Sparked by an accidental declaration from one of our book club members that he had provided the option to his intern to schedule a call on a Sunday, the group realized the need to interrogate how power is negotiated and upheld within the workplace. What is the role of culture and values in democratizing decisions and priorities, and how do diversity, power distance and corporate norms influence the flow of power? How do we identify out-dated or harmful practices and speak truth to power so that our organizations can move forward? These were some of the questions we sought to address

Here are some of the resources we used:

1. What is Corporate Culture – Duke University
2. Company Culture and the Power of Thoughtful Disagreement – NYT/ Ray Dalio
3. Power Dynamics in Work and Employment Relationships: the capacity for employee influence – Dundon et. al, 2017
4. Social Capital Theory – Alex Lyon
5. French and Raven’s Five Forms of Power – Mindtools
6. Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace – NYT
7. Diversity wins: How inclusion matters – McKinsey
8. Confronting Racism at Work: A Reading List – HBR
9. Ableism In The Workplace: When Trying Harder Doesn’t Work – Forbes
10. More states are banning questions about salary history in job interviews. What to say if you’re asked about it anyway. – WaPo

Getting the Basics Right

From our discussion, I identified two ways corporate cultures need to evolve. The first is to be able to articulate clear values, empower employees to not just practice those values but also be rewarded for them and finally to create ways for employees to call out deviance from the values. It’s perhaps the last feature that is missing in most organizations. Values should not be seen as just fluffy good-to-haves, but rather as essential foundations for the organizations norms and practices. So much of what we do cannot be codified into SOPs or structures, and that is where values help to cover the bases in providing a compass. This is especially so when an organization sees conflict between individuals or teams. Values will dictate how power must be negotiated and decisions should be taken, rather than individual personalities and agendas.

The second way to cultures need to evolve in getting the basics right is to have more involvement from its stakeholders in shaping that culture. Values should be determined with diversity in mind. Firstly, is the organization able to understand the needs of the customers and clients being served, and even so, is it able to fully utilize the diverse set of talents and experiences in the market. Secondly, assuming the organization has gotten its hiring and recruitment right, with discrimination (conscious or unconscious) reduced, how involved are the non-majority employees in shaping cultures? Are the involved in leadership, in setting practices and calling out unwanted ones? Are they involved at the working levels, in being consulted and proactively sought after? Values that are derived from a majoritarian view will most likely only serve the majority, continuing to exclude and disenfranchise the rest of the broad base. Power negotiated through values then will intrinsically leave out minority groups, and worse, hide behind the veil of corporate culture. Culture is not in scarcity – there is no need to focus on just those who are plentiful.

Speaking Truth to Power

The truth is that most of us operate in organisations where values and cultures are defined only to exist as a web-page or introduction sheet that gets soon forgotten. Alternatively, cultures are strongly understood but vastly problematic, because they are defined without the involvement of all working levels and representative groups. This is the case where managers unload work over the weekend and see it as part of due course for work to be delivered before the official work week starts. The occasional overtime is understandable, but the moment it becomes a pattern, one must question the culture.

Such values and cultures are often individual driven, whereby the boss at top (especially for smaller organisations) drives behavior. How then, can employees speak truth to power, and perhaps more importantly, avoid retaliation? Beyond individual tactics around employing niceties and avoiding confrontation, this is where we started to recognize the value of unions to provide negotiating power to workers. Unfortunately, our group lacked much understanding of union dynamics and issues and identified this as an area to build more knowledge on. In the absence of unions with such a mandate (as it is in Singapore), how else can HR teams empower employees to shape culture and values? These were questions we were left stranded with.

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As I mature in my professional roles both as an employee in a large organization, as well as a board member on others, I must think more intentionally on how culture shapes the flow of power and how power must be distributed so that organizations and their stakeholders can thrive. Every individual is likely to have flaws and shortcomings, it is only when we come together that we are able to leverage strengths and cover blind-sides. Cultures that don’t respect this are bound to fail.