Criticality is a necessary component for workplace success in an age where diversity of thought is necessary for innovation and creativity. Without it, social bonds will weaken, and we will never be able to realize the potential of anything beyond the sum of its parts.
Highlights:
- Workplace culture is an important factor to consider when designing a culture where new, empowered employees can contribute their ideas and perspectives.
- The best way to confront negativity is to talk about it and create an environment where people are comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings.
The power and value of co-constructed knowledge require a shift towards criticality as a matter of effort and contribution, not tension and dissent.
In an age where we may soon be required to stop ourselves from shaking hands with one another, accessing and challenging multiple viewpoints will become increasingly difficult without an active effort to promote learning and criticality in our workplace environment. The very kernels of innovation lie in the social connections between our team members. If we are to better understand what can be found in those bonds, we cannot rely merely on what we or others can observe and must continually question the information upon which we rely. In holding on to our notions of what is supposed to work, we are too often forgetting that the very conditions in which we conduct our enterprise are constantly changing and cannot be controlled entirely, if at all, by even the most powerful actors.
Therefore, the frame of mind necessary for exploration and purposeful action cannot rest solely with organizational leaders but must be fostered in all team members in the pursuit of innovation as well as the very sustainability of the firm. Too many of my colleagues roll their eyes at the mention of co-constructed knowledge to support workplace strategy and decision-making. They are in good company as I am very much used to doing the same. Relying on the value of empirical observation has led to my seeking pre-packaged solutions with assurances of credibility through mimicry. Those of us grounded in positivism must no longer view the inclusion of diverse and varying viewpoints as disdain for the singular, comfortable truths upon which our training and practice are founded but as redress to the pitfalls of reductionism because, otherwise, we will never realize the potential of anything beyond the sum of its parts.
Necessary for global competitiveness, the power and value of co-constructed knowledge require a shift towards criticality as a matter of effort and contribution, not tension and dissent. In such an environment, teams can evolve to act rightly and sustain critical analysis to better understand, define, confront, and overcome problems. Fostering social conditions at the workplace is a start but must be supported by material and structural changes within the organization. Apart from creating organizational space and time to invite new ideas, managers must empower frontline team members to report novel client stories and user experiences, including failures. We no longer question the value of learning in an organization, but its antecedent, openness, is all too often eschewed.
A few key changes can help to start the process:
- Move away from a culture of blame by migrating rewards for performance towards rewards for behavior. Consider how commonly an employee is rewarded solely based on their performance as if earning a commission solely for transacting a sale. While such performativity contributes well to the bottom line, its primacy does little for the development of your organization and its competitiveness.
- Link and coordinate these changes with the process of review for team members. A review process that is formulaic and relies on mid-level automatons rarely serves to do little more than demoralize and stifle the contributions of team members. Consider having a more interactive process that challenges team members to critique their contributions to the learning environment of your organization.
- Do not confuse the invitation of team members to contribute with a weakening of governance or operational compliance. Good leaders do not worry about free-thinking team members. The blunt reality is that if someone is neither acclimating nor contributing to a learning environment, they may just be a bad hire.
- Elevate the involvement of your HR team in all processes. Especially for SMB firms, the inclusion of HR professionals must extend beyond the identification and selection of suitable candidates for a given position. HR professionals are capable of doing much more than verifying resumes and references and can prove instrumental in enabling and moderating social bonds among team members.
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