Leading with Culture to Succeed at Strategic Change

Companies in highly technical industries such as Energy or Technology are known for their capabilities to engineer solutions to difficult problems such as safely drilling high pressure/high temperature (HPHT) wells or creating self-driving automobiles. It’s a natural extrapolation to think that industry leaders can simply apply similar technical approaches and processes to address their own organizations’ challenges.??

Why is it then, that so many strategic initiatives in companies produce little results, stall, or out-and-out fail? Why don’t change management processes really work? Recent studies suggest that approximately 60% organizations are considered weak in execution.

In our experience, there are multiple factors to the under-performance of strategic initiatives. Many of these factors have an analytical or technical origin. But organizations tend to overlook the “human side of the equation”. These “soft” barriers to success include:?

1. Leaders give too little importance on how their own mindsets, attitudes, values and behaviors affect the culture and climate of the organization. Thus, allowing the culture of the organization to develop unintentionally.?
2. There is too little “cascading” of those attitudes, values, and behaviors that support new strategic initiatives throughout the organization’s population – leaders and managers may understand it but are inconsistent in action and thus it doesn’t cascade through all levels of the organization.
3. Failure to fully engage employees deep within the organization in the strategic change.?
4. Too many initiatives for people to focus – stress brings suboptimal performance.?

The prevailing mindsets and behaviors in a group or organization trying to change will have a profound impact on its success. In other words, trying to implement a strategic change in an organization without addressing the required cultural shift will likely doom the project. It’s like trying to quickly move the Titanic away from an iceberg with a rudder that is too small.??

Like that iceberg, culture is exposed at the surface, but also goes much deeper. The visible parts of culture are an organization’s stated values, its signs, traditions, symbols, behaviors and interactions. Nice posters of a company’s values in every conference room may not reflect the “real culture” in an organization. Modifying a process and educating employees through a training course about the new process probably won’t make it stick. Yes – a few people will readily adopt the new process. Most won’t because some of the underlying attitudes, values, and beliefs are not aligned with the new process. That’s why changing these surficial parts won’t likely lead to lasting change. To really transform a group or organization, leaders have to go deep and make the necessary shifts to the deeply held (and often unconscious) values, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs. It takes intentional leadership with passion and stubborn dedication to modify culture in order to achieve the desired performance of the group.?

Culture can be a source of strength for growth or a hindrance to a company’s performance. As noted in a recent Harvard Business Review article,?

Leading with culture may be among the few sources of sustainable competitive advantage left to companies today... Properly managed, culture can help leaders achieve change and build organizations that will thrive in even the most trying times.2?

Intentionally shaping culture is one of the key mechanisms leaders can employ to successful execute on their corporate strategy. Strategic change occurs when leaders pursue a strategic direction and are willing to address change from a human perspective not just the organizational structure, processes, or systems.??

What does this cultural platform look like and how does a transformational leader align it properly to get the desired results? It starts with understanding your organization’s current culture.? It has to be assessed. This can be done through cultural diagnostic tools, through interviews, observations, or workshops. These tools provide insights into both the strengths and hurdles that exist in the organization.? They will identify the levers for change that should be employed.?

Once a clear and mutual understanding is developed of the desired culture, the parts of the current culture that need to be modified will be prioritized by the leadership team. A plan is created to embed the new values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in the organization.? This means that leaders must act intentionally to consistently demonstrate them. People watch their leaders and they will emulate those leaders, especially if they trust and respect them.??

It is also critical to develop and empower cultural champions deep within the organization to implement the plan for transformation. It’s also important to leaders to not abdicate their roles in the process at this time; they must publicly demonstrate sponsorship of the new strategic shift. It’s too easy leaders to assume that giving the order to “make it so” allows them to not personally engage in the process. The development, empowerment and accountability of leaders and champions are usually gained through workshops, group coaching, individual coaching, and mentoring.

Moving forward, leaders must acknowledge and celebrate successes to reinforce the strategy execution. Actively monitor progress and build ways to sustain the transformation (typically through feedback, coaching, mentoring, and co-designed workshops). As you can tell, executing on strategy is a journey, not an event. By not addressing your company’s culture, you are hindering the performance of any strategic change in it.?

References

1. The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution, HBR, June 2008.
2. Groyseberg, et al, Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb 2018

Culture Innovations, LLC (www.cultureinnovations.com) is a consulting and coaching firm that focuses on shaping organizational cultures to be able to execute on their strategy, build leadership depth, and strengthen cross-cultural teamwork. We help organizations develop and retain authentic, emotionally intelligent leaders, strengthen customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and help build Human Resource capabilities to meet today's strategic challenges.