Achieving Culture Change in Your Organization

1. It belongs to a group.
2. It helps the group to cope with problems.
3. It is taught to new members - it is passed on and perpetuated.
4. It covers perception, thinking, feelings and behavior.

The Relationship Between Change and Culture

For leaders and managers alike, understanding their organization’s unique culture and the integral role it plays in change management is essential. Culture guides and informs the decisions and behaviors of employees from a deep, unconscious level. Consequently, culture has a powerful impact on the way an organization operates and ultimately, its success. Sometimes driving change can be challenging because the new vision or direction for an organization is at odds with the existing culture. Change is also difficult where the culture actively blocks any attempt to change the status quo. Before trying to change the culture in your organization, it is important to consider the following:

Four Culture Caveats

1. Ask why your culture needs to change. Before any steps are taken to change or enhance a culture, it is important to think carefully about why it is that the culture needs to change. That is, what problem has ‘culture change’ been proposed to solve? Will changing the culture solve this problem? Organizational culture is quite an amorphous concept, so it is important to be very clear about what you aim to achieve from cultural change and how this will be measured.

2. Do what works for you, not what works for others. Some organizations are admired for their great cultures: Zappos, Facebook and Google to name but a few. However, simply trying to copy best practices from other organizations can be a recipe for disaster. Organizational cultures are unique, so what works well for one organization may not be successful in another. Ensure you are changing the culture because it is right for your organization, and not because it is a popular approach.

3. You don’t necessarily need to think big.

The literature on culture change and change management often talks about big, complex cultural change programs which cost a great deal of money, time and effort. Rather than trying to tackle a large scale culture change at once, it often pays to start small. Find a manageable scope by involving employees and managers in culture change activities without labeling them as such. For example, ask managers in a specific part of your organization to identify a couple of small improvements they could make to their team environment. Take what you have learned from the successes gained in one area and gradually build upon them. [1]

4. Work from the bottom up. Linked to the previous point, research has shown that cultural change programs have a better chance of success if they are ‘bottom-up’ rather than ‘top -down.’ Peter Elsmore’s 2001 study of organizational culture change found that culture change was more effective when it was directed upwards from middle and junior management towards an organization’s senior team. He also noted that top-down cultural change has a bigger risk of putting employees under greater emotional strain, as well as difficulty in coping with increased workloads. [2]

An Important Note About Measurement

With any change process, it is important to find an effective way of measuring your progress. However, it must be said that cultural change is notoriously difficult to quantify, and is more about how things ‘feel’ within an organization than hard data. There are lots of tools and diagnostics available which claim to ‘measure’ culture. However, a good way of finding out whether your culture is really changing is to get feedback from employees.

You might use a cultural survey to do this, or run focus groups with employees (ideally facilitated by someone external and held off-site to encourage honest answers). As true culture change takes a considerable time to achieve, you should collect feedback regularly, sharing it across your organization to facilitate further discussion about the direction of cultural change.

As long-lasting culture change comes down to a change in behavior, think about what the new behaviors will look like (e.g. are you looking for improved creativity or a greater focus on customers) and build in ways to measure incidences of positive and negative decisions related to these behaviors.

Five Steps To Achieving Lasting Culture Change

Below follows a process that can be used to change an organization’s culture. It can be applied at team level and also to wider organizational culture change.

1. Understand Your Current Culture

Before trying to change the culture in your team or organization, it is important to understand the way things are now. There are a variety of tools available to assess culture, such as the cultural web, running small focus groups or conducting an cultural survey. The Assessing Culture tool can help you do this. This doesn’t need to be a large scale exercise: the aim is to identify the core aspects of your existing culture. If doing this on an organization-wide level, be sure to include the views of those other than the top team. For example, how do employees, customers and the general public view your organization? Do their views broadly match?

2. Critique the Culture

Once you have gained a good understanding of the current culture in your organization or team, it’s time to assess it. Think about the positive elements of your culture as it is now and what should be retained. Also identify any negative or destructive aspects of the culture which should be eliminated. Finally, consider whether there are any areas which are weak or completely absent from your existing culture. It is a good idea to do this as part of a group exercise with your senior team (perhaps as part of a strategy session or away day) or if you are a line manager, your team. Unless you have identified a highly toxic culture, there is no need to discard everything and attempt to start from scratch. Instead, make the good elements the foundation of your new, improved culture.

3. Develop a Vision for the New Culture

At this point, think about the culture you’d like to create. If you have a specific organizational or team goal in mind, think about the kind of culture that will support your goals. Involve as many people as you can in this process. As a starting point, ask contributors to consider the five most important values they would like to see embodied in your organization or team culture. [3] Consider whether these values fit with the current culture. If not, why not? What needs to change in order to make these values real?

4. Share the Cultural Vision

Nothing will change unless you share the vision for the new culture as widely as possible. The vision has to be compelling, otherwise there is little reason for people to buy into it. When you develop a rhetoric for the new culture, remember to make it clear exactly why your organization or team must change. What will be different and better about the new vision you are striving for? There is little point giving a list of cultural values to your HR or communications department and asking them to publicize them. Get each and every part of your organization involved in determining what the values look like for their area of the business and how they can be made a reality. Ask teams, ‘What does good look like?’ and how they can stick to these standards.

5. Change Leadership Behavior

This is the hardest part of any culture change process. In most organizations, the prevailing culture is ‘set’ by the actions and behaviors of the most senior people. If the leaders don’t adopt the new behaviors, no matter how much well-intentioned work has gone on each of the above steps, the culture simply will not change. The way you act as a leader has a fundamental impact on the people around you. So, think carefully about how you behave, and how that behavior is perceived by others. Model the behaviors that you want to see in others. It is absolutely essential that the senior team is supportive, and this goes way beyond giving verbal support. Managers must also demonstrate behavioral support for the cultural change and drive cultural change by changing their own behaviors.

Additional Levers to Help You Get There

Aside from following the process of cultural change outlined above, there are a number of additional factors that can be utilized to help drive successful cultural change:

Tools and processes. This is about the way in which your team or organization currently operates, and whether the introduction of new tools, systems or processes would make it easier for people to start behaving in a different way. An organization’s internal systems and processes should support and reinforce the vision of the new culture, not undermine it. For example, if you are planning to move towards a more customer focused culture, consider whether any existing tools or processes are currently getting in the way of the adoption of new behaviors. Talk to people that use these tools and ask them to help identify any improvements that could be made to how they work in order to move towards the new culture. Would a new IT system or improved customer management software help them support customers better? Could better sharing of information and tacit knowledge be of benefit?

Structure. Sometimes, the very structure of an organization can be a barrier to true cultural change. Although it is unwise to begin a cultural change movement by re-organizing the entire organization, some re-organization can be helpful in removing ineffective structures or silos. Before changing the structure of your organization, it is important to first clarify the vision and put in place the right systems and individuals who will drive the new culture.

Learning and development. Effective culture change is underpinned by behavioral change.To start working and behaving differently, people need a program of development, plus coaching or mentoring, often for a considerable time. Employees at every level throughout the organization or team must clearly understand what is expected of them, and how to actually demonstrate what is expected. In particular, managers need support when it comes to cultural change, so that they know how to deal with negative reactions and resistance. Development and support is essential to ensure that managers can effectively communicate expectations and encourage new behaviors in their teams.

Recruitment. A good way to maintain a positive culture is to select people who already embrace the organization’s values. This is particularly important when recruiting new team managers. Assessing cultural fit as part of the selection process can give you an insight into whether a candidate is a good match for your organization. It can also be beneficial to use social media channels to communicate your culture to prospective employees to attract people who share your organization’s beliefs and values.

Reward and recognition. It is important to consider how people will be rewarded when they do display the desired behaviors. Highlighting and rewarding the early adopters is a great way of encouraging more people to follow their example.

Consequences. As your organization starts to move towards a new culture, it is likely that you will face resistance from many quarters along the way. People who resist or actively block change can put the success of the whole program in jeopardy, particularly when they are found in key management positions. To address this, it is important to consider what the consequences will be for people who choose not to adopt the new behaviors. If there are no consequences, people simply won’t change.

Summary

Cultural change is not easy. Understanding the current culture and identifying its strengths and weaknesses is a good starting point. Developing and then sharing a strong, compelling vision throughout the organization gives people the motivation to change. Having the support of the senior leadership team and the managers responsible for driving the cultural change across the organization is also essential. Aside from these core elements, utilizing an organization’s internal drivers such as its structure and hierarchy, systems, learning and development, recruitment and reward can give the process direction and clarity.