Never Forget your Guiding Compass
A conversation with Fatemeh Jailani.
Fatemeh is a Tusker Club Fellow and the Chief Operations Officer of SINGA Global, a prominent not-for-profit dedicated to migration. In this role, she shepherded the new strategy of the organisation, raising the bar from inclusion to leadership development. She is also an Ambassador of the European Climate Pact and the founder of Accidental European, a hybrid media / think tank building bridges between European public policy and European citizen.
TC - How do you define culture within an organisation? How can you ensure its lifespan goes beyond the interview and hiring processes?
FJ - Within an organisation, for me, culture is defined as a common set of values shared by a particular group. These values will be influenced by internal staff, but also by external elements like the people NGOs strive to help, products companies are developing, or their target audience. As such, culture is not just defined by one thing within the organisation, but by a range of factors—top-down and bottom-up, and inside-out.
However, culture is not a static component. In fact, much like any country, culture is constantly evolving. For instance, if a company has operated successfully for 10 years and it’s ready to scale up, its culture is going to evolve along with its size. As organisations recruit new members, they’re also bringing in other experiences and perspectives that will ultimately help further shape their values.
Such values are anchored by the organisation's mission statement and vision to help map its future. In the past, 10–20-year vision statements were common, but in today’s fast-changing environment, organisations are urged to revisit that vision much more often to ensure its relevance.
An organisation’s shared values, mission, and vision serve as its guiding compass and success is often derived from the ability to incorporate them into whatever processes that are being created. Whether it involves operations, HR, or management, organisations must constantly reflect on the compass to ensure they’re headed in the right direction. This is the key to maintaining a clear and stable culture.
TC - Many organisations aim to create a balance between a no-nonsense approach and a more relaxed and fun environment. How can organisations achieve this stability, while maintaining clarity and consistency internally?
FJ - While I believe that we can all be passionate about a topic, I’ve never been one to view work as something that’s meant to always be fun. The reality is that it takes shoulders and strength to push things through and get projects off the ground, and oftentimes that will involve nitty-gritty work that no one likes.
However, what’s important in today’s environment is for people to understand why they’re doing something. For me, the key is to ask people where they see themselves in five years and how the work that they’re doing today makes sense within their overall life projection. The goal is to consider personal and professional ambitions and find opportunities to better match them in a way that makes sense for both the staff and the organisation.
Ultimately, if you’re tasked with a tough project, but you know that it makes sense for your overall trajectory, it becomes a lot less painful.
TC - As a leader, how do you establish and maintain culture? Specifically, how did you factor in culture in the recent strategy revamp you spearheaded for SINGA Global?
FJ - This was a very complicated task because the CEO and I came into an organisation that had already existed for 10 years. This meant that, unlike new start-ups, people had already been working together for some time, under a formalised structure. SINGA’s agile and dynamic culture was what had made it successful, so we certainly wanted to maintain it, but we knew that to scale up, we would have to bring in more processes and transition certain operations vertically.
For the first year, our goal was to listen and understand what the organisation was really about. We wanted to uncover any previous tensions or challenges, but also grasp the magic behind the organisation to recognise how to best preserve it. Based on that assessment, we developed a vision that leveraged the previous culture, while anticipating what waits for us on the horizon. We wanted to continue to stay relevant and innovative, but also help shape a new collective imagination around the future of migration. The truth is, we didn’t want to make harsh and uninformed changes. We wanted to help take the organisation to the next level, but we knew it had to be through a collaborative approach.
To do this, we had to ensure everyone understood where the new, or rather updated vision was coming from. We wanted to make sure our collaborators were following us in the thought process, so we interviewed staff throughout the organisation and shared versions of the document with them, ultimately going through several drafts until we reached the final version. The process is long, and the discussions tense at times, but a vision that is not shared is like preaching in the desert, as the French would say.
Creating the spaces to have those discussions is fundamental.
TC - How can organisations ensure that their value charters are effective in practice, especially in sensitive moments or ones of reflection?
FJ - Two things are important in this scenario: first, organisations must be clear on where they want to go; in other words, have they established a guiding compass? And second, the guiding compass needs to anchor the creation of any strategy or process. This way, organisations can reflect on any issues or projects with clarity and assess the latter’s alignment within the scope of the set vision.
This is not a simple task. Oftentimes, organisations will write a set of values, mission, and/or vision statements, post it on the website, and later forget about it. As Chief Operations Officer, my job is to make sure we always come back to it. Organisations are presented with a range of options daily, and if they choose one without taking its core values, mission, and vision into account, they will likely get lost and lose momentum.
Our guiding compass keeps us from straying too far and allows us to stay anchored when conversations become tense or too emotional. Such a compass enables discussions to remain constructive. It’s just a matter of having that one person in the meeting room willing to draw everyone’s attention back to that compass when the discussions become too scattered.
TC - Is it possible for organisations to play a leadership role in bridging differences of opinion within the organization? How can this be done effectively?
FJ - Members of an organisation can have diverging opinions and perspectives—and that’s a good thing. If you are sitting at a table with only nodding heads, then there is a major problem. We should never fear hard discussions. It’s a sign that your organisation is dynamic and still awake! However, when such discussions arise, your guiding compass can serve as a tool to constructively address differences and reach compromise. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what route you take (depending on your time and resources, of course), as long as you’re realising that shared vision, while respecting the value system adopted.
Again, if an organisation is clear about where it wants to go and shares that direction with all its collaborators, then that principle will always hold high in everyone’s mind during discussions. And if it doesn’t, again it just takes one courageous person to remind the others in the room.
However, this doesn’t mean that the vision cannot evolve. You might realize halfway that a piece of it must be modified, or external circumstances might force you to adjust. This is normal and expected, but maintaining transparency and engaging with staff on the changes being considered is key. Otherwise, failing to include others will lead to a major loss in momentum.
This is why it’s essential for any CEO or COO to keep their eyes and ears open and approach the job with humility. Top management can provide stewardship, but it cannot do so successfully if the information is not circulating, and if it’s too distanced from the ground. We are living in societies that are constantly evolving and we will only succeed when we can trust the people that see the blind spots to which we are not always privy.
Interview by Cristina Rue - 04/2023.