You can’t “do” culture change to your organization. Culture arises from the beliefs and underlying assumptions held by the people in the organization. Trying to change culture by decree or through training programs won’t affect people’s beliefs.
One way to change the culture is to fire a lot of people. That really shakes things up and gets change going – especially if you replace them with new people who come in with a different attitude about the company and the work.
If that doesn’t appeal to you, the only way to quickly and effectively change the culture is to involve the people you want to change in designing and implementing the change effort.
They will better understand why the change is needed and will be more invested in its success. They will better understand what is required of them and will be more committed to taking action. Instead of being the recipients of change, they will become the drivers of change. And because they understand the work and the current systems and processes, they will have ideas on the best way to implement changes needed to support the new culture and business strategies.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can come up with the best strategies in the world, but if the people are not prepared to implement them, your strategies will fail. Simply explaining the change won’t work. If you only train people, without addressing the underlying attitudes, your implementation will stall.
Where To Start
First, senior leadership must be aligned and truly supportive of the change, not just with lip service. They must look at their own behavior and whether they are modeling the new values. People watch what you do more closely than they listen to what you say.
But you don’t have to wait until the leadership transformation is completed. It’s possible to begin the organizational involvement while the leaders are still working on alignment if there is a sincere commitment at the top.
Three Involvement Approaches
1. Vertical: Cascade top-down
This is the typical approach. Each leader on the leadership team drives the change through their own part of the organization. The leadership team monitors progress of the entire enterprise.
Pros:
– Leaders visibly drive the change.
– Specific changes can easily be tailored for each part of the business.
Cons:
– Difficulty with coordinated efforts and consistent messages.
– Especially difficult in matrix environments where people have multiple reporting relationships.
– This is a hierarchical process and might be at odds with the new desired culture.
2. Cross-company
People from across the company come together for a series of meetings to learn about the intended changes and to get their ideas. Often these take a “town meeting” format. However, if these meetings are simply used for one-way communication, where the leaders explain and answer questions, the change effort becomes an ineffective variation of “change by decree.”
Pros:
– Opportunity to quickly collect diverse perspectives.
– Consistent messages across the organization.
Cons:
– It takes more time to make decisions on implementation. Momentum can get lost and people might not see the connection between their recommendations and the decisions that are made.
– Tempting to leaders to hand off to HR or a project manager.
3. Large group slice
A significant slice of the organization, representing all levels and functions, comes together for a collaborative change meeting where roadblocks are surfaced and analyzed and decisions are made in real time during the meeting. The meeting is designed by a team that is a microcosm of the group that will be attending the meeting. This approach requires that leaders are aligned and able to work together as a team to make good decisions quickly.
Pros:
– Leaders visibly support and model the new culture.
– The fastest and most effective way to implement change.
Cons:
– Requires the investment and commitment of senior leaders.
– Requires having faith in the people and willingness to let go of control.
Which Approach is Best?
The best approach for your organization depends on many factors including your resources, timeframe and the type of change effort you want to implement.
Set up a “change team” that is representative of your organization to design and facilitate the change process. However, remember it is important for senior leaders to be visible champions and drivers of the change effort. If there’s a disconnect, your change effort will fail before it starts.
Very useful outline of culture change initiatives at an organization level. I have seen that teams and functional units within organizations have their own sub-culture which may or may not be a subset of larger organization cultures. As someone who is trying to fix that in an old team that is growing dysfunctional, I found this post very useful and timely as well. Sub-cultures within teams are a result of leaders driving the team and beliefs they practice (actions, decisions, communication, structure etc) and sometimes, the faster way to stir things up is to bring new mindset by replacing/realigning leaders.
Good point about subculture of teams. The principles hold true, whether for the entire organization or for a team. Thanks for sharing your insights, Tanmay.
Jesse,
You make several significant points above and the one that is still ringing in my ears is that the approach taken needs to fit the circumstances experienced. Known myself as a “large group guy” I have often come into organizations being pegged as having only one strategy in my toolkit — large group meetings!
By putting the pro’s and con’s into this post I think you’re helping to sound a clarion call to all those with a favorite hammer to slow down, gather some information, weigh some important tradeoffs and make a more informed decision. Knowing what you’re getting into with a culture change effort — thoroughly understanding what it will take — should have a lot to do with the approach ultimately taken. That will help move the needle on the success rate of all of these efforts.
Such an important point. If you’re not willing to change yourself, how can you ask your organization to change? And this includes the processes you use to implement change. As the saying goes: If your only tool is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail. Not a great way to begin a change initiative. Thanks for emphasizing this point, Jake.
The other point to make related to approach #1 is that as soon as senior management stop pushing, things start reverting back to the old way of doing things, the cultural norm re-asserts itself.
Indeed. Ultimately the ownership needs to be transferred to the people for the effort to become self-sustaining. The challenge for senior leaders is to discover how to visibly support and model the change effort and the new culture, while at the same time let go of the ownership.
Also I would add:
4. Empowering small groups.
Put in place the guardrails and enabling factors then encourage key people at ground level to run with the change and form small work groups to enact it in their area. This is similar to #3, but is done by small local work groups and creates much more local ownership, but can be more unpredictable.
Very interesting. Sounds like an “emergent” approach. Could you share an example of an organization that has used this approach or say more about how it works?
As you say an “Emergent” approach (as per Beer & Nohria).
The small groups approach is all about getting people involved, encouraging them to take ownership around common goals, a real grass roots effort.
Management provide a set of guidelines in order to encourage things to move in a similar direction, then challenge the employees to tackle local issues that are relevant. Local management encourage the groups and provide support as needed.
The aim is to generate lots of small local wins that help to build momentum and drive more change. The end result will hopefully start to change the culture.
Funny enough I have an article going out on my blog this coming Saturday on this very subject and it even mentions this article as well! So from July 25th see Culture: The iceberg that sinks organizational change.
Thanks, Martin. I’ll look for it.
Quoting: “Trying to change culture by decree or through training programs won’t affect people’s beliefs.” This together with “Culture eats strategy for lunch” are so very true and thus so very important. The relationships, the transparency, the engagement builds the trust – the culture that will seek to understand and then cooperate in the development and implementation of the strategy of change!!!
Appreciate your tossing the idea of “trust” into the mix. Interesting how involvement increases trust.
Unfortunately, when I retired as CEO of my company, the next CEO has gradually used the “fire everyone” approach. It has worked. There’s a change in the culture, but many of the people who supported the old culture are only holding on to their jobs until retirement. It’s been discouraging to watch.
Culture change is not always for the better, as you know so well.
You identify key issues in culture change efforts. Culture change efforts may take longer than the leader’s tenure. Leaders also have to consider the time frame in relation to their motivation and expectations. Strategically terminating people may accelerate the process, but it will also impact culture. The listed article is a compelling and comprehensive account of cultural change in an environment where employee terminations were not condoned. Time and leadership commitment were essential
Building Quality Improvement over the Long Run: Approaches, Results, and Lessons Learned from the PennDOT Experience by Theodore H. Poister & Richard H. Harris Jr.
in Public Performance & Management Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Dec., 2000), pp. 161-176
Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3381266
Thanks for raising the issue of time, Fred. If you need to accelerate culture change, I strongly recommend using a collaborative change methodology like Real Time Strategic Change. Here’s a description of how Southern New England Telephone used this methodology to quickly transformed from a sleepy monopoly culture to a customer-focused culture in order to implement their new strategies to become competitive in the face of deregulation: https://seapointcenter.com/process-and-results/. Thanks also for sharing the description of PennDot.
Jesse,
Your post linked here as process-and-results is an excellent description of a story I had an up close and personal experience with myself. You really highlight the seductive trap we can get into when the wisdom in the room starts to feel too smart. As I learned from my mentor Kathie Dannemiller, always look one or two circles out from whom you think are the key stakeholders. Otherwise you’re likely to forget a few!
We are so lucky here, our Fire Chief intuitively uses the Large Slice method, although he is sometimes tempted to use the Vertical Cascade. In certain instances, like when there is a truly damaging bad apple, the top dog needs to step in and make the change by decree (“Here’s your last check”), but by and large, our boss GETS how effective change is made. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your real-life experience of how this can work, Dave.
Hey Jesse,
It’s rare to see such a detailed and complex subject be made so accessible!
Culture is such a vague topic and seeing some concrete examples of different types of cultures and their pros and cons was super helpful!
I’m going to repost this on my google + group
Best,
JL
So glad you found this helpful, Jon. Too often leaders consider culture the soft side of business and not important to focus on. I think it’s because, as you say, it seems vague and difficult to do anything about. Hopefully making it more accessible will give leaders some tools to address the undercurrents that will often sink their attempts to deal with the hard side.
Jesse
A great distillation of what Culture is. Your point about culture being an outcome of beliefs and the values of the leaders and organization is spot on.
The values of the leaders, and of the organizations they represent, are the foundation of the culture that is created. The unique aspect of culture is that it is always there. Good or Bad, a culture will be created and lived in an organization. The role of the leader is to shape the culture through the positive living of the values. As you say, people are always watching.
I believe that for change to stick, it has to be real. Meaning that it can’t be change for change sake. It can’t be the flavor of the day. The underlying reason should be well understood by all and the efforts to take those first steps towards a new direction practiced by all.
Thanks!
Well said, Stephen! You speak to the importance of leaders embracing and living the values they believe should guide the organization. I agree. This is the essence of great leadership. You remind me of the wonderful book Leadership is an Art by Max DePree, the founder of Herman Miller furniture. Much thanks for deepening the conversation.
Jesse, my pleasure and thanks for your comments back.
I’m in the process of developing a 2-hour workshop for a corporate client and the theme is entirely on Values and Culture. I’m starting with a survey to understand what the team currently understands of their corporate values, division values and their leader’s values. The leadership does have stated values but they are not sure the values are understood or more importantly always lived. The values currently may be more plague material in the boardroom than the foundation of their culture. Not that it is necessarily wrong to place them on a plaque, but far better to embed them in the daily living and subsequent culture created.
All the best,