Employee Empowerment in Action.
Unveiling the secrets of how employees empower themselves to drive business impact and organizational change in large companies
A Cultivator is an employee who creates positive change within their organization
We Started With Two Questions
Attempting to change anything significant about a giant, complex organization can be so challenging at times that it feels like trying to change the entire world. Sometimes, that feeling is accurate, because transformative changes that happen inside large companies can have equally large ripple-effects on entire industries, communities, and societies. But first, someone has to make some waves.
Fortunately, there are people working inside these organizations right now who are perpetually undaunted by that challenge. Some are out there gathering support for a uniquely creative idea. Others are building communities and networks of support to help their colleagues find a place to belong. Still others are starting up scrappy, grassroots movements to make their companies more inclusive, sustainable, or empowering for everyone.
Researches have applied a number of terms to describe these types of individuals who are self-empowered and persistent enough to try to change their organizations for the better despite the barriers in their path- terms like “intrapreneur” or “changemaker”. Those labels are at least partially accurate, but our own research into these individuals has led us to call them “Cultivators” because the single most important thing they all have in common is taking action to cultivate positive change from wherever they are.
And “wherever they are” is everywhere. We’ve found that Cultivators exist inside every company and at every level. This remains true even in our current moment, when it is more popular to bemoan employees’ supposed lack of motivation to work that it is to acknowledge the resilience and persistence of a workforce that continues to show up and create positive change amidst the ongoing stress of a multi-year pandemic, economic turmoil, and a host of organizational, national, and global challenges.
“ The single most important thing [Cultivators] have in common is taking action to cultivate positive change from wherever they are. ”
Our mission is to support Cultivators and the organizations that work to empower them. One of the ways we do that is by learning as much as possible about both sides of that equation. So, heading into 2022, we zeroed in on two high-level questions to guide our year of research:
1. CULTIVATORS: What truly makes a Cultivator a Cultivator, and what types of experiences are shared across these otherwise exceptionally unique individuals?
2. CONTEXT: What organizational factors tend to support or inhibit the kind of empowerment that we think is crucial to Cultivators’ success?
We embarked on two studies to explore these questions; the first was a narrative analysis in which we analyzed the published stories of Cultivators who had enacted positive change at work. The insights from that study are the focus of this report. Our findings build on a body of past research on empowerment, innovation, community, culture, and organizational change, and they serve as confirmation that creating positive change inside large organizations requires Cultivators.
Let’s take a look at what we can learn about empowerment, community, and purpose driven change from stories of people who have sparked a movement and made an outsized impact on their organizations.
Findings:
The Short Version
A Cultivator is an employee who creates positive change within their organization.
Between 10-30% of employees in large organizations are likely already Cultivators.
While Cultivators’ stories are all unique, there are 8 types of actions that are common across most of their journeys to drive positive change at work:
Cultivator Story Analysis
Research Process
Cultivator Stories are published narratives by and about people others have called changemakers, intrapreneurs, innovators, community builders, or just “that one new hire who keeps asking annoying questions,” as they work to drive a particular change in their organization.
As our dataset for this study, we built the first-ever collection of Cultivator stories. We found them by mining our Cultivators Community member profiles, searching major business publications, browsing changemaker award-winners, partnering with a business course at Rutgers to collect inspiring examples from students, and soliciting ideas directly from our networks.
A Pixar Story
“ One of the executives has described me as ‘relentless’… being relentless has worked for me ”
Jessica Heidt has worked as a Script Supervisor on many of Pixar’s feature films including The Good Dinosaur, Cars 3, Soul, and Luca. During the production of Cars 3, Heidt noticed something important about the script: an apparent gender imbalance between the number of lines spoken male and female characters. So she started to count, taking notes in the margins of the script pages. Then, she made a spreadsheet, and when she saw in the data a confirmation of the suspected imbalance, she shared it with the team. What she had discovered was a 90/10 percent split between male and female characters and their lines of dialogue, and her findings rallied the team to make some mid-production changes to significantly reduce that steep gender divide in the final film.
But she didn’t stop there. Heidt partnered with other colleagues to spread the word and to try to get ahead of the issue in future films, collaborating to develop a program that counts characters and lines by gender in all Pixar scripts. Now, writers, script supervisors, and other members of the film production teams can see the data transparently throughout the process, making adjustments as needed to address the implicit bias and promote greater equity in how these characters are ultimately represented to millions of global viewers. Today, films like Soul and Turning Red are excellent representations of gender equity.
This year at CultivatorCon ‘23, Heidt accepted the Cultivate Lifetime Achievement Award for her inspiring work as a Cultivator. She shared that “There were moments at the beginning, talking to friends or colleagues [who] told me, ‘don’t do this; you’re going to be fired; it’s not worth it’… but I [decided] it was worth it.” She went on to say that, “it took a couple of years before I could legitimately say this is baked into the fabric of our filmmaking… We’re starting to see now the receipts for the work that we put into practice back in 2016.”
That multi-year journey - filled with obstacles and treasured allies, and ultimately leading to an impactful change with true staying-power - is the quintessential example of a Cultivator Story.
CULTIVATORS IN ACTION: RESULTS
“What is a Cultivator?”
The answer to the question:
Our analysis of stories like Heidt’s both confirmed and expanded our understanding of Cultivators and their work, resulting in a new, comprehensive definition that encapsulates our findings about what it means to be a Cultivator.
There are many different types of Cultivators
It may seem obvious to say, but humans are all complex and unique, so any research that attempts to reduce them to a specific set of traits or qualities is always going to fall far short of reality. However, it can be helpful in story analyses to focus on distinguishing features of the protagonists, so one of our analytical strategies included categorizing those features. We found that the Cultivators in these narratives:
Inhabited a variety of different roles.
Pursued different types of organizational change.
Embodied different sets of actions depending on which stage of the journey they are in.
We then synthesized those three sets of variables into a handful of Cultivator Personas which represent a few “types” of individuals in our dataset:
Noticing Natalie is a Cultivator with a cause. She represents those who are in the earliest stages of trying to address an inequity or take up an opportunity to serve the community, including developing her understanding of her own individual power to act within her organization.
“I have an idea for a change but I’m not sure what to do with it…”
Stage: Early-Stage
Type: Cause
“It doesn’t seem fair that…”
“I know it’s not officially my role, but I think we should have the power to…”
Empowerment: ‘Power-To’
Thick-of-it Theo has been working on his change for a while. He’s a Cultivator with an innovative idea, and he’s actively exercising his power with other colleagues to refine his idea and spread it throughout the organization.
“I’ve worked out some details of my idea for change, but I need to develop a clear vision and gain support…”
Stage: Middle-Stage
Type: Inventor
“Wouldn’t it be great if our company could offer…”
“I know I can make a change in this organization if I combine my power with others to see it through…”
Empowerment: ‘Power-With’
Pitching it Pam is a Cultivator with management or leadership role, and she’s been working on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of her part of the organization for some time. She also has some positional power, and she’s ready to leverage it to access senior leadership and make a strong pitch to push her change initiative to the next level.
Stage: Late-Stage
“I have a well-developed idea and promising data, but I need to get more buy-in to move forward…”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if we…”
Type: Efficiency
Empowerment: ‘Power-Over’
“I have the power and resources to change how my team operates, and I think we should…”
Cultivators are taking a lot of different actions to create positive change at work
We identified 52 separate actions taken by Cultivators in these narratives as they worked to change something about their organizations for the better, using an iterative open coding process to identify each action within and across the stories in our dataset.
We grouped the 50+ actions into the following 8 themes:
(% of Cultivator stories involving actions related to each theme)
Top 6 most common Cultivator actions:
(Appearing in at least 44% of the stories)
3 | Notice problems, needs, and/or opportunities for change
2 | Advocate for what they believe is right
1 | Collaborate with other colleagues
4 | Emotionally commit to change
6 | Use and coordinate multiple sources of knowledge/information
5 | State their cause and/or values clearly to others
Every Cultivator Story is different, but they follow similar paths…
A temporal analysis of data revealed that many of the Cultivator’s actions occurred at similar moments across these stories. That analysis allowed us to synthesize their journeys into a representative Cultivator Journey Map representing the eight action themes along a single, simplified narrative thread.
This visualization gives us a way to see some of the commonalities in the paths Cultivators thread as they drive a particular change. That’s helpful because it means anyone who is interested in supporting their Cultivators as they navigate these change journeys can more easily anticipate the types of work to be done and the challenges to be overcome at various points in the process.
Stages of the Journey
The Cultivator Journey Map is a simplified, linear storyline that represents the actions a Cultivator is likely to take as they work to create change in their organization. In reality, as we saw in the narratives analyzed, many of these steps in that journey happen in parallel, and the whole process is a lot messier than a journey map can convey. So, to dive a little deeper into some of these actions and when they tend to occur, it can be helpful to divide the journey into three stages, just like most stories: A beginning, a middle, and an end.
The Beginning
When Doug Dietz and his team rolled out their newest design for an MRI machine in hospitals, he could have just patted himself on the back and checked the project off his list. Instead, he watched what happened after one of the new machines was installed, and that gave him the opportunity to notice something important: the children coming to be scanned were absolutely terrified. But he didn’t just notice, he practiced critical awareness, intentionally paying attention to the details of the situation as it played out, identifying aspects of the problem, and tying his observations to his knowledge of the context, the machine, and his company.
As a result, Doug was moved to action. Though his job was technically done, he realized that he couldn’t just go back to work knowing that children were having to be anesthetized every time they needed an MRI, increasing risks of the procedure and undermining the goals of the project and the company as a whole. Something clearly needed to change, and Doug took personal responsibility for making it happen.
Internalizing that personal commitment to the change was important, because this problem, like most of the problems we encounter at work, was going to be tricky to solve. The new MRI machine rollout was the culmination of a multi-year, very expensive project, so changing the design itself wasn’t an option. Doug wasn’t sure where to start, but he knew it was going to take a lot of creativity, so he started generating ideas.
Practicing critical awareness is about noticing problems and patterns, connecting to personal experience, and questioning the status quo.
STORY THEMES:
Taking personal responsibility for change is about committing emotionally and materially to taking action, not waiting for someone else to solve the problem.
Exercising creativity is about framing and reframing problems, generating ideas, and exploring novel solutions.
The Middle
It is often through the creative process that we discover how little we know about a subject, and Doug’s story is no exception to that. In the next stage of his Cultivator journey, Doug leaned into the need to learn as much as possible, gaining the insights necessary to produce even better creative thinking and problem-solving. He reached out to his boss and colleagues, completed a hands-on course about human-centered design, and used the skills he gained to collect more crucial insights from key stakeholders to inform his ideas for empowerment.
The middle of a Cultivator Story often presents an important transitional moment: the point when it becomes necessary to move from individual to collective action.
Doug had his motivation to drive the change and some great insights and ideas to build on, but he knew he would need allies and collaborators to make it happen. Without the top-down mandate, budget, or authority to mobilize an entire department, Doug needed to rely on his civic reputation to draw others to his cause.
By articulating what he had learned and sharing the “why” that sparked his own desire to solve the problem, he was able to assemble a volunteer team to join him in his mission. Then, he collaborated with that team to prototype a completely new experience design for children who needed an MRI.
STORY THEMES:
Learning as much as possible is about digging in and analyzing the problem, seeking advice, and educating yourself in formal and informal ways.
Building a civic reputation is about clearly stating your cause to others, taking the time to empathize deeply, empowering others, and always leading by example.
Finding allies and collaborators is about building coalitions and communities, gaining buy-in from key stakeholders, and collaborating broadly and consistently at every stage.
The End
(and the start of the next cycle)
Their concept was risky in its originality; nothing like this had been done before in hospitals or other clinical settings, and the team wasn’t operating with formal support or funding from the company for their initiative. Instead, they relied on their collective learnings, creativity, and collaboration to experiment with options until they had something they could implement with real patients.
What they designed was an immersive adventure experience that transformed the process of the scan into a story. In one example, the room is transformed into a launch pad, with the MRI decorated as a rocket ship. The machine operators guided children through the experience, cautioning the child to remain completely still as they listened to the ship “shift into hyperdrive”. Details like these transformed the previously terrifying sounds of the scanner into the anticipated sounds of a spaceship.
Compared to other Cultivator Stories, Doug’s doesn't include much detail about the need to make a compelling case for a full implementation. However, we can see in the narrative that the results of the pilot were important for gaining buy-in to expand the project. This included reducing the number of pediatric patients requiring sedation, increasing the number of scans per day, and improving patient satisfaction by 90%, all of which also contributed to the company’s bottom line. These types of impacts are often crucial tools Cultivators leverage to gain support and necessary resources to scale up their idea or sustain a change over time.
In Doug’s case and others, there really isn’t an end to the Cultivator Journey. While one problem might be solved, the process of solving it almost inevitably reveals others, and the new relationships we form with our collaborators and leaders may result in internal mobility opportunities that present new ways we can drive positive change.
What we see in these narratives is that they often represent just one of many change journeys a Cultivator will take over the course of their career. For organizations that care about employee empowerment, innovation, and continuous improvement, this is great news, because it means their Cultivators are perpetual motion machines of positive change. All they need is a problem to solve and the support to do what they do best.
Taking risks and experimenting is about starting small while being bold enough to try something totally new; it’s also about prototyping -testing - and improving with each attempt.
STORY THEMES:
Making a compelling case is about telling the story of an idea, connecting to a broader purpose or mission, leveraging data effectively, and persuading peers, leaders, and/or other stakeholders to provide the support necessary for large-scale impact.
Cultivators in Context
This report has focused on our analysis of individual stories about Cultivators in action, but we know that the contexts where those stories play out are equally worthy of investigation.
That’s why the second major research inquiry we pursued over the past year was about which organizational factors support or inhibit the kind of empowerment that is crucial to Cultivators’ success.
Consider for a moment the reality that many of the narratives reviewed in this study show Cultivators persisting in making positive change happen, even within extremely disempowering and resistant organizational contexts. But what if, instead, every Cultivator was embedded in a context that fully empowered and supported them? How many more successful Cultivator stories could we tell?
After all, just because someone manages to successfully ascend a dozen floors in an elevator filled with killer bees doesn’t mean we should accept bee-infested elevators as the norm! So it goes with disempowering workplaces.
In service of promoting more empowering (and killer-bee-free) organizations, we investigated why companies that want to be innovation leaders, to attract and retain top talent, and to prepare for the future of work, would choose to invest in empowerment. Our findings resulted in a deeper understanding of what it takes to create organizations where Cultivators can thrive. That understanding became the foundation of our SPACE Model of Organizational Empowerment.
Learn more about this study and the five dimensions of the SPACE Model in our next white paper: Organizational Empowerment in Action.
