Using Organizational Culture for Stretch and Leverage

Linda Gravett, Ph.D, SPHR

Through the conventions and traditions that comprise an organization's culture, great accomplishments are possible. Effective leaders know how to use their organization's culture to achieve results and can identify when changes must be made within the culture to stay current with an ever-changing environment.

In order to lead culture change, I believe an organization's leadership must proactively engage in five steps: envisioning; communicating; motivating; measuring; and retaining change.

Envisioning Change.

Strategic thinkers are aware of how events in their environment affect the company's ability to survive and thrive. Given constant change in a global economy, effective leaders must have a vision of how their organization can leverage employees' skills, knowledge, and abilities to take advantage of evolving markets. Visionary leaders regularly ask, "what if we…..?" and focus on breakthroughs in technology, services, and products that give their organization a competitive advantage. From this vision, anchored in core values, come objectives and goals that drive the actions of the leadership team.

Communicating Change.

The critical challenge for leaders today is finding an effective means to transfer values and a vision for the future from their hearts and minds to all the organization's employees. A strategic plan, for instance, is only as strong as the weakest link within the organization, for every employee's talents, abilities, and behaviors are needed to implement the breakthroughs required to stay ahead of competitors. New competencies and new approaches may be necessary to keep the organization viable.

I have found that, whether you have six months or six weeks to implement new processes, policies, or procedures, four phases of change are required to change your organizational culture (see Figure below). The first phase involves communicating change.

In the first stage, preparation, the groundwork is laid for impending change. For example, let's say that the organization has decided to implement a diversity initiative as part of its strategic plan. Successful implementation will require people to behave differently. Prior to rolling the initiative out, information should be provided to employees and managers about events in the world around them - the changes in the economy, demographics, and societal norms - that necessitate recruiting, developing, and retaining a diverse workforce. This information can be provided in several forms, such as articles on bulletin boards or on the company web site, discussions in company-wide meetings, or brown bag lunch seminars. At this point, there's no "pitch" for people to change. The focus is solely on providing information.

Motivating Others to Change.

In the second stage, acceptance, employees are brought into the change process by solicitation of their input about potential policies, core values statements, or activities and how changes might affect them personally, their department, and the company as a whole. The question on most peoples' minds will be, "What's in it for me to accept new policies or people and to change the way I do things?" If that question isn't addressed, real culture change isn't going to occur….at least not at the pace that may be required. Using our example of a diversity initiative, in the acceptance phase Human Resources could conduct a culture audit, a needs analysis of issues and problems regarding recruiting, orientation, training, career development, and compensation. An analysis would then be conducted to determine if one particular group of employees, for example, those over 40 or women, have indicated on the survey that they believe they haven't experienced the full benefit of promotions and career opportunities that other employees have enjoyed. Human Resources would then follow up with focus groups to attempt to understand why people over 40 or women have the perception that they aren't being treated the same as other employee groups. Focus group members would be solicited for concrete ideas about methods to remedy the real or perceived disparate treatment. When employees' opinions are asked, and their solutions implemented whenever feasible, the company gains their acceptance of policy or procedure changes much more readily.

Measuring Change.

When employees are made aware of specifically how their contributions have affected the organization's success, they're not only motivated to continue their efforts, but they know which behavior(s) to continue.

During the implementation of an organizational change process, I believe it's critical to set process checkpoints in order to step back and ask, "are we meeting our objectives?" Of course this question can't be answered unless clear objectives are established in the first place. Objectives must be articulated in terms that are easily understood by employees, customers, and suppliers. Some examples are:

1) Expand our recruiting sources to ensure the organization hires more Hispanic and African-American employees.

2) Establish a presence in the volunteer community as advocates for education.

3) Expand our customer base to include the 50 - 65-year-old demographic.

Culture is simply "the way things are done around here." Behaviors can be observed, and the results of those behaviors can be measured quantitatively - increased sales, fewer customer complaints, and recruitment and retention of quality employees that are representative of our customers and the community, to name a few.

Retaining Change.

If you'll look back to Figure 1, the last two phases of the "PACE" of change address the challenge of retaining change. In the third phase, commitment, new policies or procedures are distributed, training is conducted when necessary, and the changes are put into place. A key element of success at this juncture is that the organization's leadership must be actually following the new policies or procedures instead of just telling everyone else they must change. To make sure this happens, change agents must be assertive in educating people at all levels within the organization and coaching managers and first-line supervisors alike to model changes in behavior.

The fourth phase in the change process is empowerment. I know, I know...this is an overused word that's a holdover from the mid-1990's! In the truest sense of the word, though, empowerment must take place at all levels in the organization to truly effect lasting change. Employees can't be empowered in an organization that has artificial barriers at every turn that keep them from carrying out required changes. For example, if part of the company's diversity initiative is to establish cross-functional process improvement teams that are comprised of employees at line, first-line supervisor, and managerial level, the "senior" person on the team cannot step into the first team meeting and assert himself or herself as "the boss." If the company CEO announces to the company that she has an "open door policy" and wants employees to stop by and offer suggestions in person, employees can't be faced with five assistants and a waiting period of six months before they can actually meet with the CEO for 10 minutes.

Sometimes organizational change must occur within a matter of weeks, so obviously the process outlined above must be abbreviated. This does not mean, however, that any of the phases can be omitted. An organizational culture takes constant nurturing to develop, mature, and evolve….which means the people in your organization require constant nurturing and care to develop, mature, and evolve.