Australian Institute of Management -- Management Today
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Carolyn Taylor
Carolyn grew up in a family typical of the fast disappearing culture of the English aristocracy. In rebellion, she set out for Australia to prove that she could reinvent herself without familiar cultural artefacts. Along the way she became entranced by the burgeoning personal development movement, and taught personal growth across the world.
In 1985, she formed Corporate Vision to harness the thinking, values and behaviours of people to an organisational cause.The Corporate Vision team discovered first-hand the profound influence of culture on individuals and teams. They concluded that investment in culture was a key plank of organisational performance and built their expertise around this premise.
Corporate Vision is a pioneer of culture work in Australia. Carolyn has personally worked with the top teams of many blue-chip organisations, both here and overseas. She has a reputation for strong, honest feedback and for her skill in helping to form a team of formidable egos into a cohesive leadership engine.
She is currently completing a book that is a 'how to' of the process of changing a culture. She is also enjoying the freedom of having nudged three children out of the nest.
To find out more about Carolyn and her work, and to read selected articles, visit www.corporatevision.com.au.
Carolyn Taylor can be reached at ctaylor@corporatevision.com.au.
Culture can be a significant competitive advantage and it is not easily replicable. However, most organisations are not investing in culture at the level that will set them apart from their competitors.
To build the case for investing in cultural improvement requires a thorough understanding of the cost of the current culture. The business case is strong in the areas of speed, accountability, rigour, collaboration and attractiveness to customers and employees, and it is in these areas that the link between culture and performance is most easily demonstrated.
Culture is the result of messages that are received about what is really valued. People align their behaviour to these messages in order to fit in. Changing a culture requires a systematic and planned change to these messages, whose sources are behaviours, symbols and systems.
This chapter selects three highly desirable cultures (Performance, Customer-Centric and One-Team) , describes each, shows their impact on performance and provides an overview of what is required to achieve them.
The chapter opens with a clear definition of culture and how it is sustained, and concludes with a description of two of the initial key steps for harnessing its potential.
I have had the privilege of working with organisations in the sphere of human behaviour for over 18 years. When we started our consulting company, Corporate Vision, in the mid-1980s, leadership was a term rarely used in a management context in Australia. Culture was associated with the arts or tribes in New Guinea and people were just starting to consider vision and values in an organisational context. Eighteen years is a long time, and yet the development of methodologies to establish culture as a competitive advantage is a discipline still in its infancy. Compare it to the journey of marketing since the 1960s, when organisations first grasped the benefits of understanding and influencing the behaviour of their customers. There is much more to come in the culture space.
Culture poses some particular challenges that make it a harder path than it first appears and necessitate an investment of time, money and resources. However, because it is a hard path, it is also difficult for competitors to replicate—and surely any source of competitive advantage is worth careful consideration. It is this line of thinking that I would encourage you to adopt in considering the benefits of such an investment for your own organisation.
Most organisations I talk to describe their culture as limiting the implementation of strategy. A few, very few, describe their culture as a competitive advantage. So, logically, most companies would benefit from building a culture more suited to their needs. Yet, when we compare their investment in their culture to, for example, their investment in technology or even advertising, it is easy to conclude that most companies do not actually see culture as important, despite what they say.
A truth that you will have to confront if you intend to change your culture is that we all put time and effort into those things that we value highly. If we value something less, we dedicate less of our limited resources to it. Therefore, it tends to be less cared for—less functional—than our top priority areas. Following this logic, if culture is unsatisfactory, it is because we have not valued it enough, for long enough, to pour effort into it to make it shine. And perhaps we have not valued it because we have not recognised its value to us.
Some companies don't take culture seriously because their leaders describe culture as 'all that soft stuff'. That is a convenient way to avoid facing the fact that these leaders either do not understand what culture is, or are so scared of what it would require of them that they are making sure their company does not get them anywhere near such a personally threatening situation.
If I put organisations that fit into this category aside, we are left with a very large number of companies who see their culture as an impediment, but have not made the level of investment required to deliver a substantial change within a reasonable timeframe. In most instances, I have found that this is because:
So, how can you assess if investment in culture is wise for your organisation? Start by answering these questions:
So, if you got a 'yes' to at least one of the first five questions, and got a 'yes' to question 6, the key enabler, then I suggest it is worth looking at culture as a potential opportunity for enhancing your organisation's performance and increasing competitive advantage.
This chapter will give you an understanding of what culture is, how it is sustained and where to look to quantify its impact on performance in your organisation. It will also enable you to build a business case for investing in culture, and provide the initial key steps for turning your culture into a competitive advantage.
This is the definition that we use at Corporate Vision:
Culture is what is created from the messages that are received about how people are expected to behave in your organisation.
We are tribal animals; we are hard-wired to fit within our tribe. We read the signals about what it takes to fit in, and we adapt our behaviour accordingly. If we absolutely cannot do this, we either leave the tribe, or the tribe throws us out.
These signals—the messages we receive—come from many sources, and most are non-verbal. To get a sense of how messages are picked up, imagine a little boy born in Italy. By the time this child is five years old, he is unmistakably Italian—his gestures, his expectations, his expressions, how he treats women, how he treats food, what he thinks about his home and his possessions. How did that occur? Somehow, along the way, this child picked up signals about how to be, and these signals were different from those picked up by, for example, an English child. This process is beautifully described in a book called An Italian education , by Tim Parks, an Englishman writing about watching his son, born in Italy to his Italian wife, emerging as an Italian.1
So culture is about messages sent and received. These messages demonstrate what is actually valued, what is important, and what people do around here to fit in, to be accepted and to be rewarded. People pick up these messages, adapt their behaviour and, in so doing, further reinforce the culture by sending messages themselves. Here is an example.
A company says that it values customers, but when it comes to allocating scarce IT resources, the company invests in a system that will help employees track and make more sales, rather than one that makes it easier for the customer to do business with the company.
This decision says that, although the company values customers, it values winning them more than satisfying them.
In addition, there are often very long meetings to review sales figures, but no meetings to evaluate causes of customer dissatisfaction.
The message bank about the value of customers is filling up.
Finally, a recent key promotion was given to a strong sales person who has a reputation for stopping at nothing to make a sale.
Now the picture is clear. When smart employees are trying to figure out how to spend their scarce time, they know what to do to get ahead in this organisation.
Culture is about messages . so, culture management is about message management. To change a culture you have to recognise the sources of the messages your people receive about what is valued and then change them. This task is a logical and systematic process, but not an easy one.
Messages come from three broad sources(outlined in table 1.1):
Messages from behaviour. The management team and those people considered important in your organisation are watched by others. They are role models and their behaviour is carefully observed. Their actions send messages to your people about 'what is expected around here'. These messages are much stronger than any spoken messages from the management team.
That is why it is important for leaders to 'walk the talk'. Cultural messages are picked up from the 'walk', not the 'talk'. Your people will watch the decisions their leaders make, how they spend their time and the quality of their interactions with others. Since your organisation has rewarded these individuals with positions of importance, it is a reasonable assumption that their behaviours are the ones required to succeed.
Messages from symbols. Symbols are actions, decisions and situations visible to a large number of your people and to which those people attribute meaning. Often the attributed meaning goes far beyond the scope of the individual circumstance.
Highly visible symbols, such as how time and money are spent, where priorities are placed, who gets promoted and how office space is assigned, are seen to represent the deeper value set about 'what is important around here'. Symbols provide an important leverage point for culture change, because small events can send big messages.
Messages from systems. Your organisation's systems reward, measure, manage and communicate what has been deemed as important up until this point. They direct a lot of focus and effort, and thus send cultural messages about what the organisation values.
A lag time between changing culture and changing systems means that there may be a hangover from a previous value set. Business, financial and HR processes set a cultural framework for behaviours and values. Therefore, managers such as the Chief Financial Officer may control important and often unrecognised levers for changing culture.
Source |
How the cultural message is delivered |
Behaviour |
|
Symbols |
|
Systems |
|
The business case for cultural change escalates when the benefits extend beyond 'making this a nicer place to work'. In the past, the human resources section of an organisation was often given responsibility for dealing with the 'issue' of culture. This is possibly why there seems to be a belief within the business community that culture is the 'soft and fuzzy stuff' that we do in addition to running the real business. Wrong!
Your organisation's culture is involved every time you make a decision. It is your organisation's culture that causes:
Culture is your business, not something you have on the side. Culture influences what we value and what we believe is important. It influences how we feel, and our motivation—it is either motivating or demotivating, depending on whether it galvanises or saps energy. Culture guides our behaviours, symbols and systems, which in turn produce outcomes that contribute to or detract from the organisation's performance. It strongly influences the decisions your people make, how they spend their time, and the nature of their interactions with people inside and outside your organisation. Figure 1.1 illustrates how this occurs.
The business case for investing in cultural change is based on the fact that a positive culture can improve such performance-enhancing behaviours (summarised in table 1.2) as:
Behavoiur |
Outcomes |
Speed |
|
Accountability |
|
Rigour |
|
Simplicity |
|
Collaboration |
|
Attractiveness |
|
Over the years, I have studied many cultural change efforts, both successes and failures. A key differentiator has been specificity (or lack of it) about what is required, and why.
When approaching cultural change or enhancement, it is natural to start with something of a 'wish list' of desired cultural attributes for the organisation. To be successful, however, it is necessary to focus on the areas of greatest opportunity for your organisation.
There are many opportunities for cultural focus. There are business opportunities in each, and each has different levers for change, a distinct business case and a particular mind-set. Over the years, however, Corporate Vision has found that there are three types of cultures that can be developed by most organisations, and that can result in considerable business gain. Corporate Vision have given them the titles:
They are summarised in table 1.3 and are described in greater detail in the following sections.
Culture |
Descriptors |
Performance Culture |
Achievement, accountability, focus, speed, delivery, meritocracy, discipline, rigour |
Customer-Centric Culture |
Customer focus, service, responsiveness, external focus, relationships |
One-Team Culture |
Teamwork, collaboration, globalisation, internal customers |
There are, of course, many types of cultures. And every organisation is seeking a unique combination of values, beliefs and cultural norms to deliver a set of behaviours that will enhance its performance. I will use these three culturesto give you a deeper perspective on how culture can work to deliver a set of performance outcomes for your organisation. You may choose to focus on only one, a combination of them, or perhaps explore others.
My advice—simple messages are more memorable, so one focus is likely to increase the speed of transformation.
In analysing what differentiates successful and unsuccessful attempts to change culture, we have found that harnessing existing strengths is an easier journey than trying to become something completely new.
In our diagnostic work we look for an organisation's natural predisposition towards achieving particular cultural outcomes. Such characteristics are so embedded they are almost part of the organisation's soul. Identify and work with them and your path becomes easier; your investment delivers a faster return.
For example, a client organisation of ours had a deeply embedded belief about itself that our research team classified as 'a cut above the rest'. This characteristic played out on several levels. At its best, it resulted in the pursuit of excellence. At worst, it produced arrogance and a refusal to recognise deep flaws. This denial had caused severe performance problems. Our advice was to orientate the culture initiatives around redefining what it meant to be 'a cut above the rest' and to consider how to harness this existing characteristic. In this way the organisation leveraged the natural value-set and ambitions of its people, and were able to get traction very quickly.
For each of the three cultures, I discuss its core organisational strengths, beliefs and characteristics. If you recognise these strengths within your own organisation, you are naturally predisposed to creating this culture.As discussed later in this chapter, the success or failure of cultural change will depend on the attitude of the leadership team. They must be prepared to champion the beliefs and values that underpin the emerging culture.
So, if you are in a leadership position, it is important to pick a cultural focus for which you have a natural affinity. Each cultural bias has certain beliefs and values that are so fundamental to it that you should undertake some serious self-examination to ascertain your capacity to walk the talk.
For this reason, for each of the three cultures I have included a list of beliefs that the leadership team must champion, and values with which all members must be truly aligned.
The next sections are designed to help you gain a clearer picture of the three cultures. As you read about the cultures, consider how difficult each would be to implement in your organisation. Consider what you have in place already that will facilitate the process, and which culture will contribute the most to the success of your business strategy.
This can be defined as:
A culture in which individuals, teams and the organisation achieve what they agree to achieve.
Other words that can be used for this are: accountability, achievement, focus, speed, delivery, discipline, meritocracy and rigour.
In a Performance Culture people deliver on their promises. When they say 'I can do this', whether it is to meet an annual target or fulfil a commitment to complete a report by Friday, it occurs. Rewards and consequences are aligned to delivery. The results are speed and focus because people are conscious of what they commit to; they assess risks more carefully and complete what they start. This provides confidence that what is targeted will be achieved.
Table 1.4 provides a vivid description of such a culture. As you read through the columns, think about how building such a culture might increase performance and business opportunities for your organisation.
Clarity |
|
Stretch |
|
Transparency |
|
Personal responsibility |
|
Meritocracy |
|
Teamwork |
|
Signs that your organisation would benefit from building a Performance Culture include:
Adopting a Performance Culture will provide the following business benefits:
These characteristics will facilitate building a Performance Culture. Do they already exist in your culture?
Other motivators include:
The leadership team must be prepared to champion the following beliefs:
The leadership team must have the following values:
A client of ours had an avoidance culture that displayed itself in the over-enthusiastic starting of new initiatives, including massive spending on consultants for projects not linked to each other. Projects were rarely completed or stopped—instead they would quietly peter out and be replaced by the newest silver bullet.
Over a three-year period, they were able to reduce their project spend by 30%, and were also able to measure and deliver business benefits that helped to increase market share significantly in key sectors. The key to their cultural transformation was accountability and the discipline of finishing things. They learned to hold people to account not only for completing projects, but for delivering the benefits outlined in the original business case.
This required a major change to their entire accounting, planning, performance management and career development processes. Above all, it required all of the mind-sets, behaviours and skills involved in being accountable and holding others to account.
This can be defined as:
A culture in which an intimate understanding of the customer drives everything.
Other words that can be used for this are: customer focus, service, responsive, externally focused, relationships.
The Customer-Centric organisation is designed from the outside in. Everybody understands the customer and can see how the customer will be affected by what they do. There is a strong conviction that customer satisfaction will deliver more sales. The driver for decision making is whether what is proposed will make it easier, faster, cheaper or more pleasurable for the customer. With this single-mindedness an extraordinary amount of waffle and 'activity-itis' just falls away. Everyone is turned in the same direction.
Table 1.5 provides a picture of a culture geared to make an organisation a winner in the customer satisfaction stakes. As you read through the columns, think about how building such a culture might increase performance and business opportunities for your organisation.
Empathy |
|
Insight |
|
Openness |
|
Common purpose |
|
Living values |
|
Priority no. 1 |
|
Signs that your organisation would benefit from building a Customer-Centric Culture include:
• high customer turnover plus a high cost for winning new customers
• the complexity of too many products, and the associated costs of training, tracking, servicing, manufacturing and processing
• new market entrants and customers finding alternative ways of meeting a need that previously was fulfilled by you.
Adopting a Customer-Centric Culture will provide the following benefits:
The following characteristics will facilitate building a Customer-Centric Culture. Do they already exist in your culture?
Other motivators include:
The leadership team must be prepared to champion the following beliefs:
The leadership team must have the following values:
We worked in depth with one of the call centres of a large financial services institution. Their customer satisfaction rating continually scored the lowest of the group.
Our work focused primarily on the mind-sets and attitudes that lead to Customer-Centricity, which can be achieved through programs that realign thinking and values, and re-engage the hearts. (When changing culture within a local unit, the broader systemic issues are often out of reach, and focusing on mind-sets and behaviour is the best strategy.)
On their own, the team leaders then realigned a number of local practices and processes, based on their new understanding of what was important. These symbolic acts further reinforced a new cultural norm. The culture transformed as the underlying values shifted towards the customer and their needs.
Within a year they had measured improvements in customer satisfaction and sales, and a reduction in complaints. When, the following year, the organisation amalgamated four call centres into one, this centre was selected as the model for the future.
This can be defined as:
A culture in which the good of the whole is placed ahead of the good of the individual or sub-group.
Other words that can be used for this are: global, collaborative, internal customer, teamwork, supportive.
A One-Team Culture is becoming more essential as technology and process re-engineering make isolated units a thing of the past. A One-Team is counter-instinctive, because we do not naturally bond with those people who are not geographically close to us.
Building a One-Team Culture requires considerable effort to increase the identity of the component parts with the larger group. I like to give the example of the European Union—being French or being Spanish is much more important than being European. Aside from the Ryder Cup in golf, the Europeans do not even come together to play as one sporting team. The success of the EU will depend on its ability to create a One-Team Culture.
Your challenge may not be quite as great, but do not underestimate what it takes to create this economically attractive culture in your organisation.
Table 1.6 provides a vivid description of such a culture. As you read through the columns, think about how building such a culture might increase performance and business opportunities for your organisation.
Big picture |
|
Trust |
|
Support |
Information is shared freely Opportunities are spotted by one area and given to another to capitalise on (e.g. cross-selling) Shared accountability—areas that are struggling are given help (resources, ideas) by others Rapid correction with alternative steps put in place in the case of performance variation—one team will compensate for another When a decision is made, individuals speak and act supportively of it Teams operate selflessly on behalf of other teams |
Individual accountability |
Every team member understands the others' individual roles Performance requirements Metrics for one role are discussed with another where efforts may appear in conflict—tensions are managed explicitly Individuals are held to account for different KPIs by different leaders within a matrix structure Conflicting priorities caused by the matrix are resolved openly and constructively Individuals are trusted to play their role without interference Fewer meetings; distinctions between information sharing and decision making clear |
Reliability |
Peers negotiate directly with each other to deliver what each requires KPIs signed off by dependant colleagues is at least as high a priority as delivery to the boss 'My word is my bond' is a commonly held value and practice Delivery and non-delivery acknowledged |
Learning |
Best practice is transferred quickly Formal processes to bounce ideas off colleagues are in place Frequent feedback on behaviour and performance Post-implementation reviews occur on projects and initiatives Experience is valued and requests for help common |
Signs that your organisation would benefit from building a One-Team Culture include:
Adopting a One-Team Culture would provide the following business benefits:
The following characteristics will facilitate building a One-Team Culture. Do they already exist in your culture?
Other motivators include:
The leadership team must be prepared to champion the following beliefs:
The leadership team must have the following values:
A client organisation of ours in the mining industry had exhausted its ability to increase production from three mines, located some distance from each other, that shared rail and port facilities. Each mine operated as a separate fiefdom, wherein the mine manager was king. Communication between mines was low, and collaboration non-existent.
A transformation occurred when the three mines collaborated to ensure maximum use of the rail facilities. In addition, they collaborated to ensure that the port was able to have ready the right type of load for each ship, according to the requirements of the customer to which that ship was delivering. This often meant one mine actually stopping or altering its production for the good of the whole.
Creating a One-Team Culture increased production by 25% over three years, and resulted in a decision to invest significant capital to facilitate a further 25% growth. The group has become the star performer of the wider organisation.
Every time I have the privilege of working in an organisation that exemplifies the three cultures I have described, I am overwhelmed by how utterly different it is from the vast majority. These organisations simply playing a completely different game. What is the difference? They are values-driven.
As stated earlier, when building a culture, you must change behaviours, symbols and systems in such a way that the existing messages about 'what is expected around here' are altered forever. In this way a new value-set emerges, and you have built a new tribal norm.
Creating a culture that is a competitive advantage requires a shift in the hierarchy of values amongst a critical mass of people in positions of influence and power, underpinned by a simultaneous change in enough of the messages so that everyone in the organisation realises that things really have changed.
Once this occurs, the culture change process speeds up incredibly. For a while it feels as if you are pushing a huge rock up a steep slope. Suddenly, almost overnight, you reach the top and the rock starts to roll very fast indeed. Your leaders are making decisions that change symbols faster than you can keep up. The cultural change plan is overtaken by ideas you could never have dreamt of. This usually occurs some time in the second or third year of a focused process that has proper funding and priority. So hang in there.
The process of changing a culture involves changing the values and mind-sets of your people so that they themselves will change their behaviour towards others, their decision making and how they use their time. This means becoming a truly values-driven organisation that genuinely holds to its chosen values during times of pressure.
To understand this, think of friends and colleagues you know. Do you remember the phrase: 'a person of principle'? A person of principle is someone who holds true to an inner set of beliefs or values at all times. They do not sink to behaving in a way that only serves their own interests or short-term goals.
My father was a prisoner of war in the Second World War. He speaks very eloquently about watching the behaviours of his colleagues. Within days it became clear which fellow prisoners were 'men of principle'. Some, he noted, gave up all principles in the desire for a cigarette. Others when they became hungry. Others, simply through the frustration, fear and boredom of camp life, began to steal, to betray and to put their own interests ahead of others.
An 'organisation of principle' is a values-driven organisation. Even when times are tough, performance is poor and time is short, there are certain principles from which it will not waver. It is easy to uphold good principles when there is no pressure to do otherwise. This is why tough times bring out the true character in us.
Most values involve some element of upholding the wellbeing of others as well as our own. The role of values in society has been to ensure that, as a community, we live in a way that looks after the whole, not just the individual. A values-driven organisation has achieved this as a tribe. There may be some members who do not always behave appropriately, but the tribal norm is that its values will be upheld. Those who do not do so are not given many opportunities to repeat their behaviour, because it threatens the strength of the whole. The values are the glue that holds the tribe together.
A shared vision or purpose will also hold a tribe together, but in a different way. A vision provides a shared aspiration about what we, as individuals , are going to do, achieve or contribute towards the group's purpose. Values, by contrast, bind us together to act as a group, rather than as a set of individuals. The vision gives the sense of purpose, but the values provide the sense of identity. Together they are a formidable pair.
The culture that exists in your organisation today is the result of what has been valued over the past few years. If there has not been strong bonding through a shared set of uplifting values, then many individuals will have reverted to a selfish set of drivers: control, power, status, looking good and so on. So, the biggest step in your culture journey is to become a values-driven organisation. This means lifting yourselves as a group out of individual or organisational selfishness (the pragmatic approach that says 'we don't really have principles; we will achieve our outcome at any cost at all').
The process requires leadership. It requires one or two people in key positions discovering their own personal values, and rebuilding (if they have lost it) their belief that holding to these values will deliver performance outcomes.
There is an element of faith involved here. It is always possible to make a quick buck by taking an easier or more expedient path. But evidence built from studies such as that described by Collins and Porras in Built to last , 2 shows that over time values-driven organisations have the resilience and reputation to sustain a lasting performance.
The process for the leader is:
Every time a value is upheld in the face of the temptation to take an expedient path, that value is strengthened in your culture. These moments form the stories that are told and re-told to reaffirm your tribe and its values.
This shift to being values-driven is the most difficult work of the cultural change process, and also the most important. The rest of the work centres on your chosen thrust (whatever that might be).
People get very attached to the work associated with developing their list of values, and see this as the main component of the definition stage. There is little point, however, in spending three days debating whether teamwork or customer focus is the most important value for your organisation if, as a group, you are not at all committed or prepared to be values-driven.
The main component of the cultural change process is looking within and determining whether the organisation and you, as its leader, are up to the challenge of being values-driven.
To plan and implement a journey to establish your culture as a competitive advantage, I recommend you focus initially on two key steps:
Significant culture change can only occur when the behaviour and mind-set of the top team changes. Culture change is not something that you can drive from the bottom up. Organisations are hierarchical by nature. Those at the top have more power than the rest, and their opinions, decisions and behaviour impacts on more people than those in any other part of the organisation.
Culture is about messages. People read messages and adapt their behaviour to fit what they see as the required norm. What creates the required norm? More than anything else, it is the behaviour of the boss. After all, in a hierarchy the boss ultimately has the power to determine his or her people's future career advancement, remuneration and continuation in the organisation.
The top team is important because they are the ultimate bosses. But, in addition, their decisions ripple through the organisation and send signals about what is important. Finally, the top team's decisions have a powerful symbolic impact. The team casts a long shadow. Their actions are amplified and more is read into them than is necessarily intended.
The work of the top team is to understand with searing clarity and honesty their current behaviours, values and beliefs, and how these play out in their decision making, use of time and interactions with others.
Once the top team understand this, they must a program of work to change those behaviours, values and beliefs sustaining the elements of culture that are negatively impacting their organisation's performance. Such a program will be personally challenging, and one or two members of the team may not survive the process. However, such changes can and do take place when the business case stacks up, the resolve is strong and the program well designed.
On every occasion when I felt that we had failed our clients, it was because we were unable to find the key to unlock a change in the behaviour, beliefs and values of the CEO. Despite all the efforts further down the hierarchy, the shadow cast was too dark. Small steps of change at the top have huge ripples throughout the culture.
A program of work for the top team should include:
A cultural diagnostic is a process of research that will provide you with a thorough understanding of the culture you have right now. It will enable you to:
Even though you may be champing at the bit to get going on your cultural change program, it is well worth investing in such an exercise. These are the reasons why it is important (and you can also use this list as a basis for the objectives of your diagnostic):
Such a business case is essential to ensure that cultural building moves up the list of priorities from 'nice to do' to 'absolute priority', which is necessary if these efforts are to be successful.
Most of this is going on quite unconsciously, by the way, which is why the construction of the cultural diagnostic is very important. In order to hear the messages your people are receiving, which will almost certainly not be the messages you think are being sent, you have to keep a very open mind.
A well-designed cultural diagnostic will show you how and why messages are being received, using a rigorous research process that your leadership team will respect, and identify specific ways in which new messages can be sent.
Pinpointing the sources also helps key influencers to understand their role in this journey. It holds up a mirror and allows managers to see their actions and behaviours as others interpret them. So often, this interpretation is different from the intent.
When you are in the process of change, it is quite difficult to remember what things were like before. The culture journey tends to leave you with a continuing sense that there is more to do—it is easy to forget how much has actually been achieved.
Repeated measurement of change is a morale booster if progress is being made. And if the objective measure does not register change, it can be a useful jolt if a small group of individuals have been mistakenly feeling that real progress has been made. Sometimes a culture process can create leaders who become legends in their own minds.
Culture is your business, whether you choose to focus on it or not. Your organisation's reputation, and yours, can be damaged by superficial attempts to change the culture.
If you are not sure your organisation is really ready to put in the investment of time, money and priority necessary for cultural change, then investigate the business case and test the resolve of your top team. If after this stage you conclude that it is not right for you, do yourself and your people a favour and walk away from it.
There are moments in time when you will have enough of the ingredients in place to do culture well. In this chapter I have sought to provide you with a picture that will enable you to consider that decision for your organisation.
If you embark on the journey, you will find it the most satisfying, frustrating, confusing, personally challenging and thrilling experience of your career. Along the way, your customers, owners and employees will be pretty damned pleased as well. I wish you every success.
Material for this chapter is drawn from the years of experience of the large Corporate Vision team of consultants, whose work on major cultural change projects with clients all over the world has taught us what we know about how it is done.
1. T Parks, An Italian education , Random House, London, 1996.
2. J Collins & I Porras, Built to last , Random House, London, 1988.
© 2004 Australian Institute of Management