Fast Cultural Change

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. When you look upon organizational culture, especially culture change, research and books, very often you can see that researchers say, "For a deep and lasting cultural change, you would need at least seven to 30 years." And, by conducting research and engagement of middle management within a cultural change project with a client of ours, we could manage to fulfill this organizational culture change within two years. And we know today that this change still is working, so we can say we managed that cultural change, that lasting cultural change, within two years, which is definitely faster than seven or 30 years!

Rachel Salaman: I think some people might be surprised by those numbers, seven to 30 years for lasting cultural change. Could you talk a little bit more about that, based on your experience of what you've seen?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. Well I think that the long time that is meant by many authors and researchers comes by the aspect that a cultural change is something which is going very deep into a personal change of the people within organizations. And so I always say, it's something like an operation at the open heart. You go very deep, you go into the DNA of an organization.

However, research today very often focuses on the role of the top management within these change projects, and I always had the feeling, when I was conducting my consultancy work within organizations, that the middle management hasn't been regarded very much yet. If you could find a way to include and implement the middle management much better within that process, that it should be possible to get this change within a shorter time.

We needed two years, however this was a medium sized company. At the moment we are working within a company that has at least 10,000 employees, and even here we are working on the management culture change and even here we will need less than seven years, although this company is very huge.

Rachel Salaman: Now, in the book you differentiate between strategic change and cultural change.

Martina Nieswandt: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: Just to clarify, what is that difference and why is it important?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. Well, that comes according to the usual perspective on changes in organizations. Very often you can observe within organizations that the people are talking about strategic changes when there's a new strategy for the company. The market's changed and so they adapt their strategies according to the new demands coming from the market, coming from society, coming from globalization, and whatsoever.

These change projects are very often focused on working on new procedures and new tools within that organization. When we talk about cultural change, this is another focus. This cultural change can take place within a strategic change, but within the cultural change we focus also on the cultural aspects, whereas strategic aspects are more the "what we are doing in the organizations." Maybe you could say that culture is something of how we do these things.

So when you're working in an organization that is service orientated you can tell the people, "OK, when the customer's coming in, please offer him a seat." That's a procedure, you know, "I'm trained to offer the customer a seat whenever he or she is coming in." However, the inner feeling or the inner belief that when the customer's coming in, I say, "Hey, there's someone coming in, it's important for me, I love to serve him, and I like to serve him because he's very important to me." That is something that is much more inside the people, and the way that I would offer the client a seat with that attitude is different from just, "Oh a customer's coming in but I have to offer him a seat," and so they say, "Please sit down."

So, with a cultural aspect, we go much more to the values that are lying behind and the attitudes that people have - an inner belief.

Rachel Salaman: And, as we've already discussed, you focus your research on middle managers. So just to be clear, what kinds of roles are these?

Martina Nieswandt: It depends a little bit on how many levels an organization has got. There are different definitions of who belongs to middle management. I go with a definition that a middle manager is the one in an organization that receives information by another manager and forwards information also to another manager, so that he or she is in between.

If there's an organization with five, six, seven levels then maybe two or three levels can belong to that entire group of middle management. And if we have an organization that has got more lean management and lean levels, then it's just one group of persons within that organization.

They are right between, in the middle of the organization chart.

Rachel Salaman: Why did you choose to study the role of middle management in cultural change?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes, that's a very good question. The top management is quite well researched, and very often then you can read something like, "Well, the other management levels are also very important." But I think that especially the middle manager is in a very special situation within the organization as he or she is placed right within the organization chart. For the middle manager still usually has got contact to staff and team leaders or lower management levels, but also has contact to higher ranks, and so he or she is in a very important linkage. I was always thinking, "Hey, we do not know a lot about this special group."

There has been some people that said that middle managers are the ones that were hindering changes in organizations, but my experience with middle managers was different. I saw very many people that were so engaged for their companies. They said "No, these people are not hindrances, but let's see how we can engage with people, how we can implement these people so that they can become change agents and so they support the change." And if they do so then it must have been possible to reduce time spent for changes and also the success, because, in reality, we can see that the middle managers, they are the ones that, with their teams, have to realize the plans of the top management and board.

Rachel Salaman: So tell us a little bit more about your research then, because you said that it was within one of your client companies.

Martina Nieswandt: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: How did you go about it? What was your research question?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. Well, the research question was in fact is middle managers play a role within the change. I thought that they were playing a crucial role but there didn't exist anything about that. That was my research question, to answer that, because I thought, "OK, when we know that they are playing a crucial role, then for us as consultants it's so important to include and work especially with this group of managers when doing change work within organizations."

So one client of ours, they had the situation, there was a new CEO coming, and in the former years they did have a very bad development of culture. You could experience it with observations, with a very critical talk within the staff, the management, firing and no trust, and stuff like that. So not very nice to work within that, which led to the situation that the people didn't decide anything anymore because they were afraid of being dismissed when they were making a decision, that after that was shown as being a wrong decision. And so nobody decided any more - they all gave it to the board and said, "Hey, you are the boss, please decide."

So the organization was facing the situation, "If we stay within this manner, we can't be and stay successful in the market. So we have to change." The start of the CEO was that he said, "OK, we have to change the strategy." There was one bullet point on one of his PowerPoint slides where he said, "OK, we have to change the culture as well." That was one point beneath many others. I said to him, "OK, may I suggest that I quantify this aspect of change by research work," and that was very welcomed by that company. And what we did then was quite a practical approach, that we did something that we call "action research."

So while the organization was working, I stepped into that organization with different approaches and methods of data gaining, qualitative and quantitative, being an observer within different situations, and what we decided to do was, when we were working with the middle management, that we won't differentiate between the aspects of culture and other change or other aspects that were according with procedures and structures, because what happens very often is that culture is thought as a totally different part within organizations. Often organizations, they're doing something like a culture workshop or something, but we said, when we are writing a letter to a customer, this is also a cultural act, not only a process. So we didn't divide this. We put this together.

When we were working about procedures and everything, we always asked the question of the culture and developed the maturity of the middle management, so that they lost their fear and they started to decide more by themselves, taking over more self-responsibility, that they could gain more self-confidence, and that they started even to discuss with the CEO, "Have you regard to this and that aspect when you are looking on that project?"

So the real discussion about "How can we create a better project than we are doing today?" could take a start. And that was what happened during that organization, according to the growing maturity of the middle management.

Rachel Salaman: So what do you think was behind that growing maturity? How did they gain that confidence?

Martina Nieswandt: Well, there were different aspects. One aspect certainly still is that, if you really want to create change of that quality, you need the commitment of the top management, of the CEO. We had some very strong situations where he showed that he's really committed to that cultural change and that he was honest with that. On the other side, we were working within workshops and training with the managers how they could better communicate, how they could better discuss, that they find another style, and how they go with a situation, that maybe they get a counter word by their CEO so that they won't step back but still have good arguments and discuss.

So, on the one hand it created a situation where the CEO said, "Well now, it is getting a little bit more difficult to discuss with these managers" because they have arguments and they now dare to tell them. So it is not as easy going than if you as a boss just say, "Oh do this and that" and then the people do it. But now they say, "Hey, why should we do this? And isn't there another idea? I have that idea," and quickly do it. Better off when they're going that way.

So this is another side of a mature management: that they really take over their responsibility and that they live it. However, it makes the company much more successful than just having one at the top who decides everything. And at the top, in the complex world we are living today, you can't know everything. Indeed, to make very good decisions, you need also the other management levels to do so.

Rachel Salaman: At the end of the study you came up with five propositions.

Martina Nieswandt: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: And the first one goes directly back to your research question. It's, "Middle management does play a crucial role in the cultural change process." If a middle manager is listening to this, what tips would you give them to maximize their role in culture change in practical terms? What actions should they take?

Martina Nieswandt: The first thing I think is that the picture, the image that they have from themselves is that they are very important for organizations, that they are playing a crucial role, so that the self-confidence can grow. They are much more than just operative people doing the operative work on a higher level. And that they as a group understand and discuss with other middle managers and take over the chances they have, where they can take over responsibility, where they can make decisions, and that they don't always ask the management level above them for allowance for everything. So that they start using freedom they have, that they start to create a discussion process within the management in their organizations of how they could develop their potential.

Many companies, there the middle management has got some freedom and they should use this. On the other side, the top management have got the role to create this freedom for middle management and to forward them the responsibility and give them the allowance to do so.

Rachel Salaman: In your book, you say that, during strategic change, middle managers are required to be implementers, synthesizers, champions, and facilitators.

Martina Nieswandt: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: Could you briefly explain those four roles, and then perhaps go on to talk about what's different in cultural change?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. As an implementer, it is the situation that still you receive information from the top management, guidelines or something like that, objectives. And so this is a very typical role that the middle manager has to implement within his ranks this information and objectives and guidelines, and has to organize that this works. So this is the implementer role.

As a synthesizer, on the other side, I said before that the special aspect of the middle manager is that he or she is right between levels of lower management and staff, and so he receives first-hand information by team leaders and staff members. So his job also should be or is to forward the information he receives here to the higher ranks, because, very often, you can see, as a CEO, the staff members would not really tell very openly to you what they think, what they feel, what happens. So the top management is dependent on the middle management that forwards this realistic and important information about the realization of goals and what's going on. So this is the second role.

The third role we research, about the strategic changes, came up with the role of the champion. Whereas with a synthesizer the middle manager forwards information, data, with a champion this meant that he sees, maybe, that staff members or team leaders, they have fantastic ideas for a very good project and he supports them by championing these ideas to the upper ranks, to help them to realize maybe these new projects. And when we see, with regards to the call for innovation that we have in many companies today, this is a very important role as well, because the people that are doing the operational work, they know what's happening, they know what the client is thinking, what the customer is thinking or feeling, and then from there they can develop ideas, projects and further development for the company.

You know, with championing, some people say, "Oh I have an idea,"' and he forwards it and supports it, but the facilitator, he works with his people that they develop and engage in idea generation, so that this is not a coincidence that they find an idea, so that they maybe have the attitude of, "Well, idea generation, something good," like we have maybe with quality management, where a group are thinking all the time about how to get better off and develop things. So that the people are really engaged and can act and develop ideas and experimental thoughts and stuff like that.

Rachel Salaman: And then, in cultural change, there are additional roles that middle managers need to take on. Can you talk about those?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. As I said, the cultural change or culture is concerning the "how we are doing things" in organizations. We can see that people are looking upon their superiors of how they act, how they behave, what attitudes these people show. To generate a cultural change that includes the entire organization, there we need special awareness of the middle manager, that he or she in this aspect is acting as a role model.

With a feedback provider, the middle manager, as a cultural aware manager, also talks with his people and gives feedback about cultural aspects, so how did we do this. For example, in a meeting, not only is talked about "OK, these questions were answered last week and we have this project in front of us and we will do this task and that task and that task," but also about, "Well, how did we work together? How did it work? How did we live our cultural vision within our department?" or whatsoever responsibility area.

Beside that, he or she also gives this feedback to single persons when he sees that somebody is really acting fantastic with regard to the cultural aspects, or the other way round: that he's looking for the talk with that person and talks about that with him or her to develop the awareness of the culture, also with the subordinates, to make it more and more part of daily living.

And the last one, the trainer. Well, maybe the people don't know how to prepare aspects or facts that their middle manager can make a decision, or something like that, so that they have to be trained with certain aspects or that they have to learn something. That the middle manager also should offer that knowledge to the people and train them there so that they can fulfill their new tasks and responsibilities.

Rachel Salaman: So, we're talking about middle managers being implementers, synthesizers, champions, facilitators, role models, feedback providers, and trainers, all at once. How difficult do middle managers find it to juggle all of those roles, and what tips can you give them?

Martina Nieswandt: Yes. Well yes, it sounds like a huge list when a middle manager looks upon this, and also in addition, very often in organization, he has to do operational work as well, and so it's a huge demand to be a perfect manager. However, I think it was Peter Drucker who said, "God may be there, but as for perfect managers…."

However, yes, I think again the issue, that if we are talking about organizational culture, the first thing is to be aware of these aspects. Not any role is going to be shown at every time. For example, the role of champion; this role comes up if there are ideas by the staff that I have to champion upwards, but there are not 365 days' ideas that have to be championed. But if I am aware of that, and that is not something that takes a lot of time to be aware, if people are telling me something, maybe within the appraisal interview I'm doing usually, then the one is telling me something about an idea he or she has got, then to be aware, "Well yes, I could champion this" if it is a good idea, and work with his staff member or subordinate on how he or she could bring forward that project or idea. Then I think it's a good thing.

As I said, it is not something that has to be there 365 days a year. However, the question of role model, for me personally, is one of the most important ones, because my experience is that the subordinates are watching and observing at that point and they are very sensitive of "Does the middle manager do what he's claiming to do and does he really act according to the cultural vision?" For example, that he was presenting to the people, or whatsoever. So maybe middle manager that starts with that process should start with the idea, "OK, I'm laying a focus for a certain time on that role and I am reflecting myself from time to time. How did I do this? How did it work? What's working? What was a failure? And what can I learn out from the good things and what's going wrong?" Then it's getting more and more to something that is going automatically, like when we are driving a car. Then I say, "OK, now I'm focusing on the role of champion."

So slowly, little by little, I am in the situation that I'm more and more adept at all these roles, and can integrate them in my person.

Rachel Salaman: We've covered a lot of ground in our discussion today. What do you think are one or two of the main takeaways from our discussion for middle managers?

Martina Nieswandt: One of the main aspects, I think, is the meaning of the regard of cultural aspects during change as a very important success factor, and the very important role middle managers can play within that change process. Because they have a lot of power within the organizations and they can support organizational culture change. Or if they can't take over their roles and responsibilities, it's very likely that the cultural change would be at least slowed down.

I think it's very important that organizations should use the potential of the middle managers, that they should think about, "How can we create the environment within our organization so that we create giants and not dwarfs?"

Rachel Salaman: Martina Nieswandt, thanks very much for joining me today.

Martina Nieswandt: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Martina's book again is "Fast Cultural Change: The Role and Influence of Middle Management."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.