There’s always been a lot of talk about how hard it is to change the culture within an organisation. It’s true. It’s not the simplest thing to do. This is primarily because of people. People are the vessel that culture grows in.
So, why does that make it difficult? People also happen to represent the biggest obstacle to change. There’s a large number of people to convince, please, and engage, each requiring a different strategy. That alone makes changing culture a huge job, most attempts at which fail.
Let’s consider for a moment why we want to change the culture. A great number of organisational elements rely on a healthy culture. Think of strategy, efficiency, communication, knowledge transfer. Is there another way, aside from culture?
How about process. Process is something that is, usually, comparitively easy to change. For example, we can remove levels of bureaucracy in approvals processes, we can decentralise management, and we can eliminate all manner of overheads. All with a much smaller dependency on convincing and engaging staff.
I’m not saying culture never needs to be changed. What I am saying is that you need to think very carefully about whether that is really what is needed. Are there easier ways to accomplish your objectives? If so, work on those first.
Very interesting take here, Daniel. I think companies need to determine whether it’s process or culture that needs to be changed. However, I’ll also say that to affect culture changes one has to change their processes as well, whereas changing processes could leave everything else the same. To me, you can teach people how to answer the phone more professionally, but that’s only a superficial change, and if nothing else is fixed then you’ve just wasted your time.
Culture change always starts at the top, then with management in general. If those people never change for the better, the company will find a way to implode until true and good leadership comes along.
Hi Mitch, Thanks for your comment.
I think you’re entirely correct that culture flows from the top. You’re also spot on that to change the culture you need to change the processes. That’s the beauty of it — if you take smaller steps changing processes, it grows and changes the culture to suit.
In unrelated news, I subscribed to your blog the other day!
Daniel
Good stuff Daniel; I appreciate that. One thing I’ve also seen every once in awhile is a lower level manager with good skills influencing a team in a positive manner, and someone else seeing that and deciding to try to copy it. Doesn’t happen often if an organization is defective, but otherwise it’s like a mini grassroots movement.
Oh, just so you know, I didn’t get a notification that you responded to this post; I just happen to come back. You might need to check your settings on that one.
Thanks Mitch, I’ll check into the settings for that.
You’re right about the grassroots type effect. Real leaders (regardless of their heirarchical positon) often have that legitimate level of influence over people, contribution to that positive, flow on effect.