What are the best ways to stay organized during a culture change?

Anticipate potential obstacles and risks in advance. Develop proactive contingency plans to mitigate these challenges swiftly, minimizing disruptions to the project timeline and objectives.

The idea that we plan for culture change is somewhat misguided, as people are constantly joining and leaving a business for various reasons constantly impacting the culture of a work place. Understanding how the existing culture inhibits or enhances the goals of a company should be an ongoing practice in relation to organizational values. Where company/organizational culture undermines organizational values and goals, leadership needs an intervention to correct matters. Shaping such a project requires firstly requires a company wide conversation to create awareness of the problem and then to distill a corrective course of action that everyone buys into. Ensure you are part of this process, as this will allow you to understand your role.

Connect with colleagues, mentors, and new contacts who can provide insights, guidance, and potential collaborations for personal and professional growth.

Adaptability is a superpower that can be developed when one understands the various skills and character traits that underpin it. Abilities such as grit, mental flexibility, mindset, resilience and unlearning together with character traits such as hope, emotional range, thinking and motivational style are all capable of being developed with appropriate training, leadership and mentorship. By embracing an adaptability assessment tool such as AQme, individuals can learn a lot about their level competence on these dimensions and set up a personal development plan that will help individuals navigate any change demands.

Any culture change project will likely also challenge your own values and is something that should be considered in relation to your own mental and emotional well-being. Being able to confide in someone whom you can trust to express concerns, fears and conflicted emotions is very important not just for the duration of a culture change project, but also for ensuring a balanced life.

In my experience, balance starts in your mind and how you SEE the changes being made internally. If you are wracked with guilt for the people that leave, or the pressure that teams are under you're going to have a bad time. You know a culture change is required - some eggs get broken along the way. Stop seeing it as a bad thing! It is just the reality of a situation. You are breaking to make better. The moment you let go of your internal struggle and pressure, everything else becomes easier.