Change Your Corporate Culture

Every organization has a distinctive style of working which is called its culture. The policies, principles, how employees interact, and how the management deals with employees- all contribute to the culture.

It is said that an organization’s culture is like the wind. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. And it’s present around you. CEOs and leaders across the globe are trying to create a corporate culture with better customer care and create an organization that’s nimble and agile.

However, culture change is challenging for organizations to transform and become adaptive and innovative. It’s because you can’t accomplish it through the top-down command. For a culture change to happen, the collective efforts of the people and their shared awareness of how things are accomplished are important.

Have a clear strategy 

An organization’s cultural aspects are reflected in collaboration, trust, and willingness to work toward a common goal. A clear corporate strategy can set the foundation for a culture change. Smart leaders ensure clarity in the organization, division, team, and individuals before they start the process. When the above are in place, employees will start believing in and driving the process. Leaders strive to cultivate a robust corporate culture to achieve sustainable competitiveness in global markets. This strong corporate culture includes three areas: collaboration, trust, and learning. Leaders should consider the marketplace challenges they face before trying to change the organization’s culture.

One study by researchers at Duke University (completed before the outset of the pandemic) concluded that a strong corporate culture fosters better execution, reduction in agency cost, and therefore, higher productivity and creativity.

Leaders are aware of the organizational culture’s power and how it impacts the bottom line. They recognize the importance of shared values and behaviours that impact how an organization conducts its business. An organization’s culture touches every functional department, which is critical to its strategic direction.

Evaluate the existing corporate culture

Do an objective analysis of where your organization is. Unless you know the organization’s health, performance, and alignment, you will not be able to reach where you want to go.

Be as objective as possible in assessing your current workplace culture. Don’t pull any punches. You need to assess your organizational health, performance, and strategic alignment levels so you know where you stand compared to where you want to go.

Explain the desired culture

Once you know your existing cultural health, clearly defining the desired workplace culture is easy. It is critical to align your organizational culture to the business strategy across the workplace’s cultural dimensions. The critical ones include market approach, customers, loyalty, focus, risk tolerance, operational approach, decision making, information, and results.

When you want to bring in an organizational culture change, just conveying the need for a change won’t cut. To harness full-fledged and lasting changes, leaders should make the employees feel it, kindle a desire in them and make them ready to take up the responsibility. A good organizational change is a pursuit of shared goals. It offers meaning to work, touch individual emotions, and motivates collective action.

It is often said that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Consistency is key in trying to make a change happen in organizations. However, an organization’s cultural changes are put on the back burner due to the perceived complexity of the effort. Holding leadership and the workers accountable and adaptable to change helps the cause and effect of organizational cultural change.

Plan steps to change the culture 

Once you understand the differences between your current and desired organizational culture, you can define the one or two most impactful cultural shifts needed to execute your strategy effectively. Next, you must identify and train culture champions and support them to help align your culture with your strategy. Leaders should be ready with a clear road map for change with key performance indicators, objectives, deliverables, and milestones.

Spread the word about cultural change

Cultural change must happen through a movement, not as a mandate. To create such a change, the leader should identify the culture champions and nurture them to become responsible by creating emotional engagement and connection with the people in the organization.

Celebrate quick wins

Leaders should recognize the power of celebrating small wins. Disseminate the wins to a large audience by leveraging employees’ social networks and other innovative methods to keep the momentum going. Establishing quick wins will help mobilize more supporters. And one should continue with it.

Every employee should become familiar with the culture change plan and be able to articulate the specific culture changes, why it is vital, and how it will help fast-track the overall people and business strategies compared to the status quo. Everyone should understand their unique contribution to the effort and how culture change will benefit the organization, their team, and themselves as an individual.

Cultural change can occur only when people take action. Hence, leaders should sow the change they want to see. A culture change is an opportunity for a leader to walk the talk. Behave in a consistent way that upholds the corporate values you endorse. Like leaders, high performers and culture change champions should follow the desired behaviors.

Avoid these pitfalls

Leaders often fall into the trap of declaring the cultural shifts they hope to see. Instead, they need to highlight examples of actions they hope to see more of within the culture. If there are any existing behaviours within certain groups or departments, highlight them. Never overuse power, like coercion and intimidation, to bring about culture change. But use your clear vision for the organization and communicate it to the employees that vision with leadership storytelling. Quickly implement new systems and processes that support and reinforce the vision. Reinforce the values for continuous improvement. Ensure to communicate more and often horizontally in conversations and stories, not through top-down commands. Don’t get into reorganizing and bring in a new team of top managers. Work with the existing managers, identify those who share your vision, and convert them into enablers.

Conclusion

A leader is in a position of authority. They can dictate changes to the organization. But, when it comes to culture change, use it sparingly. It’s easy to overuse one’s authority in the hope of accelerating transformation, which may result in disaster. Sometimes, leaders shy away from organizational friction, and some friction is possible and desired in cultural change. Though harmony and ensuing seamlessness is the most preferred stage for a business to transact, a complete absence of friction is not desired. Take a look at the areas where resistance and friction exist and emphasize those places to evolve to align with the organization.

If you are determined, achieving a positive culture change is not tough. That said, changing a culture is a large-scale undertaking, and you will have to use all organizational tools to change minds to use. However, how it is deployed critically impacts the success rate.