We typically want to work for an organisation with a great culture. We also choose to stay longer with organisations that facilitate learning and help bring out our best.
Many organisations want to enhance their organisational culture so that creativity and innovation flourish. For some organisations this is a huge change, while for others, reinforcing behaviours or processes and systems are needed. In this blog I’ll chat about steps you can take to change the culture of your organisation
In related news, I’ve recently published a book, Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations. This book describes a myriad of ways to facilitate change in an organisation including stories covering mergers, acquisitions, new systems and cultural change which is the focus of this blog.
What is culture change and why is it hard?
Cultural change is perhaps the most complex type of change program as it involves changing people’s attitudes and behaviours. As a result, it takes time. Culture is a big and complex concept and covers habits, behaviours, processes, attitudes, artefacts. It’s sometimes described ‘as the way that things are done around here’ although Ed Schein, former MIT professor and organisational culture expert, observes that this statement disguises the complexity of culture.
Those of us who’ve lived inside organisations know that culture can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including leadership and employee behaviours, communication styles, decision-making processes and office layout. While it can be hard to describe, culture is something you can feel after a short time within a new environment.
Schein, tells us that culture is built through shared learning and mutual experience. He advises that if you want to change an organisation’s culture you need to think about it systematically – and that culture change can evolve from small but effective changes in behaviors. In trying to change an organisation’s culture, he advises to be very specific about the behavior or behaviours that are creating a problem in the organisation and then to focus on the types of behaviors we want to see.
Cultural change stories
In my book of Change Stories I had stories shared around steps taken to more deeply embed a safety culture in a mining company, around building a more diverse organisation in a male dominated engineering company and around building a more innovative culture – which is so important as organisations need to respond to and anticipate changes in their external environment. Some of the lessons from these stories include:
Need for long-term investments in awareness raising and skills development
Importance of building small conversations around the desired change into everyday work meetings.
Having conversations that connect to the employees’ own circumstances and interests as a driver for change.
How would you know that you have an innovative culture?
There would be frequent reflection, learning fast, evidence of thinking differently and of challenging the status quo. These behaviours are typically associated with creativity. It’s also recognized that innovative organisations tend to be ahead of their customers rather than responding to them. They are much more proactive.
What attitudes and behaviour support an innovate culture?
In an innovative environment mistakes are expected. Because innovative cultures expect to take steps into the unknown they have also developed very good risk-management processes.
Many organisations have recognised the need to encourage innovation as a way of ensuring their survival and success. While they can introduce systems and programs, building an underlying culture that supports innovation is much harder.
Innovative cultures are often described as fun. They’re characterized by a tolerance for failure and a willingness to experiment. They’re seen as being psychologically safe, highly collaborative, and non-hierarchical. And research suggests that these behaviors translate into better performance.
I’ve recently been reading Carolyn Taylor’s excellent book on how to change your organisation’s culture titled: ‘Walking the Talk: Building a culture for success’. She describes what’s needed if an organisation wants to change and embed a different culture. Some of the many things I took away from her book include
- Culture journey is a long one, it requires considerable investment in both time and emotional energy and is not something to be undertaken in a hurry as a knee-jerk response.
- Behavioural norms evolve over long periods of time and are influenced by many factors including the values or beliefs that brought the community together in the first place; past and present leaders (We all think of the influence of Steve Jobs at Apple on building an innovative organisation).
If you’d like to know more, I propose you read the books and articles referenced below.
References
Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.
Stanley, T. (2020). Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations
Taylor, C. (2005). Walking the talk: Building a culture for success. The Learning Organization.