Why changing organisational culture is tough…
The most invisible but impactful element of the organisation is culture–and arguably one that helps sustainability as well as consistent and superior performance. It’s not just difficult to define but also to explain in a meaningful way, and at the end of the day, is an aggregation of many things. Culture is underlying and what is visible or observable are symptoms, and maybe some behaviours, or how things happen in the organisation. It is then the job of leadership to make meaning out of these visible symptoms/signs and take action to reinforce or correct certain things. However, changing culture is often difficult and unsuccessfully attempted. The difficulty often lies in changing things (processes, leadership, ways of working, people bahaviours and rewarding mechanisms). This is particularly so if the organisation has been successful in the past. Here are a few primary causes (and there can be many more), which seem to be relevant in this context. These are more from a leadership and people perspective and do not illustrate the challenges from a financial, process or system perspective.
It’s easier to talk about problems than do something about them. Most people can fairly accurately talk about symptoms, and some even get to the root cause of issues. Collectively or individually, it’s most likely that the people in the organisation often are well aware of the problem, or at least part of the problem. It is however quite amazing that nothing happens as a consequence. This could be due to many reasons–the voice is not heard, symptoms ignored and /or the analysis of the root cause is faulty. However, it appears that most of the time organisations and leaders do not know “how” to deal with the problem. So they know the “what” but not the path to get there. It’s also feasible that the “how” is linked to difficult choices and a different way of doing things, so it does not automatically happen. And many leaders may believe that by talking about the problem enough, it will somehow go away. Unless there is differentiated action to address real issues, this is unlikely to happen.
Most People/Leaders see themselves as being outside the problem. It’s often quite enlightening to see people talk about challenges in their organisation. It is as if they are analysts or consultants. They refuse to believe that their own actions, behaviours and contribution is also part of the success and culture of the organisation. It is as if they are not part of the organisational dance but standing aside watching other people dance. It’s good to step back once in a while and take a detached view. It is also imperative to accept that each employee (and particularly senior leaders) leave a mark by how they behave and do things on the fabric of the organisation. This defines culture more often than not, and unless there is personal responsibility to see and do thing differently, the collective change at an organisational level will not happen.
The wrong behaviour is being rewarded and not reprimanded/corrected. This is perhaps the most contentious area. Leaders often give confusing signals to people down the line. There are either not enough motivators for change, and not enough communication around the consequences of changing or not changing are. The rewards (or reprimands) often have nothing to do with behaviours the organisation is trying to drive. There are overt and covert reward mechanisms in organisations–e.g,who gets more face time with the leader in a particular group. While leaders may deal with overt and apparent reward mechanisms (pay, promotions, appraisal ratings etc), they are often negligent of the more subtle recognition mechanisms and what message it is passing to the organisation at large. It is quite difficult to get even the stated reward mechanisms right while implementing–bringing objectivity and fairness. On top of that if there are too many covert signals as to what is ‘really’ valued –or not–it confuses the organisation and creates mistrust and lack of behavioural direction.
The subtle signals are ignored. Organisations and culture don’t change by themselves, at least in a planned way. There are of course examples of crises which force change. While implementing change however, signs of support or resistance can be often ignored, By not acknowledging support, this is likely to go away and enthusiasm fade. By not dealing with conflict and resistance in a timely and direct manner, it can grow, and even become a roadblock. The ability to pick the signs, and more importantly act on them is critical. Change managers and leaders are so taken up by their own vision and what they want to drive that other perspectives can be missed sometimes. Also, differentiating between the more apparent (vocal) signs vis the ones which are less apparent may be important to direct action. The trick therefore is to not just pick the right signals and all of them, but also interpret meaningfully, assess the impact and act.
Change Orientation, Managing Culture, Managing Culture Design & Change
“Developing a cultural Competency”
I am broadly in agreement with Bimal’s view that changing culture is tough, whilst I am of the view that people have changing and conflicting perceptions on this account. Measuring the current culture and changing to a desired culture is undoubtedly a key requirement for today’s fast paced, globally competitive and complex business organisations.It’s relevant more so in a business world where a rapid acquisitions, mergers and restructurings has been a trend. Gone are those days when business owners could run organisations solely based on their own way of doing things around. Culture remains to be a very strong variable in order to remain productive and profitable, in a conceptual era driven by technology and knowledge.
HR’s role is pivotal in bringing about a positive cultural change in organizations, attuned and integrated to the business.HR’s competence and capability to work as change agents is of tremendous value add for any business organisation.We have to look at not only leadership culture change but ” Cultural competence ” as an important and holistic dimension. Hardwiring the soft stuff like culture is an uphill task but our understanding and attempt in this direction has to be correct, as pointed out by Bimal in his thought provoking write-up.
I would say that culture change is a big project in itself and we have to involve multiple stakeholders so that there is a common thread and understanding, not only in accepting the rationale for change but effectively dealing with the same in the process. Assessing and developing a cultural profile of an organisation is must and delineating all the challenges is very important. Many a times we find that those aspects of culture that need to be changed are not addressed when doing so, resulting in resistance and lack of trust.
Culture curve for all organisation are different where in behaviors play a critical role. Ones the behaviors are adjusted to changing requirements, everything else changes smoothly. We are trying to map the behaviors and basic assumptions which lead to an organisational culture where achievement and fulfillment are high, so that we can create a valid case for ourselves in arriving at all those numbers of dimensions and build cultural competencies in our organisation.Self-awareness and authenticity being the first two of them. Once we get all our real measures in place, we would put them together and broadly categorize them in two broad cultural competencies, initially to be implemented for leadership levels and then the cascading and the waterfall effect should take place. We would also look at not only successes but characteristics of a few of those big organisations which successfully failed and take learning’s from there.
I see that most of the older rules in the new economy will not be applicable, so let us build positive alliances and collaboration through sharing since Cross Culture Management is a new Global Competency and “Cultural change to my mind is a shared responsibility” in today’s dynamic and networked world. All the best.
Warm Regards,
Vijay Rai
Group President
LUXRA GROUP
@Vijay Rai
Role Of HR In Culture Change Management:
Would like to add to above discussion………
Culture is a subset of values of any organization, which in turn is linked with vision and mission.
In todays scenario of competition, every organization is trying to catch up with the pace of market. Which is directly or indirectly effecting culture.
Any change has to flow from top to bottom. Where communication and ownership at every level will play key role.
HR can play major in bringing cultural change at organization level. Various means could be Recuruitment( by matching attitude of the new recruit with values of the organization), Competency Mapping along with training programmes ( organizing Training Programmes to match the required competecny and current comeptence of the employees), Internal Communication, by linking it to performance etc etc.
As its famously said change starts at “home’. HR should start inheriting the change and should set an example for rest of the organization.
Any change is like an OD intervention and the owners have to act like OD consultants, in other words to be keen observers. Sometimnes simple one to one discussion also helps to deal with resistance. Where in peers, seniors , juniors every body can play active role.
Hi Bimal
Your comment are very appropriate and timely. The problem with any change is that leaders do not use all the soucers of Influnce. Our decades of global research has shown (and our article was declared the “Change Management article of 2008 by MIT managment school) tnat the main reason for failure of more than 85% change initiatives is that the leaders try and find “silver bullets”. We will be very happy to share more on this, if some one feels intereted.
Yogesh Sood
Managing Partner – India operations
Tel : +91 124 4040573/74, Ext. 900, Direct: +91 124 4511900
(M) +91-9811554725
Email: yogesh@vitalsmarts-india.com
VitalSmarts™ Change for Good.
http://www.vitalsmartsindia.com
Transform your organization with our widely proven corporate
training solutions, ground-breaking research, acclaimed speakers,
and three New York Times bestselling books – Crucial Conversations,
Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. http://www.vitalsmarts.com
What gets in the way of leading change?
90% of leaders recognize that bad behaviors have become tolerated norms
Top 2 : Lack of Accountability & Protecting Turf
95% say they persist for 1+ yrs 55% say they persist for 5+ yrs
90% of Leaders use fewer than two sources of influence
When 4+ sources of influence are used to change behavior: 10x correlation to successful behavior change