Role: Culture Catalyst / Navigator
Delegator |
Unclear, for now Business Operations (Management) |
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Role keepers |
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Purpose
VSHN, like every other business, needs a healthy organizational ecosystem and enable people to work efficently and effectively to be sucessful as a business. While we expect everyone to do their part, we can’t expect the bigger topics, needed training, documentation, and holding things together to magically happen.
VSHN sees the need to have dedicated capacity to understand, drive topics, and cultivate our understood Work Culture and with that ensure that organizational issues and opportunities are addressed in time, to be a sucessful business organization and an attractive work environment for VSHNeers.
Role Summary
This role acts as a thought leader, spokesperson, facilitator, mentor, and trainer, dedicated to nurturing and articulating the unique work culture of the organization. It focuses on creating comprehensive documentation, providing training and mentoring, embodying VSHN’s values and principles, and ensuring a healthy organizational ecosystem. This role serves as a vital link between the company’s cultural ethos and its practical implementation, benefiting the entire business and its individuals by fostering an effective and engaging work environment.
Key Responsibilities
What I take responsibility for, whether I do it myself and how I do it is up to me. Not a task list.
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Usable documentation of our organization (structures, practices) and understood work culture
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Internal and external training and mentoring in and around work culture topics available to VSHNeers
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Leading by example with our principles and values
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Facilitation support available to VSHNeers
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Work culture aspects represented in relevant Governance
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External presentation and employer marketing around our unique culture
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Organization level cultural challanges or opportunities understood and addressed
Stakeholders
Who needs something or benefits directly from me in this role?
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VSHN as a Business: The business requires a functioning ecosystem and a healthy work culture.
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VSHN Teams: Need clarity on our structure and guidance on leadership, participation, and governance - making the needed things happen.
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Individual VSHNeers: Desire to comprehend VSHN’s culture, learn, and develop to better navigate complexity and deal with tricky situations.
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Other Culture-related Roles: Scrum Masters, Team Facilitators, Product Owners, etc., need each other to understand and develop what’s relevant for their role and VSHN’s culture.
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Key Deliverables
The concrete things that stakeholders get from me.
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Handbook Documentation on Culture and Organizational Structure
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Lead of cross-company organizational development and culture topics
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Representation of cultural aspects in Governance
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Contribution to relevant Communities of Practice (for example, Scrum PO/SM)
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Internal Educations
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Mentoring or Coaching
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"Rent a Facilitator," primarily for Governance
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External Talks and Blog posts on our Culture
Dependencies
- Documentation and Tooling
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Effective tooling like our handbook, wiki, etc.
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Maintenance of documentation systems/projects, for example, the handbook - to play by the same rules.
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- Collaboration
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Mostly nothing in this role can be done alone. Organizational Change, defining new standards, documenting things, etc., requires involving people affected by the principles of Consent and Equivalence.
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Educating, supporting, mentoring, and guiding others starts with them seeking and accepting it.
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Skills and Mindsets
What Skills and Mindsets are needed, to fit this role?
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Practice our values, principles, and adhere to agreements to lead by example.
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Sociocracy 3.0 Practitioner Level 1, better Level 2
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Solid understanding of Agile and Scrum
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Awareness of one’s own emotional intelligence and its active development
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In-depth understanding of our organization and business.
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Being approachable, open-minded, and collaborative.
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Being reachable and being around - remote, at events in our office.
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Curiosity - "I have no clue, so let’s do it and learn together" mindset.
Constraints
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I don’t decide for others - I inspire, drive, write, advise, mentor, teach, and support.
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Investing (cost and time) into external events, (self-)education, and involving people needs to be balanced with effective output and positive impact for VSHN’s business - addressing the right opportunities or problems at the right time with the right people.
Key Challenges
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This role supports VSHNeers and our Teams in being self-organized, being empowered to understand, navigate and address their issues or opportunities - While I don’t solve their problems, spotting and addressing systemic, organization wide issues might be in my responsiblity (as it can be anyone’s).
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Cultivating work culture and proactively developing it is only a means to an end in order to be a successful organization and business, which includes being an attractive employer. However, it is not a purpose in itself.
Role Assignment
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This is not a role reserved for anyone.
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This role could be owned by any and multiple VSHNeers. Actually we’re looking for 3+ people.
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This role is considered a 30-50% FTE role. Less could be possible as the role keepers share the work among each other: There might be more specific/limited versions of this role, based on capacity and other constraints.