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<\/p>\nI have been meaning to tackle this issue for some while now, because I have to admit that I do not fully comprehend the concept \u201corganisational culture change,\u201d so I am using it as a bit of a learning exercise. I have also seen a few articles on the subject of late and I wanted to add my 10 cents worth to the debate.<\/p>\n
So, here it goes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Eremedia\/TLNT highlighted a Booz Allen \u201cculture study\u201d<\/a>\u00a0that came up with these interesting statistics:<\/p>\n Great. I fully agree with those, but:<\/p>\n OMG! 96% said some form of culture change is needed within their organisation! Clearly they see there is something fundamentally wrong and want to improve it. But such a high percentage… staggering!<\/p>\n But what exactly is Organisational Culture?<\/p>\n The Business Dictionary describes it this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n The values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.<\/p>\n Organizational culture includes an organization’s expectations, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, and written and unwritten rules that have been developed over time and are considered valid.<\/p>\n It affects the organization’s productivity and performance, and provides guidelines on customer care and service, product quality and safety, attendance and punctuality, and concern for the environment.<\/p>\n All clear then! Given the above you can imagine that why embarking on an Organisational Culture Change initiative is so damn difficult!<\/p>\n And just to add!<\/p>\n In a 2016 interview called \u201c20 Organizational Culture Change Insights from Edgar Schein\u201d by Culture University<\/a>. He cites the following four culture fundamentals:<\/p>\n There is also an interesting slant on organisational culture from CultureQS<\/a>:<\/p>\n In organisational life the seven layers form the core. And, like culture itself the manner in which they influence changes continuously.<\/p>\n Conversations about culture, and especially so-called \u201ctraining courses\u201d on the theme of culture, frequently ignore one essential: it is always an individual who interacts, not a culture.<\/p>\n Cultures can\u2019t interact. \u00a0Culture is merely a notion. \u00a0People interact!<\/p>\n We do not encounter and engage with each other as representatives of a specific cultural group.<\/p>\n We engage in a context, as individual whole beings: humans, with our personal history, experience, influencers, intrinsic motivators.<\/p>\n But just how difficult is Organisational Culture Change?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at what some \u201cleading lights\u201c of the business world have to say on the subject:<\/p>\n Harvard Business Review<\/strong><\/p>\n In their article of 2015 called\u00a0Changing an Organization\u2019s Culture, Without Resistance or Blame<\/a>,\u00a0it says:<\/p>\n One of the biggest challenges a company can face is changing people\u2019s behavior \u2014 getting them to collaborate and be humble, for example, or put the company\u2019s long-term interests first. Most behaviour-change initiatives accomplish little, at best.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Forbes<\/strong><\/p>\n In their article of 2011 called How Do You Change an Organizational Culture?<\/a>, it states:<\/p>\n Changing an organization\u2019s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. That\u2019s because an organization\u2019s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Changing a culture is a large-scale undertaking, and eventually all of the organizational tools for changing minds will need to be put in play. However, the order in which they deployed has a critical impact on the likelihood of success.<\/p>\n The Wall Street Journal<\/strong><\/p>\n In their article called How to Change Your Organization\u2019s Culture<\/a>\u00a0(of an unknown date), it states:<\/p>\n As a manager, you may have the power to change your organization\u2019s policies with the stroke of a pen. And you may have the ability to hire, fire, promote and demote people with relatively little effort.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But changing an entrenched culture is the toughest task you will face. To do so, you must win the hearts and minds of the people you work with, and that takes both cunning and persuasion.<\/p>\n strategy+business<\/strong><\/p>\n In their article of 2013 called Culture\u2019s Critical Role in Change Management<\/a>,\u00a0it says<\/p>\n Our own work suggests that the problem is one of mind-set. Companies facing cultural challenges often think the answer is to try to transform their cultures by using traditional change-management tactics. But cultural situations are complex and rarely lend themselves to change through the same mechanisms or at the same pace as other parts of an organization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All good stuff highlighting the challenges and complexities of culture change, but the burning question for me is\u2026 can you do culture change in its own right or is culture change a sub-set\/part of of a bigger change programme?<\/p>\n A personal example (this will be one of my case studies forming part of my Life & Times series).<\/p>\n I have never undertaken a stand-alone culture change programme. However I have certainly had \u201cculture\u201d impact what I have done where a change impacts two or more parts of an organisation who have their own distinctive \u2026 I\u2018ll call them \u201cways of working\u201d … which of course can be interpreted as \u201cculture\u201d.<\/p>\n To give you an example I worked for a large UK telecoms provider who were using SAS as their analytics platform. The role was to support a technology change to facilitate the development of a Target Operating Model and New Ways of Working for a new Strategic Enterprise Environment and roll it out across the Business and IT teams.<\/p>\n The key objectives were to:<\/p>\n The main problem was that the Business Team had long since had control over the SAS environment (mainly one individual) and that the IT Team had little or no knowledge of how it was being used.<\/p>\n Some weeks into the project it was apparent that the main challenges were to:<\/p>\n Easy for you to say!<\/p>\n Unfortunately there was a distinct lack of trust and little or no engagement between the two teams and just getting them to sit together and discuss the processes was a major challenge\u2026 \u201cwe don\u2019t have time,\u201d \u201cwe still don\u2019t have enough information,\u201d \u201cbusiness as usual takes priority\u201d were some familiar phrases.<\/p>\n Another challenge was that the Business Teams were located in London and the IT Team was located in Bristol\u2026 over 100 miles apart.<\/p>\n Anyway to cut a long story short \u2026 eventually I was successful in getting both teams together, through joint workshops and engagement meetings, and agreement was reached as to who would do what but it wasn\u2019t easy given the organisations cultural differences.<\/p>\n Culture Change Models\/Methodologies<\/strong><\/p>\n For those who know me through my frequent articles and comments to posts I am not the greatest lover of models or methodologies but it would be remiss of me not to mention some tools and tips related to organisational culture change.<\/p>\n Define<\/strong><\/p>\n Align<\/strong><\/p>\n Manage<\/strong><\/p>\n And finally the following are some examples of large-scale culture change successes (so it does work):<\/p>\n Tony Hsieh sold earthworms, greeting cards, and slices of pizza. Along the way, he never considered that a failed business meant he was a failure. Then, the guy who wore the same pair of shoes founded Zappos. Today, Tony says it’s all about Happiness, and he’s got the business to prove it.<\/p>\n For the full article click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This case study looks at how Jaguar, one of the world’s most prestigious car manufacturers, has been involved in a culture change programme to create new ways of working for the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n For the full article click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Atlassian is built on the bright ideas and efforts of our team because we\u2019d grow stagnant as a company if we relied only on the ideas of a select and blessed few. Indeed, our long-term survival depends on our ability to continuously improve through change.<\/p>\n For the full article click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n So there we have it my take on Organisational Culture Change. Is it difficult? Is it something to take on in its own right? Can you change culture “top down” or “bottom up?”<\/p>\n It would be great to hear your views.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been meaning to tackle this issue for some while now, because I have to admit that I do not fully comprehend the concept \u201corganisational culture change,\u201d so I am using it as a bit of a learning exercise. I have also seen a few articles on the subject of late and I wanted… Organizational Culture Change: What Is It Exactly and Why Is It So Difficult?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":2309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[228,470,603,793],"class_list":["post-2308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-organization","tag-change-management","tag-corporate-culture","tag-organizational-change","tag-organizational-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2310,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2308\/revisions\/2310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n10 Tips from HR Magazine<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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9 Clear Steps from Eremedia, Talent Management & HR<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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6 Tips from the Huffington Post<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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