What are the keys to sustaining Culture Change behaviors over the long term?

Aligning with strategy is a great way to create a positive narrative around culture change. Rather than "our culture is bad and need to be fixed", the focus can be on creating something special together. For this approach to really work, staff need to have ownership of the strategy. They should have a strong understanding of it, have contributed to it, and definitely need to see how their role links to it. This leads to much stronger internal motivation to enact cultural and behavioral changes to achieve the strategy.

Culture change today is an important direction that companies need to implement due to many aspects that pushes the company towards the future. Culture change in my opinion is needed when you are company is facing the following: 1. Generation Gap ,where the younger people are use finishing everything with a swipe of a screen. While the older generation like to take everything slowly. Therefore management needs to have workshops that are designed to bridge the gap. 2. Management style: This needs to be changed from the top of the pyramid to the bottom. Management should be more open to criticism & be empathetic to its employees & help them succeed in their career. 3. Companies should also encourage vulnerability

It’s important to share the big picture strategy overview as to why the change is taking place, so that people can feel included, so communication of the goals and objectives, where the company is headed and how everyone can contribute to get there.These should cascade to the teams so that they can work on the business goals.

Ensuring your culture understands your long-term strategy is a great way to tackle this tricky relationship. Both culture and strategy, when well designed, are cornerstones for the success of your business. Also, incorporating your company’s foundational part in your Cultural model enhances your culture to evolve with our losing your essence (aka what nroughtyoyr company to the present day).

It's important that employees have a contributory say on what's not right and how it can be addressed because its assumed, erroneously though, that culture issues are mostly bad behaviour from the lower hierarchy. Adopted concensus should be wholeheartedly embraced by all especially the leadership. Else it starts to look like one of those things that look good on paper but sneered at discreetly.

Get the collective and representative involved! Meaning, culture is, in its simplest form, collective regard and social norms. There is NO longstanding culture change without the very people (collective and representative) who comprise the culture being trusted, empowered, and enabled change agents. Even as a culture consultant, there is NOTHING that I can do that would improve the culture moreso than the very people who live it every day. They know and see the social norms. They know and see the culture vultures. They know and see the policies and processes and structures...not to mention the people who influence them. Let them be part of the change. HR should run it, but most of the change agents should be everyday employees.

In my experience, get the most important senior leaders in one room and have them make a list of all relevant stakeholders. Think really broad by including internal and external stakeholders. Dive deeper into the motivations, needs, dependency, influence and relationships with each of the stakeholders in order to make a full mapping. Keep reviewing this map regularly. Decide on ways to listen better to the stakeholders (perhaps inviting them to a leadership conference or bring them in during a team coaching session), to monitor their influence and their opinions.

Language becomes very important here. Whether it's your values, above the line, on the bus or some other framework, giving stakeholders shared language to talk about culture is critical to achieving sustainable culture change. In an ideal state, staff are able to have conversations amongst themselves about culture where they identify issues and come up with solutions. Engagement should focus on giving people the tools to do this. External stakeholders/customers should also be able to articulate the culture so that they feel confident to raise issues.

Formulating working groups is a great way to engage stakeholders. When employees volunteer to be a part of the group it ensures diverse representation from the employees regardless of the grade.

To sustain a culture, change effectively, there are several actions you should avoid: ?Ignoring Existing Culture - Disregarding the current organisational culture when implementing change can lead to resistance and failure. ?Lack of Leadership Commitment - Without strong support and example-setting from leaders, culture change initiatives are unlikely to succeed. ?Inconsistent Messaging - Mixed signals or inconsistent communication about the change can create confusion and hinder its adoption. ?Neglecting Employee Involvement - Excluding employees from the change process can lead to a lack of ownership and engagement with the new culture.

Ask "why would someone behave the way we want them to?" Everyone operates on incentives, whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic. Sustainable change needs aligned incentives. A simple example : someone completes the work you assign them faster than you expected. You give them more work, to fill the time, their colleague continues at a slower pace. You've just dis-incentivized faster completion of work. A simple test to see if the response to actions aligns incentives to the right behavior is to ask "if this was the response to an action I took, would I want to do more of it, or less?" It's not a difficult question to answer, it's just seldom asked by the people driving the change.

It's valuable to weave storytelling into your reward and recognition program. As opposed to lists of achievements or an ambiguous award title, stories resonate with people. They also act as great parables around the kind of culture you are working towards. Make sure you consider all levels of the organization in your reward and recognition approach, and remember that people like to be recognised/rewarded in different ways. Because of this, investing in your managers is a very effective way to reinforce and reward the right behaviors. Managers need to have the tools and skills to understand how to motivate their staff to align with culture and managers also need to value time spent doing this, otherwise it may be missed.

Things to avoid: ?Neglecting Employee Involvement - Excluding employees from the change process can lead to a lack of ownership and engagement with the new culture. ?Overlooking Small Wins - Failing to recognise and celebrate small successes can demotivate employees and slow down the momentum of change. ?Insufficient Training - Not providing adequate training and resources for employees to adapt to the new culture can result in poor implementation. ?Ignoring Feedback - Not listening to employee feedback or failing to address concerns can lead to resentment and resistance. ?Inconsistency in Practices - If actions and policies don’t align with the new cultural values, employees will struggle to embrace the change.

Here is when your culture happens, when you have to identify and recognize (and sometimes reward) behaviors. Here is where a strong link with your Operating System must exist. In the same way, someone needs to follow a specific procedure to operate or execute something; you have to create those mechanisms in place to reinforce and reward behaviors.

A great tool for measuring and monitoring is including specific questions related to culture change behaviors in a yearly engagement survey that goes out to everyone in the company. If you keep measuring year by year, you will be able to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of initiatives you are undertaking. Next to that, include some measurement in 360 feedback for leaders could be considered. In my view, all too often key indicators and metrics are changed or attention goes to other topics. Long term measurement and monitoring seems a challenge for especially corporates. New leadership, new culture initiatives ...

Culture change is a challenging process, people organization culture ethics policies goals and Sops everything has to be alligned to achieve the outcomes. So for a sustainable change We not only reinforce but also continuously monitor and provide feedback

With the rapidly changing market dynamics companies need to be agile. Organizations are forced to adapt to the external factors to remain competitive. The biggest example being Covid which transformed how teams had to deliver remotely. How line managers had to adapt to remote teams and re-learn managing distant teams. Companies that understood and accepted remote working have invested a lot not only in technology but also coaching and teaching employees for the new era of remote work.

Assess whether leaders and managers are exemplifying the new cultural values in their leadership style and decision-making. Look at measures of innovation (like new products developed) or adaptability (like response to market changes) to see if the culture change has led to increased organizational agility. Comparative Analysis - Compare current culture metrics with baseline data collected before the culture change initiative began.

Culture is made up of people. Many aspects of cultural change involve changing behaviours, but these come from beliefs and values. Holding company wide conversations on what it means to be part of the organisation and the values it wants to represent galvanises people behind a common cause. These collective efforts lead to long term sustainable culture change.

I think before heading down the 'culture change' path, an organisation needs to decide if that is what's needed. There are three responses to consider (see Stokes & Harrison, 1992): 1) Is it about strengthening the culture?This involves intensifying the culture’s expressions, and doing the same things, only better. 2) Is it about balancing the culture? This is used if we want to preserve the culture’s benefits, adding counterbalancing elements. 3) Is it full-on culture change? This should only really be used when at least several aspects of an org's culture are a hindrance to success. Each of these require different strategies.

Something important to consider is that each team within the organization is at a different starting point when undergoing cultural change. Therefore, the journey to achieve the 'Aspire-To Culture' needs to be tailored for each team. Considering this, one of the most powerful strategies for sustaining cultural change behaviors could be to have each manager collaborate with their team to identify practical ways to progress and highlight the advantages for the team in doing so.

Strange not to see "leadership role-modelling the change" in this article. Without a united leadership team, change fails. Without a leadership team role-modelling the behaviours, change fails

Avoiding these pitfalls can significantly increase the likelihood of successfully sustaining a culture change ?Inconsistency in Practices - If actions and policies don’t align with the new cultural values, employees will struggle to embrace the change. ?Rushing the Process - Culture change takes time; trying to rush it can lead to incomplete adoption and superficial changes. ?Failure to Reinforce - Without ongoing reinforcement and integration into everyday practices, the new culture may fade away. .