Organizations facing change often look at their patterned behaviors (culture) and realize that these behaviors don’t match behaviors needed to have a competitive edge.
Today, power companies are great examples of a necessary shift in culture. On one hand, they have cultures which are very safety conscious, methodical, detailed in their planning, slow moving, and conservative. This patterned culture has helped them be very reliable and safe, which is what their customers demand. So what happens now that competition is growing in the generation part of their business? This requires an adjustment in culture toward that which is faster moving, more innovative, tolerance for more unknowns in terms of finances, and a willingness to experiment with out of the box trends such as decentralization of power generation and construction of renewable power generation. Yet is is still critical that a culture of safety and reliability remain strong.
Certainly we don’t want the nuclear plant operators to suddenly become more innovative and experimental nor do we want this for the employees working on the transmission and distribution lines. Yet we do want a shift in other parts of the business such as in the business development functions as well as the marketing and finance functions. So the first obvious lesson in culture change is to be clear not only about the new behaviors you want, but to also be clear about the parts of the business where this is to be emphasized and the parts where it is to be deemphasized.
So, what is the most powerful lever available to change culture in an organization? My experience is that by far, culture change is most influenced by the behavior of the leadership team. I have seen consistently over time that the culture of any organization is constantly in movement toward the culture of the leadership team. Another way to put this is that the shared values of the leadership team are like magnets pulling the shared value of the organization toward that of the leadership.
A great way to support this effort is to have senior leaders not only identify the desired shared values of the organization, but also to provide examples of behaviors which support each value – and – the most important part is for the leaders to consciously align their behaviors with those of the desired shared values.
There are certainly a variety of other things which can be done to “hard-wire” shared values in organizations such as:
- Incorporation of the shared values into the organization’s performance management system, compensation calculations, and training/learning programs.
- Communication of stories where living by the shared values made a positive difference.
- Tracking of behavior changes through periodic surveys.
- Symbolic and visible moves to demonstrate support of the shared values.
Yet, all of the above can be easily undone if the leadership is not aligning themselves to the values. That is the most important facet of culture change.
What are your experiences in culture change? What worked and what did not?
