Corporate Culture Change

Most organizations want cultural change as a solution to something that is broken. This can be detected in 360 feedback, falling sales number or just the general malaise in the company.

If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist & Noble Prize Winner.

The leadership that recognizes the issues and seeks cultural change should be congratulated for averting a disastrous train crash. This is a mid to long-term process, requiring a concerted effort by all levels, especially from the leadership and management.

The Role Of Management

Cultural change starts from the top down. When the leadership is committed to making the necessary changes, the rest of the company have an example to follow. Leaders cannot have double standards of behaviour for themselves and the rest of the company. Having double standards is a sure-fire route to sabotaging this work. So management support is a critical success factor.

"72% of companies agreed that culture is key to organizational performance. However, only 32% said their culture aligns with their business strategy."

2014 Survey conducted by Korn Ferry on Strategy and Culture.

While the thinking may initiate from the top down, the real work starts from the bottom up. Change lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here”, which is a mindset. Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity. The ideal situation for corporate culture change, is for the whole team to have mutually ascribed goals and common values to hold them together on this journey. Individuals, working within teams create the sustained momentum to power this change.

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"Corporate Culture Change is a movement, not a mandate!" Fred Then, Accidental Educator.

Define The Problem (Items 1-4)

Create Alignment (Items 4-6)

Manage The Processes (Items 7-10)

  1. Setup Phase
    1. Private discuss with management on objectives.
    2. Design-the-alliance to agree on rules & behaviour during the process.
  2. Identify Current Organisational Values
    1. Storytelling exercises by individuals to identify current corporate values.
    2. Facilitator-led.
  3. Identify Personal Values
    1. Storytelling exercises by the individual to identify personal values.
    2. Facilitator-led.
  4. Set the organisational objective
    1. Management to set the objective. Town Hall meeting style.
    2. Adjustments of the objective by the teams. Group work.
    3. Buy-in by the teams. Group work followed by group presentation.
  5. Recognise discrepancies between current organisation and personal values
    1. Create strategies to deal with the differences.
    2. Create new organisational cultural values
    3. Work to determine the new core values that will drive the cultural change.
  6. Design individual and group responsibility support processes.
    1. Design measurable KPIs to track cultural change
    2. Facilitator-led workshop to help the group decide on indexes to track changes.
    3. Group-led discussions to determine tactical approaches for implementation.
    4. Defining job KPIs that support the cultural change.
    5. Group presentation to management for approval.
  7. Design Thinking For Implementation Strategies
    1. 3 Days facilitator-led workshop.
    2. Group-led learning & co-creation of solutions.
  8. The Sandbox
    1. Create a Sandbox environment to test the new values and strategies.
    2. Review the sandbox experiment and implement improvements.
  9. Organization-wide rollout
    1. Group-led presentation to the company, supported by management.
  10. Follow-up practices
    1. Individual and group coaching to ensure adherence to the plan.
    2. Revision of implemented strategies
    3. Celebrate the milestones

Moving The Elephant

Shifting the culture of any organisation is bound to create organizational friction. In a movements-based approach, a moderate amount of friction is positive. A complete absence of friction probably means that little is actually changing. Look for the places where the movement faces resistance and experiences friction as these are the potential areas of growth.

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The Peak My Performance/Think Solution Approach recognises that individuals are the building blocks for successful change. Our process focuses on helping people move past old mindsets or habits that may be counterproductive. By shifting people, we'll move the organisation!

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