Product Operations Program ManagerBarcelona, Cataluña, Spain
How can you safeguard a project's well-being in a toxic organization, where poor management at higher levels can create a negative atmosphere that trickles down and affects all aspects of the work? What steps do you take to minimize this impact and shield your team from the resulting distractions? Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The key point is: one of the key points of enterprise architecture (putting this in terms of PMI´s standards this type of things belongs to business analysis) is the culture. If this is the culture of the organization then is the field where all people inside projects must be perform to achieve the objectives. Then, in my personal opinion, there is not valid to put this in terms of toxic or not toxic. Is about the culture. No more than that. And sorry if I misunderstood the point. Saving Changes...
A toxic prevailing culture is no excuse for not trying to build psychological safety within your own team. I wrote an article about this a few years back:
"We would all like to work for companies where leadership teams truly embrace people-centric values and principles but that is rarely the case, especially in organizations which have been in existence for decades.
It is common to find companies where the walls of their corporate offices are decorated with empowering, motivational posters of treating staff like their most valuable asset but this is usually a case of putting lipstick on a pig.
While organization cultural transformation cannot occur without the sponsorship and commitment of the management team, waiting for them to evolve is a cop out when it comes to creating safety within your team. As leaders, our responsibility is to create a safe haven for team members to work to their best abilities. While there might be stormy weather surrounding the team, we need to keep our team members within the calmer eye of the storm.
How do we do this?
It starts with building psychological safety between the individual team members. Even if they all represent different functional areas, roles and seniority levels, everyone wants to feel safe while at work.
Gain commitment from them as part of developing team working agreements and then reinforce the desired behavior by being a role model for how you want them to behave with one another. If they are not well informed about the subject of psychological safety, take the time to educate them about its importance. Recognize team members who act in ways to increase safety and coach those who diminish it.
But safety won’t stick if it exists only between your team members.
Their work will likely require them to interact with those outside of the team, and often it is in those interactions where safety gets eroded. Until you start to see a corresponding level of safety being promoted by others, you will need to act as a buffer to protect your team members.
This will likely mean your having challenging conversations with senior colleagues who ridicule or threaten your team members, educating these stakeholders about the importance of safety, and escalating if necessary. It might also mean being more thoughtful about the planning of interactions between your team members and others, especially if the scope of the interaction is expected to be stressful, controversial or risky.
If you shy away from this, not only might you have to settle for mediocre performance, you may also risk losing the best talent you have. If you are successful at building safety, your team members will begin to reap its rewards and, in turn, will begin to demand it as table stakes for any team they join. They will become champions in their own right for safety and will help to build it within other teams.
And that is how positive cultural changes happen." Saving Changes...
George FreemanThought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States
Hi Eduard,
When a strategic project with co-located resources finds its work products systemically impacted by corporate politics or negative atmospheres and all reasonable and traditional efforts to remedy the situation have failed, it’s probably time for a “change in scenery.”
If functionally inhibited from virtualization, my preferred approach is a “project war room,” where the project manager can tailor an environment suited for project success (e.g., commandeering a large conference room or boardroom or leveraging a different corporate property).
Remedying toxicity in a work environment does not happen overnight unless it takes on my favored form of “change management,” that is, a “management change,” or in most cases, “management changes.” Hence, to protect your project, sometimes you need a change in scenery.
George Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Eduard,
Whether toxic or not, it is a good idea to build boundaries for your project, isolate the team from the context's influences, and increase cohesiveness by establishing a project culture based on beliefs that support your project purpose (us vs. them). You could get some support from a well-designed steering committee. Saving Changes...
Khaled El Haj IsmailHead of Programs| United Nations World Food Program UNWFPTripoli, Lebanon
I believe this is a very common and often overlooked risk that is difficult to quantify and, more often than not, is considered a taboo. In other words, how easy is it to record something like this in your risk register:
'Toxic Work Environment Promoted by Senior Management'?
From the project manager's perspective, I believe the best approach in such a situation, depending on the organizational structure, is to go micro. Focus on creating a culture of excellence within your small team that is resilient to workplace toxicity and acts as a shield, filtering out the toxic waves affecting the organization as a whole and your team specifically.
Product Operations Program ManagerBarcelona, Cataluña, Spain
Thank you for your thoughtful replies, excellent comments, and helpful tips. Two key takeaways from your feedback are the importance of shielding the team from a toxic environment and addressing the toxicity with senior management.
Sergio, your comment reminded me of Drucker's famous quote: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Since strategy is implemented through projects, the connection between culture and strategy is evident. Saving Changes...
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