THE CULTURE CHANGE DILEMMA
An acquaintance residing outside Kenya recently requested me to help him source for a fairly priced hotel in Nairobi. I quickly logged an international travel website to have a look at services offered by various hotels in the city. However, something else caught my eye beneath each hotels profile were customers comment, and most were unimaginably negative and seething. The complaints ranged from theft, coerced, tipping, hostile staff, insect infestation, prostitution, food poisoning, amongst many others.
Even more surprising was that some of the more popular hotels rated as three of five star establishments had some of the worst customer reviews, a situation made worse by high price tags that customers believed were underserved.
After two hours of searching, I only found two fairly priced hotels (both officially rated below three or five star hotels) with a horde of positive comments from across the globe. On reading the customer reviews, a common theme emerged, their sole competitive advantage was consistency in quality service. In Kenya, and across East Africa, organization and restricting various certification, rebranding and restructuring exercises, hoping to create a competitive advantages through consistency in stellar service.
However, despite millions spent on quality management, customers still complain of less than satisfactory service with a higher price tag.
Where then is the Missing links? Culture change
According to Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn, authors of the book ‘diagnosing and changing Organizational Culture’, a global empirical study conducted in more than 100 organization found out that when quality management initiatives were implemented independent of a culture change, most were highly unsuccessful.
However, when the culture of these organizations was an explicit target of change, to extent that the new initiative is embedded in an overall culture change effort, they were successful and organizational effectiveness increased.
By definition, an organization’s culture is the unstated assumptions and expectations of what your organization seeks to become and valued for.
In my personal experience as a change consultant, when a new quality improvement initiative threatens the status quo, stakeholders switch into a fight or flight survival mode. In flight mode, stakeholders can aggressively regret an initiative through industrial strikes or by silently sabotaging the initiative as soon as an opportunity arises, while in flight mode, stakeholders can exhibit apathy disinterest and indecisiveness toward the new initiative
A few years ago, I was called in to salvage an organization re-structuring exercise for anon governmental organization’s regional office, an exercise commissioned by the need to improve services by retaining its best staff that was consistently being poached
Poor restructuring decisions
During the initial job analysis phase, members of the senior management team realized that the re-structuring exercise threatened by organization’s status quo. It called for a leaner and horizontal organizational structure, with more controlled salary structure. Without any warning, the senior management team directed that only support and junior staff jobs be evaluated.
This decision was, blind sighted by an undercurrent of simmering discontent, as junior and support staff refused to participate in the exercise as they felt it was nothing more than witch hunt and an excuse to reduce overhead and salaries. Although I was able to contribute towards resolving the situation later through work-place conflict mediation practices, this executive decision led to an initial collapse of the urgently needed restructuring exercise which in-turn resulted in continued employee turnover and lower employee citizenship behaviors.
According to Dr. Gerry Schmidt (PhD) author of 9 Natural Truths for Being Competent to Compete, failure of big rollouts and campaigns can be new initiatives. This phenomenon can be attributed to the following common myths that urgently need to be debunked.
Myth #1: Culture change is necessary- but it is long-term difficult and expensive
The truth is that creating an adaptive culture is like building a healthy body, and by adopting change friendly habits in planning, communicating, teamwork, decision making and rewards/incentives, an organization teaches people to embrace change.
To prove this, ask yourself, where does your culture go at night when nobody is in the building? It resides in the people working in your organization hence it determines how people work together and helps or hinders achievement of vision and strategies.
Therefore, having a change friendly culture will support any new initiatives by making your organization faster, more adaptive and better to compete.
Myth #2: People fear and resist change.
The truth is that people do not resist change, but they do resist being changed.
When you lean on intelligent process focus on telling the truth, make people part of the solution, and consciously provide a way to grow and learn. You will see anticipation, exhilaration, relief (someone is leading), and excitement about the future. Therefore it is prudent for leaders to initiate cultural change when introducing a new initiative cultural change when introducing a new initiative in a way that makes sense to people, or make it digestible. By adopting such an approach, people will not resist, drag their feet, and engage in turf battles.
Myth #3: Our Culture must change so we can “do more with less”.
The truth is that when change fails, it can be attributed to a belief that all can be done at once and with less without a common picture or how to achieve this successfully however, when employees and management understand their organizational culture, it acts as a guardrail that helps to narrow their focus on what is required to meet timelines and targets.
If you aim to have an organization that offers consistent stellar service so as to remain competitive, innovative and profitable in a hyper-competitive market first, create new culture or modify an existing one so as to reflect on what you collectively seek to be known and revered for. This will require a candid conversation with all stakeholders on what your vision, mission and objectives should be (this is best when done with help of a consultant so as to keep the process objectives.)
The new culture will hence act as your organization’s true north that will help focus your energies towards ensuring you smoothly sail out of the storm of implementing new quality or process improvement strategies.