is critical to create and maintain a organizational culture in any setting and it is easier said than done. First you have to establish what the most effective organizational culture looks like and then figure out a way to achieve it.

Typically you would do that through vision and mission statements followed by a Team 'terms of reference' or Team Charter, The vision and mission statements would identify values and the Team Charter would establish objectives, roles, responsibilities and commitments, communication, etc. The vision and mission statements would most likely not differentiate between typical work environments and on-line/WFH formats but the Charter would have to address the inter-relationships between the team members especially where there is a mixture of traditional office, on-line and/or "WFH" team members.

Communications has to be the key. Not only for the formal meetings but also the "hallway" meetings, coffee get-togethers and even pub night.

The more I think about it, the more I like the Team Charter idea. In the traditional office setting it may be an "understanding" rather than an actual document but for on-line and/or WFH operations written format may be effective.

In my experience project values and culture are not well communicated even in traditional office environments. In traditional office environments these are "picked-up" by the team members, sometimes through mentoring or observations. There is limited opportunity for such with on-line and WFH so how does one go about it?

Peter, agree.

Team Charter is a key tool, communications have to be effective, and online working is a huge opportunity.

Think in the old (!) days, many team cultures developed without conscious and skillful settings. Some people were amiable, good to get along, good listeners and so a team cohesion just happened. Sometimes bad apples were bullied out (not very ethical but group benefits prevail). Easy to do if you see each other every day, can chitchat at the coffee corner, and build 1:1 relationships in every depth.

Isn't people skills, soft skills, leadership skills one part of the talent triangle? Now we talk about power skills. Did we not see many surveys showing the relevance of these skills? Even more looking at AI, VUCA, disruptions?

Now, here is the opportunity to refurbish and use these team and trust building capabilities, the processes how to run an effective meeting, move our focus from the task at hand or the product to deliver to relationships. And by the way, relationships determine value and success, not the product.

But as a prerequisite, we all must work on ourselves, our self awareness, self control, empathy, ethical values and our understanding how humans think. PMI does not offer a leadership certificate yet. You can take that of toastmasters instead.

In the end, we project managers offer security to humans.

I'd actually look at it a different way - organizational culture provides a default starting point for a new cross-functional team. However, if that culture is toxic, that shouldn't be an excuse for the team to not establish a more positive culture for themselves.

I've seen both extremes - very positive organization culture but specific teams which had toxic cultures and the opposite.

Kiron