Turning Workplace Friction Into a Flow-Based Culture

Part 4 of our 4-part conversation on shifting our leadership from friction to flow.

Culture is built on behaviors, moods, and systems that either fuel friction or create flow. In this Relationships at Work episode, host Russel Lolacher talks with Margaret Graziano, keynote speaker and bestselling author of Ignite Culture, about how leaders can take responsibility for toxic environments and transform them into thriving, high-performing cultures. Learn how small moments of friction snowball into dysfunction, and how flow accelerates change, profitability, and retention.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: So I'm a leader in flow. I have a team in flow. You gave such great examples of friction. What does it look like to be in flow in the workplace?

Margaret Graziono: So good. So you are solving a problem together with a group of five to eight people. That's the magic number, and usually you're not on the executive team and you are fully empowered to analyze the problem, to collect data on the problem and to collaborate and affiliate on potential solutions.

There are no bad solutions. You put 'em all up on the board, then you talk and you prioritize 'em. We know this process. This is Agile 101, but now we're implement. And we're implementing and we're having fun. So you see these pictures of people high fiving. They're not just high fiving, they're disagreeing and laughing.

Flow, my son playing basketball now. He's a lot older now, but when he was young, let's say 13 years old, he would steal the ball. He was the point guard. He would steal the ball from the other player. He would laugh while he is dribbling the ball. All the other players would be laughing. The parents on in the stands would be cheering, and Zach would be entertaining people as he's dribbling that ball down the court. That's flow. Steph Curry when he plays basketball. Flow. The gymnast, I forget her name right now, Simone, when she's doing her thing. A state of flow. A team working together. Bringing in a new executive and onboarding that executive, instead of having it be one person onboards them, the team creates the executive onboarding process and the team and our levels of the organization are meeting with this CEO and sharing their world with the CEO.

And, and there's no, you know, I, I don't wanna talk about what there's not so, there's direct communication, direct feedback. Love is in the air. Joy is, I swear to God, joy is in the air. One of the clients I'm working with, I, I, 'cause I work, a lot of times the board brings me in. Either it's the board or someone on the executive team.

It's rare. That the CEO, his or herself, will call me and say, I've screwed up. I need to fix this. It does happen, and it has happened at least 10 times in my career, but a lot of times it's the board. So, when the board starts to take responsibility that they've created this monster, that they've allowed it to get outta hand, that's flow.

When people take personal responsibility, when you're in a meeting that's going south and somebody throws the, the rubber chicken, when you're in a meeting that's going south and someone says, time out. We've lost sight of our noble cause. Let's realign on the intent and why we're here. And you bring people back into the zone.

Russel Lolacher: You sort of mentioned earlier about the pendulum and you're giving great examples, but they are of an extreme nature and that's why I'm kind of, we're kind of doing the pendulum thing here a bit. So the reason I bring that up is because I've heard friction used, but I've also heard degrees of friction where it's people are saying.

But it's just slowing things down so we can be more considerate or we are just putting barriers up so we can be more thoughtful while an employee might be going, you're getting in the way of me being able to do my job. Well, the leader's going, but no, I'm just trying to help the process more. Are there degrees to this?

Margaret Graziono: Yeah, so actually when you're in a state of frustration, which is friction, if you're there for a dip. That's actually good. A little bit of friction ignites a fire. When the friction becomes a barrier to progress, that's, that's when you stop it. And there extreme degrees of flow are, we're in a state of love. We every, we love everybody, even our competitors. We're just love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Extreme friction is despair. Things will never get better, but you, then you've got fear and you've got innovation. Two opposite sides, because innovation is risk taking. Fear is we're not taking any risk, we're protecting ourselves.

Then you have frustration and engagement. If any of these stages last too long, when a mood lasts too long with an individual, it becomes a behavior. When a mood in a department lasts too long, it becomes the culture.

Russel Lolacher: Hmm.

Margaret Graziono: And so you, you need to be monitoring progress. In the change theory, in, in how do you make change happen and cultivate the environment for emergence, which is where things are always flowing and things are always changing. How do you cultivate an environment ripe for emergence? You're checking in with people, not these pulse surveys. You're actually having. All hands, meetings and communication where you're saying on a scale of one to 10, how emergent are we?

How is our environment supporting or thwarting you getting work done? How is our architecture supporting or obstructing your ability to optimize your genius at work? You know, there's these three pieces to creating an emergent culture. One is intent. Why are we here? What are we up to? The next is environment.

How do we treat each other? Are we moving from friction to flow? And the third is architecture. What are the systems that help our people thrive? When we, and this is interesting because I have a client right now, small company, 20 million. Small.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah.

Margaret Graziono: One of the leaders came from one of the biggest organizations in the world.

They have over-engineered how things get done, so there's 87 spreadsheets, 150 metrics, a process for making decisions, a process for having a meeting, a process for thinking, and it's like, it's like you're in a maze. You cannot get a clear answer. And if I, as the consultant can't get a clear answer, how'd you like to be the CEO and not get a clear answer?

And that causes friction. Obstruction of progress is friction. And when you set, gave your example of, you know, the executive thinks they're doing a good job because they set up this process to slow the role. Why is the executive setting up a process? Why aren't the people that are at the front lines working closer to the situation. Why aren't they affiliating on solving a problem? That's how you bring it in flow. When you let people solve the problems that impact them most, they move into a state of courage. Oh, thank goodness. They trust me. Oh my gosh, I feel empowered. I feel like I've got authority.

Over my experience, they're giving us autonomy to solve our own problem. Now we'll solve it, we'll test it, and then we'll report in. But most companies don't do that. They top down and they have the same problem that they've had. I have another client dealing with the same problems they've had for four years. New CEO came in, identified all these challenges everybody told, but everything stayed with the executive team. The executive team has to hold tight, but if the executive team could have fixed the problems, they wouldn't have created the problems in the first place. And so it's it takes a lot of courage to give up power to empower people to solve their own problems.

And when you do that. You turn on the switch for flow.

Russel Lolacher: So let's wrap it up with a question. Thank you for this so much, by the way. Really appreciate just the understanding of friction to flow and the value of it. So if somebody's listening to this and they're like, I don't know my role in friction, I don't know how much flow I have, I don't even know who I am as a leader to understand my connection to this.

What's the baby step like? What's the thing tomorrow, besides, you know, doing a full analysis or picking up a book, what is that? Just that first little step?

Margaret Graziono: Yeah. So I was gonna, I was going to say, pick up the book Ignite Culture or What Got You Here Won't Get You There. But if you don't wanna read, I would let your fingers do the walking and ask ChatGPT, describe friction and how I might be part of it. And then I would say describe flow and how I might be part of it.

The other thing you can do is go to your very, very best friend or spouse, your best spouse, and ask when things are in a state of courage and engagement in the family, how are you being, what are the traits that you have that help that? And when things are in a state of stress, of aggravation, agitation, anxiety, how are you being that's causing that?

Russel Lolacher: That is Margaret Graziano. She's an author, keynote speaker, CEO, founder of Keen Alignment and author of Ignite Culture, which you, you should pick up the book, Empowering and Leading a Healthy High Performance Organization from the Inside Out. Thank you so much for being here, Maji.

Margaret Graziono: Thank you. Bye-bye.