Driving Cultural Change from Technology

What is Cultural Change

Before we dive into the topic of this note, let’s define what is Organizational culture — often called company culture — is defined as the shared values, attitudes and practices that characterize an organization. It’s the personality of your company, and it plays a large part in your employees’ overall satisfaction. Also, Culture can be defined as the consistent organizational behaviors of employees and leaders (norms), therefore, Organizational culture is the glue that keeps organizations together.

“Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction, it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult.” Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule says.

Why is Company Culture so important?

A strong company culture will attract the right candidates for the job and keep them engaged as employees. According to a Glassdoor study, 77 percent of adults would evaluate a company’s culture before applying to an open position. Perhaps more impactful, 56 percent rank an organization’s organizational culture as more important than compensation.

Creating a winning organizational culture takes a lot of time and effort — your culture must accurately reflect your values and align with your overall mission. It’s a big to-do, but don’t get discouraged: your efforts will pay off in the long run.

Organizational culture facilitates the achievement of an organization’s strategic objectives. Organizational culture often mirrors the organization’s core values and directly reflects the organization’s leadership.

The culture can be observed in how decisions are made – top-down or bottom-up; and whether employees are confident to express independent thoughts and feelings without fear of being repudiated. It materializes through its benefits plans and whether employees are recognized and rewarded for excelling at their work.

Is not the focus of this article to analyze the types of organizational culture but let’s have in mind.

The best-known classification of types of organizational culture is the Competing Values Framework. Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn at the University of Michigan identified four distinct types of organizational culture.

Every organization has its own mix of these four organizational culture types, with one culture typically dominating. The larger the organization, the bigger the possibility that there may be more than one culture in the organization. This may be beneficial to the organization, but it may also be disadvantageous or challenging when attempting to have a cohesive culture in a regionally and globally dispersed organization.

The four organizational cultures Cameron and Quinn identified are:

• Adhocracy culture – the dynamic, entrepreneurial Create Culture.
• Clan culture – the people-oriented, friendly Collaborate Culture.
• Hierarchy culture – the process-oriented, structured Control Culture.
• Market culture – the results-oriented, competitive Compete Culture.

It is very important the type of culture change we are driving to impact with the right technology tools and how this tool will enable the culture type we are looking for.

Being change champions

We seem to be in the constant of change. It is the new normal in most, if not, all organizations. While change can be uncomfortable and there is often resistance to it from employees, it is the role of all organization leaders to champion these changes.

During a digital transformation or organizational culture change, IT will drive significant change not only in technology also in processes, team reorganization, etc. The business is expected to assess its own processes to determine what can be streamlined or automated to improve efficiency and the employee experience in the organization.

So, what about technology as a driver for change?

By the nature of changing the business, changing the strategy, and getting the culture to facilitate and drive that change, they are embracing newer technologies in and of themselves to be the mechanism of the culture shift,” says Christa Degnan Manning, VP of solution provider research, Bersin, Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Companies large and small are adopting tech tools to support their culture. But it is not only the technology per se but the opportunities that technology enables.

For example, a new ERP implementation or change may lead to complete reengineering of the business processes, how people interacts internally and externally (Customers) and how the business will be perceived from the market. All these outcomes will have for sure an impact on the profit.

Another example is how technology drives new ways of communications. Solutions like Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc. has brought a new way of meeting and sharing in the daily work and this for sure is the new normal.

Having said that, it is important to understand that every technology decision cannot be done not solely by the acquisition of technology, also by considering the impact of the people adoption and engagement, for example training approach, how friendly will be the curve of adoption, etc. Wrong technology decisions without these considerations will slow down the cultural change losing momentum.

The health of a company’s culture is difficult to measure, but employee engagement is necessary for a positive employee experience. The percentage of employees participating in the programs and the feedback they are providing, along with other statistics like changes in turnover and absenteeism, or in the achievement of business objectives are indications of whether a company is making progress.

As depicted by Rhonda Gardner depicted in her article of “Leading a Successful Cultural Transformation at Your Organization” cultural transformation will happen in different fronts, including how people behave and how they work. If done well, this has a positive impact on the business outcomes.

Key points to have in mind when driving change from Technology

There is no “one size fits all” strategy or recipe, but most if not all the following point must be in the Cultural Change form Tech agenda:

• As in any strategy full top management engagement and sponsoring is required. Nothing will happen without it. “Change” will not happen if all key stakeholders adhere to it.
• As IT leader you must be the champion of the change. You will need to be an evangelist on how technology will drive the change, how will empower the people using it, and enable the business to a new level. In the other side being a leader comes with the responsibility to “deliver”.
• Have clear and continues communication of what is going on and how everything is evolving. Clear project management, and lean communications are the two big factors to achieve results.
• Have the right funding and resource allocation. Cultural Change as any major endeavor will require money. We will not talk about cost but investment. Cost sometimes is necessary for business run, but the difference is that when you invest instead of expending you are focusing and delivering profit!
• Pave the road! Cultural change is setting the new basis for the future of the company, so you will need to build this road. This must be done based on convincement, engagement, delivering.
• Rule and lead by example! You will not achieve the above if you and your team are not ready and prepared for the challenge and the big effort that change means. You and your IT organization will need to be the first to buy-in and believe on the path that needs to be follow, so others will follow you.
• Remember the standard distribution gauss bell approach when driving engagement. It is very important to whom you will bring over initially for others to follow! (read my article about “Another Cultural Transformation Talk!”)
• Always keep the bar as high as possible but always achievable! Setting fair ambitions, usually do not result in high outcomes. But when you set it higher you will be able to achieve more.
• Motivate, motivate, motivate… Build momentum along the way. Human being is much more productive when fells motivated. Some time give a price, sometime just a recognition. You will be amaze of simple gesture of recognition drives a change in people and teams.
• Make success as public as possible and corrections at door closed!
• Continue evolution and continue delivery. When the company feels that is there and cultural change is realized do not stop there. Start working in the new way or the next phase. The culture is intrinsically tied up to time and chronology, so it is a living thing. Market changes, business needs to change to cope with the new demands, new ways of doing things and despite the technology evolution. So we must consider that culture will need to go through a phase of change in the future or at least to suffer and adaptation in time. Prepare for that, plan and foresee the requirements for that. Culture will need to evolve so we need to plan for an evolution of cultural change. The only constant is the change!
• Once again, cultural change will not happen by mandate, just by convincement.
• Create safe heavens. Always be real of setting expectations.
• Deliver what you can commit. Under deliver or poor delivery is a cultural killer. Over deliver sometimes will mean that you set the bar not high enough.
• Use internal marketing and branding. In the process of adoption and team identification using project names and mojos will drive engagement and identification across the organization. Also, will easy the communication.
• Challenge the leadership. As IT leader and siting in the tech cultural change, you will need to challenge your colleagues. Some will be easy but with others you don’t need to be afraid to kick some doors and desks.
• Be a pragmatic leader in term of react to problems and restrictions. Do not take too long to avoid losing momentum. This is even more true when dealing with high impact projects.
• Enjoy the ride. Take the cultural transformation as important as it is, but enjoy the journey as will become part of your DNA.

Dont be afraid to sucess!!!

#CulturalChange #DigitalTransformation #Leadership