Surveying the team to identify gaps and targets for change
Launched during peak-pandemic in 2020, dynamic, software development, cloud engineering and delivery leadership start-up Midnyte City grew quickly from a founding team of 4 to 23 by 2022.
The founding team had actively fostered a company that connected everyone as a network, rather than in a ‘reporting up’ hierarchy model. With ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging’ as a key pillar, Midnyte City’s adopted a human-centric governance approach that tapped into self-organising teams, working groups and subcommittees to shape growth.
“A key to keeping us on track is feedback,” said co-founder Ebony Worth. “Psychological safety is crucial to feeling safe and free to share. This is a massive challenge for many other organisations, but something we are proud of.”
Building on the success of the internal Feedback Club program, Midnyte City wholeheartedly engaged in Organisational Cultural Inventory (OCI) to validate and improve the feedback data that informs the company’s decisions about their people, clients and business.
One of the most widely used tools for measuring an organisation’s operational and cultural health, OCI uses a 45-minute survey to determine the ‘current culture’ and the ‘ideal culture’.
“We were happy to hear all the feedback. It was great validation for us that we are on the right track. The areas to focus on were already on our agenda. But for us it’s not ‘great, we’re done’. It’s continual work – work we’ll revisit every 18 months to 2 years.”
Key outcomes
- An exceptionally high ‘constructive’ culture style rating, par ahead of peers
- Next steps planned according to then established high base
- Identified next steps include clarity around roles and goals and formal feedback
I have worked in organisations where we’ve done similar kinds of surveys before and it’s been ‘so what’s the result of all this and what will be done with this feedback from here?’ With OCI we’ve already started working on the outcomes, such as clarity around roles and career pathways. It was great to get the external validation on things we’d potentially otherwise overlooked.”
What
When
Where
A mix of face-to-face and Zoom
About Midnyte City
Midnyte City is a technology consultancy specialising in modern software development, cloud engineering and delivery leadership.
Midnyte City's needs
- Identify organisational cultural needs and gaps
- An answer to ‘are we going as well as we think we are?’
- Use team feedback for a plan and targets for change
Building a values-based start-up
“I met Hannah 12 years ago (in 2011) when I was working in executive search,” Ebony said. “I initially reached out to her via LinkedIn, to discuss a unique and exciting opportunity with a social justice tech company. I quickly identified her as someone who would make a significant impact – a person of deep values and a high-performance mindset.”
Ebony and Hannah’s relationship continued to build over the following years. In 2019, Hannah returned the gesture and headhunted Ebony. Together they built a successful new IT services consultancy. This experience provided them a very clear understanding of the kind of organisation they wanted to create.
“We both left that organisation a short time apart. Sadly, the company culture and values were dramatically swayed due to directional changes at the board level. It was very clear to the team – and even to many of our customers – that this was a new chapter and was quickly moving from a people-focused business to a ‘body shop’ model. We wanted to build something ourselves that reflected our own values, not just in words, but actions.”
A commitment of ongoing organisational growth
“Midnyte City connected with Helga in 2021,” Ebony said. “Hannah was already well into her boardroom journey, then Helga facilitated a Midnyte City event to talk to women in technology about exploring boardroom roles. She has also been involved in our School @ Midnyte City program.”
Encouraging ongoing growth and development is a huge part of Midnyte City’s culture and values. School @ Midnyte City – their commercial skills syllabus – is the cornerstone of the team’s professional development. Feedback Club was also already in place before the OCI process.
“Helga told us that she was undergoing training to add Human Synergistics Organisational Cultural Inventory to her leadership development and facilitation tools. She told us that we’d make a great guinea pig, which we were thrilled to be!”
Midnyte City’s customised 4-step OCI and process
Developed in the early 2000s by US company Human Synergistics, OCI looks at:
- The current state: surveys employees to identify the organisation’s current culture
- The ideal state: benchmarks survey data to identify gaps and develop targets for change
“We welcomed this process with open arms,” Ebony said of the Midnyte City approach to using both the OCI “The purpose was to get information and data we wouldn’t get through a 1-on-1 conversation. We wanted to ask ‘are we going as well as we think we are?’.”
The whole team completed the ‘current state’ OCI survey and the Organisational Effectiveness Inventory (OEI). A complementary survey to OCI, the OEI looks at structures, systems, technologies and skills that affect culture. A diverse group of 7-8 people completed the ‘future state’ OCI survey.
For Midnyte City, using the two surveys was a 4-step process.
Step 1: the aim and approach
“The prep work is important in order to overcome any resistance, to get buy-in. We needed to make it clear to the team from the start that the outcome of the survey would be a plan and action.”
- An initial call to set the purpose
- Rules to ensure the psychological safety of the team
- How the survey results will be shared
Step 2: the surveys
- Conducted over a two-week period
- Up to 45 minutes to complete the ‘current state’ OCI and OEI surveys
- Up to 30 minutes to complete the ‘future state’ OCI survey
- Completed during work hours
Step 3: the feedback
- A presentation to the founders before the full team
- Findings presented to the entire team during a monthly ‘rendezvous’ session
- Opportunity for follow-up suggestions
Step 4: the areas of focus
- Identified areas of focus
- A plan to implement OCI-identified actions
The result: an exceptionally high ‘constructive’ rating
How OCI works is that it breaks down the survey data about performance effectiveness (at individual, group and organisational levels) according to 12 behaviours or styles. These behaviours or styles are further grouped according to three general style clusters – constructive, aggressive/defensive and passive/defensive.
The OCI and OEI data revealed that Midnyte City’s ‘circumplex culture style’ is constructive.
In fact, Midnyte City’s culture style rating is exceptionally constructive. Higher than the OCI historical average. Leaps and bounds ahead of technology sector peers.
Even in ‘areas of focus’, Midnyte City still ranked higher than historical average. Some of these standouts include:
- Constructively challenging their staff (goal difficulty)
- Clarity on the values and vision (articulation of mission)
- Communicating well (downward communication and upward communication and communication for learning)
Building from a great base
The exceptionally high ‘constructive’ culture style rating means that Midnyte City is building a culture from an established high base.
The benefits are many. It’s also a great acknowledgement and advertisement that Midnyte City is a great place to work.
The challenge now is to not focus on going from ‘good to great’, it’s to ‘keep going great’
“It was wonderful to have our culture affirmed and see such strong alignment to the feedback many within our team have openly shared with us before,” Ebony said of the results. “We’ve always been open about cultural direction and values. It’s important to us.”
How Midnyte City will ‘keep going great’
The OCI gave Midnyte City the data to map their action plan to ‘keep going great’.
They will keep doing the things that are working so well for them, such as constructively challenging their staff, getting clarity on values and vision and communicating well.
The OCI also confirmed their areas of focus:
- Role clarity: Midnyte City learnt that role clarity is particularly important for new team members. Recognising that roles can differ depending on each client and project, Midnyte City is defining and documenting roles where needed.
- Goal clarity: Also relevant for new team members, the survey results revealed that many wanted more clarity around ‘am I doing the right thing?’.
- Feedback: The survey results showed that team members wanted more structure around formal feedback, rather than real-time feedback.
- Significance: Many in the Midnyte City team indicated that they wanted to know where and how they brought value to the organisation, their roles and the broader community.
