Management
Maximize Your Cultural Shiftby Steve Kaye
Everything that happens in an organization is driven by the organization’s culture. It defines how people celebrate successes, react to challenges, and deal with disappointments. More fundamentally, it also controls how people make decisions and set priorities.
Cultural management is thus the prime responsibility of every leader. Savvy leaders know that a productive culture works like a powerful, silent force, shaping and guiding activities that lead to success. It creates a healthy environment that elevates morale, provides energy, and promotes dedication. In total, a productive culture is the key to making an organization efficient and effective.
An organization’s leaders create the culture through their actions, communications, and programs. Ideally, this culture represents deliberate, purposeful decisions made by those leaders. In many organizations, however, the culture is an unplanned tangle of stubborn customs left over from past administrations. As such, it hinders achieving success.
Seven Steps to Enhance Your Culture
Step 1. Analyze the current culture.
This step provides direction for the remaining steps. It consists of answering the following questions:
What are people doing now? (current situation)
What would you like them to do? (the ideal or new situation)
What forces drive the current situation? (advantages and disadvantages of choosing different actions)
What information, skills, resources, and tools would people need to implement the changes that you want?
If you conduct the analysis by yourself, write out your answers to the above questions. Although these questions may appear simple, the answers can be complex. Benefit will result in the review and revision that accompanies writing.
This analysis depends upon a complete and accurate assessment of the current culture and its driving forces. Thus, include other’s views. Gather this information through focus group meetings, surveys, and interviews. When gathering data on the current culture, recognize that the most successful people in an organization will often praise the current culture, while the least successful members may criticize it.
Also, expect that the people who benefit from the status quo will obstruct attempts to change the culture. For example, leaders in a research company wanted to standardize software development. As a first step, they called a meeting of the top programmers to analyze the current culture. One of these programmers used anger, sarcasm, and insults to destroy the meeting. In doing this, the programmer protected the current culture.
Surveys can help evaluate a culture. When conducting surveys, be sure to design the questions to obtain candid results, instead of prove assumptions. Then, analyze the results completely and carefully. Sometimes, only a minority of the people will feel brave enough (or care enough) to state views that are held by the majority. Also, a complaint about one issue may actually be related to other, more important issues, that members were unable to convey through the survey. Thus, a survey is often an initial step in that it identifies areas that need further analysis and study.
Outside experts can help conduct surveys and analyze the results. These consultants are valuable because they lack the cultural assumptions or the private agendas that blind insiders.
Generally, major cultural changes are beyond the ability of any organization. Instead, simplify the process by analyzing one activity or dimension of the culture at a time. Or, plan to implement large scale changes in small steps.
Consider a simple example, such as late arrivals at meetings. The analysis questions and their answers might be:
Current Culture.
People arrive ten to fifteen minutes late for meetings.
Ideal Culture.
People arrive five minutes before the meeting starts.
Driving Forces.
People arrive late because:
Everyone else is late.
There are too many meetings.
People schedule sequential meetings and the previous meetings always take more time than planned.
The advantages of being late include:
The individual gains prominence by being the last to arrive. It appears conventional, in that everyone else arrives late. It communicates independence and resentment to the person who called the meeting.
And the disadvantages of arriving on time include:
It wastes time waiting for the meeting to start because others are late. It invites ridicule from peers. There are no advantages to arriving on time or disadvantages to arriving late.
Information, Skills, and Resources.
In a survey, everyone admitted that arriving on time is the correct thing to do. They also stated that no one had ever told them that arriving on time was expected or important. Everyone had the necessary skills (ability to read a clock), resources (access to clocks), and tools (a watch) to arrive on time. However, most people said they could benefit from learning how to manage their time, set priorities, and conduct effective meetings.
This analysis shows that implementation will involve:
Informing everyone that timely arrival is expected (Step 2).
Management setting the example by arriving on time (Step 3).
Replacing the current driving forces with incentives to arrive on time and unfavorable consequences for late arrival (Step 4).
Conducting private coaching (Step 5).
Scheduling workshops on time management and effective meetings (Step 6).
Notice how a simple issue such as arrival at meetings can lead to a complex set of corrective actions. Other cultural issues may require far more extensive planning and a much more complex correction.
Consider, for example, two other common situations that involve deeply rooted policies.
Example 1.
A software company wants to promote teamwork. Yet, the company gives the largest raises to the individuals who write the most lines of code. As a result, there is no incentive for experts to spend time helping other programmers.
In this case, the company’s reward system encourages individual effort and discourages teamwork. The solution could involve revising the company’s reward system to encourage group effort.
Example 2.
An engineering firm promotes people based on their technical achievements and encourages everyone, including top executives, to contribute to technical projects. Thus, the managers assign the most prominent projects to themselves. Since the work on these projects requires most of their time, they neglect their leadership responsibilities. Without planning and employee development the company suffers from inefficient operation and low morale.
In this case, the company has built a promotion system that puts people in leadership roles for the wrong reasons and then discourages spending time on leadership activities. Here, the solution could involve revising the criteria for placing people in leadership roles and teaching potential leaders the skills they need to succeed.
In both of the above examples, a complex system of forces is driving decisions as well as influencing every part of the business. Thus, a complete analysis would be necessary before planning corrective actions.
Step 2. Announce the change that you want.
Often, people appear to be doing the wrong thing because no one told them what to do. People have to be told about new expectations, policies, and rules in order to apply them. When this obvious step is omitted, it makes people appear to be uncooperative, even though they believe they are doing what is expected.
Set a foundation for this announcement by acknowledging the past and describing its impact on the organization. Then describe your expectations for the future. In some cases, this announcement can be transmitted by a memo, broadcast e-mail, or a video conference.
If the change involves a controversial or complex issue, you may want to hold meetings to make the announcement. In general, it is a wise strategy to involve others in the process of announcing changes, even though you have already decided upon what you want to do. That way, the participants feel that the change occurred by a fair process.
Involve the participants by asking for their suggestions on how this change would affect their work. Ask for their concerns and reservations. Listen respectfully and acknowledge differing views. If appropriate, you may even decide to revise parts of your plan based on these suggestions. At the end of the discussion, however, you want to have their agreement to cooperate.
Of course, it is preferable if the members of the organization participated in Step 1, analyzing the culture, identifying changes, and planning their implementation. Then, the members accept the cultural shift because they planned it.
Part of the announcement includes consequences (Step 4) related to the change. Note: offer only those rewards and restrictions that you are fully prepared to implement. When leaders vary their application of consequences, they lose credibility, which undermines their ability to enforce adoption of the change.
Step 3. Set the example.
Often, a culture simply reflects the behavior exhibited by the top leaders. For example, if the CEO always arrives late at meetings, it tells everyone else that late arrival is acceptable. Since the CEO is most likely a key participant, this also prevents the meeting from starting on time.
In the case of meetings, you can begin to change the culture by arriving early. Then let the latecomers know that you resented having to wait for them. That action alone may correct this cultural flaw.
Step 4. Implement consequences.
Consequences (both favorable and unfavorable) are the driving forces that shape cultures. Thus, a new culture will require new consequences.
Consequences include the rewards and restrictions that result from different actions. To be effective, consequences need to be realistic, appropriate, and relevant. They also become most effective when they include both rewards for cooperation and restrictions for resistance. Complex shifts may be supported with a hierarchical system of consequences that span the full range of possible cooperation or resistance. For example, rewards could range from a simple "Thank you" to a promotion; and restrictions could range from brief corrective coaching to dismissal.
In the case of meetings, you could provide refreshments only to the people who arrive before the meeting starts and establish a policy that chronic late arrival will be reflected in a person’s performance rating. Notice that this includes both incentives to arrive early (refreshments) and consequences for arriving late (no refreshments, reduced performance rating).
Step 5. Communicate with individuals.
Meet privately with people who will be the most affected by the cultural shift. Some people need detailed explanations about how the change will take place and their continued role in the organization. Skipping this step can convert top performers into problem employees.
Then, while the cultural shift is being implemented, meet with individuals to talk about their adaptation to the changes. Compliment and reinforce those who cooperate, coach and direct those who seem to resist. This step shows your support for the change and makes sure that people adopt it successfully.
For example, if someone continues to arrive late for meetings, a coaching session provides an opportunity to stress the importance of timely arrival and to explore for causes. If it’s a matter of incentive, a review of the consequences may be sufficient. If it’s a matter of skills, perhaps the person could benefit from a program on time management and setting priorities.
If the change involves transfers, explain to all the people involved how this contributes to the organization. That includes the people being transferred, the people in the organization they leave, and the people in the receiving organization. One company skipped this step when they transferred an engineer into a new position. Other engineers in the receiving group felt threatened by the transferred engineer, and thus refused to cooperate. Thus, this engineer encountered sufficient difficulty adapting to the new position and, within six months, he quit.
Step 6. Provide Resources.
Sometimes people choose less favorable actions because they lack resources and skills. In the case of the software company mentioned above, standardized development could require a central subroutine library, code management software, and team development skills.
Support cultural shifts by teaching necessary skills, revising resource allocations, and purchasing equipment.
Step 7. Celebrate success.
As the organization adopts the new policy, the members need to know that the cultural shift worked. Leaders should report on this progress and offer compliments. These communications can also provide opportunities to fine tune the cultural shift.
For example, in the case of meetings, you could convene a meeting by saying, "I’m pleased that everyone arrived on time."
Once the celebration ends, however, leaders go back to work. They must maintain the culture by setting an example, providing coaching, and enforcing consequences. And when needed, they improve the culture by repeating the process.
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CopyrightŠ 2002, Steve Kaye. All right reserved. For information contact Frog Pond at 800.704.FROG(3764) or email susie@frogpond.com.
Motivation