Why Culture Change Is Not Understood – With A Short Guide To Greater Understanding

The recent past has forced many organisations to confront a painful truth. There was something amiss in their culture which meant either they didn’t see the problems coming as the clouds of recession gathered and/or their culture is inhibiting their ability to respond effectively to the new economic realities. Hence the need for culture change.

The problem is that for many organisations they seem not to understand what they are trying to do. Their terms of reference are ill defined and their ability to articulate the cultural current and desired states is poor. There is also confusion over timescales. Often you will hear managers talk about cultural change taking ‘many years’ which its tantamount to saying the culture can’t be changed, whilst others will talk about a three month culture change project.

This is why culture change fails.

To help organisations approach culture change more productively we have prepared a prompt guide to at least try to organise your thinking and process of examining culture change more productively:

1. Firstly a definition. Culture is expressed as a set of behaviours that are viewed by the organisation as normal and expected - what is often referred to as ‘the way we do things round here’.
2. Next, values are not a synonym for culture. Values (what you believe in and stand for) inform the way you behave, when those behaviours normalise you have an expressed culture.
3. So if you wish to change your culture you need to think about what your current values are. By values we don’t mean the laminated 6 phrases on the back of a company swipe card, but the things the company really believes in.
4. By proper examination of the values you can begin to decide on their appropriateness and think about changing them but you need another compass bearing before you can set a new direction.
5. The organisation’s vision. What is the organisation’s purpose? Again a real vision isn’t a marketing strap-line on a business card, but a much more fundamental expression of what you are trying to achieve.
6. As these two concepts start to germinate and synthesise (don’t worry about also needing a mission- we’ve never seen an organisation satisfactorily manage a vision and mission in any added value sense at all) you can focus on the catalyst for cultural change - the organisation’s and individuals’ behaviours.
7. Behaviours are the visible manifestation of values. By focusing on behaviours which are both definable and controllable you can start to shape a new culture.
8. This is where we can answer the timing point. Many behaviours can be changed in the very short term which will give you a quick win but they won’t (yet) be unconscious; they will easily revert unless the process is vigilant. This is the longer term perspective.
9. To affect permanent behavioural change a key component is an organisation’s consequences model. There has to be consequences, both good, bad and indifferent, for a person’s behaviour to permanently change; and this must be separated from their performance. If good performance creates license for bad behaviour any culture change stops right there.
10. Finally, never call it a programme, project or campaign, and never use the word launch. Culture change is a process, a journey, not a destination, it is organic and constantly present.

Difficult Questions That Effective HR Functions Are STILL Trying To Answer

A lot has changed recently in organisations, whether they are public, private or voluntary sector. HR teams have often found themselves dealing with issues they hadn’t expected, yet some of the key questions that faced HR people have hardly changed at all. We posed these questions 18 months ago, how many have you found a satisfactory answer to?

1. How do we retain the trust of our people when we are constantly re-organising, restructuring and removing people from the payroll? How do we ‘value our people’ whilst in a permanent state of change?
2. Skills shortages are getting worse, meaningful price increases are out of the question, and the cost to serve our customers is rising faster than revenue growth. How do we increase productivity, without adding further to our costs?
3. The legislative framework for employment best practice is increasing in scope all the time. What are the most effective ways of maintaining flexibility in our payroll (often one of our biggest expense lines) allowing us to grow, shrink and change shape as required?
4. People are becoming more complex in their motivational needs and wants. Whether that’s generational or life stage driven, as an organisation we have to offer attractive, innovative employment practices and benefits, how do we do it affordably?
5. What are our policies on diversity, equality, grievance, discrimination (in all forms), how to we effect ‘trade-off’ compliance with agility?
6. The role of HR needs to become one of catalytic agent of change as well as (instead of?) a writer of policies, procedures and people related administration. How do we effectively make that transition?
7. How do we put leadership at the centre of our organisation’s development agenda?
8. What is the most effective way in engaging employees in taking part in difficult change processes where a possible outcome of which might put their own job at risk?
9. How do we build an effective integrated ROI model for our people development, compliance and people administration expenditures?
10. How do we resolve the paradoxes and seeming contradictions in much of the inter-related nature of the previous 9 questions?

Whilst Predaptive don’t claim to have a set of neat, simple answers to these questions, we are working in various ways on helping client organisations to answer them, and where that is impossible, to at least work up a meaningful response.

Badwill And The Shovel Ready Foxtrot Economy

The recession has launched its own share of buzzwords, here’s a few we’ve been hearing lately. If there are any you’re noticing trending, let us know.

Badwill:
The opposite of goodwill, the negative effect on sales and share price (or electoral chances) experienced when the public learns about unacceptable personal or business practices.

Dead Cat Bounce:
A temporary up turn in markets following a swift decline in sales followed by a further fall.

Decremental:
The opposite of incremental, a state of steady decrease.

Foxtrot Economy:
A state in which the economic figures released indicate fast-fast growth, but are followed by further quarters of slow-slow growth.

Funemployment:
A self descriptor for people who find themselves out of work and enjoying spending time doing other things that a full time job didn’t allow, usually only used by people without pressing financial obligations.

Shovel Ready:
Descriptor of a project that is ready to start just as soon as financial resources are made available.

Zombie Company:
A business usually in financial services which is not financially viable without government loans and guarantees.