Are you frustrated because you find it difficult to influence aspects of culture in your organisation? You know having these aspects are crucial to progress. No matter how many times you’ve tried to change these aspects, they revert back. Perhaps people don’t take ownership and responsibility and keep elevating issues back up the management chain when they could be dealing with it themselves. Or, they don’t treat customers the way they should. You’ve talked about it to so many people until you’re blue in the face and still nothing seems to change. Maybe, just maybe, there is a belief in your top team that these things aren’t ever going to change. What do you do?
Let’s understand a bit more about culture. Culture is your organisation’s unwritten rule book. It’s the “should” and the “should nots” of how to behave in your organisation. Culture is built on the concept of social proof. People look around to see what others are doing. This then tells them what they should do and what they shouldn’t do. They then develop habits. After a little while these habits become automatic and sink out of consciousness. It becomes a way of living and the path of least resistance.
Below are some tips that may help you make that shift in culture.
- It’s always an issue of leadership. Whenever you see significant culture change you see it demonstrated by the top tier of leadership. It becomes important to them. It annoys them when they don’t see these behaviours lived out. Have them model the desired cultural traits. This alone can be the difference between failure and success. Are you personally modelling these desired traits?
- Have a strategy. Have a detailed plan. Make sure it’s deliverable and make sure you measure it. It’s lack of sustained focus and inconsistency that make cultural interventions fail.
- Identify the influencers – find the people with influence in your organisation. These are the people who others truly look to, when weighing up what to do. They may not necessarily be part of your management structure. Find them and work with them.
- Tell lots of stories – make sure your managers are continually telling stories of change.
- Raise personal awareness and self-development. This makes it easier for everyone to bring these habits to the surface.
- Breakdown the behaviours you want to see changed. For example, ownership and responsibility are complex capabilities. They require self-awareness, emotional intelligence, personal commitment, ability to handle stress and ability to solve problems.
- Don’t think in terms of cultures but in terms of sub-cultures. The “culture” is simply an abstract form of the entire collection of sub cultures.
- Expect resistance. It’s normal. It’s not deliberate. It’s the habits kicking in and people testing the waters to see what is acceptable and what is not.
- Finally, believe it can change and keep pushing through.