Leading in Turbulent Times Guiding the Evolution of Your Organization’s Culture

“Organizational cultures are created by leaders, and one of the most decisive functions of leadership may well be the creation, the management, and—if and when that may become necessary—the destruction of culture.” — Edgar Schein

Throughout an organization’s life, additional norms, behaviors, and practices creep in. This reality is even more pronounced during turbulent times. Positive behaviors may include greater pride, fierce loyalty to the organization, a stronger work ethic, broader collaboration, and boosted collegiality. Negative behaviors may include fear, distrust, and anger that results in hoarding of information and unhealthy internal competition. Together, both positive and negative behaviors change the organizational culture. These positive and negative influences exist in every organization. They are the written, spoken, unwritten, and unspoken ways that things happen and get done.

Charles Hill and Gareth Jones (2001, 396) define organizational culture as the

“beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines, or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another.” Unfortunately, countless leaders do not recognize the influence that organizational culture has on the past, present, and future accomplishments of their enterprise. Even more important is their lack of understanding about how they influence the culture.

Culture: Conscious or Accidental?

Every organization develops both a conscious and an accidental culture. 

Its conscious culture unfolds from the written and spoken goals, values, behaviors, and practices that are taught, measured, and reinforced in the organization. However, think about where you work: Are particular behaviors and norms that are not in writing passed on from one generation to the next, from one employee to the next?

This is called the accidental culture. It emerges from the unwritten and unspoken values, behaviors, and practices to which everyone knows they should adhere. When asked about this culture, no one can articulate where it is written; they just recognize it, as if by symbiosis. This accidental culture is revealed with seeming randomness over the course of the organization’s history. Collectively, a conscious culture and an accidental culture permeate every nook of every organization. And in both forms, the organizational culture has the power to positively and negatively influence the actions of leaders and the performance of employees, along with the retention and attraction of employees and customers.

A conscious culture has many benefits:

• Leaders more rapidly assimilate to the culture.
• Employees more quickly understand the range of acceptable behaviors.
• Recruitment is made easier.
• When there is a lack of fit, it is easier to identify and act.
• The likelihood of successful integration in the case of a merger or acquisition increases.
• And most important, systemic change is easier because there is no battle between the conscious and accidental cultures.

Four Steps for Shifting the Culture

Turbulence, whether caused by a pandemic, global recession, rapid growth, mergers and acquisitions, internal corruption, generational shifts, changes in leadership or any other changes can impact an organization’s culture.

To prepare for these changes, the necessary steps to protect and adjust the organizational culture must be planned, and this planning needs to be done before, during, and following turbulent times.

An event that rocks their world—such as the firm’s flirting with bankruptcy, suffering a significant loss of sales and customers, or losing $1 million—might get their attention (Heathfield 2008). This event can be the catalyst for shifting the organizational culture. Even so, attempting to change this culture could well be the most difficult project an organization will ever take on.

To meet this challenge, we recommend these four steps, which have been tried and tested many times, as you seek to shift your organization’s culture:

Step 1: Identify the Existing Culture

Step 2: Facilitate What to Keep, What to Eliminate, and What to Add

Step 3: Revisit Core Purpose and Values

Step 4: Communicate and Reinforce Core Purpose and Values

As stated above, organizational culture includes both conscious and accidental dimensions. A significant change, stemming from either positive or negative forces, presents a unique opportunity to evolve toward a more carefully planned culture.

Let’s consider how these four steps can help guide this evolution.

Step 1: Identify the Existing Culture

When identifying the existing culture, due consideration should be given to the negative influences that result from fear, anger, and other emotions that might emerge. These should be replaced with positive behaviors and systems that motivate people and enhance performance. The importance of identifying both the written and spoken and also the unwritten and unspoken aspects of the culture cannot be overestimated. If your organization merges, is acquired by, or acquires another organization, proper cultural blending is the only way to ensure success. To blend cultures and avoid cultural tensions, follow the same four steps being considered here. Make sure the organization’s culture aligns with its goals and primary purpose. Tension arises when there is a lack of alignment or when separate cultures are not appropriately blended.

Step 2: Facilitate What to Keep, What to Eliminate, and What to Add

Once the organization’s existing culture has been documented, bring leaders together and decide what to keep, what to eliminate, and what to add to the organizational culture. In making these decisions, the organization’s core purpose and values—whose detailed considerations we discuss in the next step—are critically important as the key filter through which each aspect of the culture must pass.

Step 3: Revisit Core Purpose and Values

We surveyed more than 200 leaders, asking them for their advice on how to shift culture during turbulent times. They told us: “Revisit the core purpose, including core values, vision, and retrospect. Look back at exactly what went wrong and identify gaps in your organization’s resilience, comparing circumstances with its initial vision and values. Identify which actions diverted from them, and build, reinforce, and reestablish values.”

A revisited, revised core purpose requires further consideration before it can be implemented. All leaders must choose whether or not to be on board. Those who opt out should negotiate an exit strategy. The upshot from changes in the core purpose that result in a turnover of leaders will be reorganization. There are good reasons for this to happen: It ensures that the leaders who are aligned with newly defined boundaries are the ones who end up leading. This reduces the chances of people feeling that there are favorites who are allowed to remain even if they are not aligned.

Now it’s time to revisit and adjust core values. Current organizational environments are filled with people who fear stepping forward to expose issues, concerns, and even potentially risky behaviors. We believe this necessitates the need for an additional core value—courage. This core value is especially crucial for the times in which we live. It entails being willing to stand up and speak for what you believe is right, even when it is the minority view; being willing to take calculated risks; being willing to learn from mistakes; and being willing to speak the truth, even to those above in the hierarchy.

According to Ira Chaleff (1998),

“Lack of courage by those serving senior leaders has contributed to the downfall of many once-powerful leaders. But even in the absence of a dramatic toppling, the price organizations or groups pay for lacking the courage and skill to address dysfunctional behavior by leaders is high. You can’t have a truly participatory workplace environment if the tough issues get swept under the rug and are only discussed cynically behind the backs of the group’s leaders.”

This underscores the essence of courage as a key core value; everyone, not just leaders, is responsible for their organization’s behaviors and outcomes.

Core values represent the essence of how you are and how you behave. 

Many believe they cannot be taught and rarely adherence measured. Defining values, setting the acceptable range of behavior, teaching that range and then measuring it is necessary in today’s highly complicated world of business. Standing by core values in difficult times is the best way for leaders to demonstrate their true character and that of their organization. This means having the courage to measure alignment and adherence, and to weed out those who violate them.

Step 4: Communicate and Reinforce Core Purpose and Values

With the revisited core purpose in hand, leaders on board or filtered out, and renewed energy, now is the time to properly implement change. At this point, there are a few words of caution to heed, because most change initiatives fail to stick. The reasons:

• The organization gives up in midstream.
• There are inconsistent messages.
• There is a lack of follow-through.
• There are attempts to measure the results too soon.

A revisited, revised core purpose requires further consideration before it can be implemented. All leaders must choose whether or not to be on board. Those who opt out should negotiate an exit strategy. The upshot from changes in the core purpose that result in a turnover of leaders will be reorganization. There are good reasons for this to happen: It ensures that the leaders who are aligned with newly defined boundaries are the ones who end up leading. This reduces the chances of people feeling that there are favorites who are allowed to remain even if they are not aligned.

Let's consider four stages for success when communicating and reinforcing the core purpose and Values. When followed in exact sequence these stages drastically boost your odds of implementing and sustaining a successful change initiative:

1. Create awareness.
2. Move quickly to adoption.
3. Penetrate deeply.
4. Implement measurement.

Let’s briefly examine each stage.

1.   Create Awareness

The more people who hear of the changes and can describe them, the greater the awareness. So stage 1 in implementing your important changes to core purpose and values is to create awareness. You are marketing the conscious organizational culture, so get creative.

Make the updated organizational structure and cultural guidelines known to everyone. Information should be available everywhere—online, in the hallways, in the cafeteria, even in the bathrooms. Meeting agendas ought to contain discussions on the subject of the core purpose. Commence awareness contests and announce daily winners. Hand out fortune cookies with the core purpose in them. Give people caps, shirts, and jackets. Use every opportunity to create awareness. Continuously emphasize the value proposition for the changes. Have leaders conduct sessions with teams to familiarize all and respond to queries. Have an awareness plan that reaches everyone in the shortest period. When we helped Satyam roll out the Full Life-Cycle Leadership model, we conducted 75 live webinars in 60 days that reached more than 95 percent of the firm’s 22,000 employees. For consistency, each webinar contained a prerecorded overview of the new model. After the overview, live web sessions with senior leaders allowed employees to gain clarity.

After several weeks of blasting messages, use an online quiz to gauge the level of awareness. Review an aggregate average score rather than individual scores to determine the success of the awareness campaign. Do not count adoption, this comes later. And do not use these scores for any purpose other than gauging awareness; that will come in stage 4, measurement. A common error occurs when you leap from awareness to measurement ahead of adoption and penetration. This is one of the reasons why most change initiatives fail.

2.   Move Quickly to Adoption

It is imperative to move quickly beyond awareness to stage 2 in implementing your change initiative, adoption. Launch small pilot groups. Less formally, observe and broadcast examples of the new core purpose being implemented. Look for the smallest of wins, and enthusiastically celebrate and communicate them to all. By now, leaders should have been trained and be on board with the desired shifts. They must be role models and brand ambassadors of change, reinforcing positive behaviors and coaching those who require added insights. Learning and human resource professionals can assist leaders by facilitating groups and providing individual coaching during this stage. They can seek answers to queries and build a robust intranet portal that answers frequently asked questions. During this stage, persistently refer to the shifts in core purpose, and tie all behavior back to this purpose. Continuously recognize and reward early adopters.

3.   Penetrate Deeply

Once a few visible parts of your organization adopt the updated core purpose and there’s relatively broad awareness, it’s time for stage 3 in implementing your change initiative: to penetrate deeply into the organization. Anyone you ask about the core purpose should be able to engage in a dialogue about it. This is the time to continuously remind people about and reinforce best practices and also to make sure that all learning programs—including those for employees and new hires—are infused with the needed information, skills, and behaviors. Moreover, one way to reinforce your overall change initiative is to reward those who are role models by enabling them to teach others about successful practices. If done consistently, over a short period, the excitement this generates will stimulate more adoption. Eventually, most employees will have adopted the new core purpose. However, don’t begin the celebrations yet. There is one more critical stage to go to ensure the change is sustainable.

4.   Implement Measurement

You are equipped for moving on to stage 4 of your change initiative, implementing measurement, only when the awareness, adoption, and penetration stages have been sequentially and fully completed. If one stage has not been completed in its entirety, attempting measurement has the potential to result in botched change. Measurement should start with regular feedback and the tracking of progress. This eliminates the surprise reaction that measuring might otherwise cause among employees.

At Satyam, for instance, we implemented four ratings: role model, consistent, building, and issues. (These ratings were also used by Booz Allen Hamilton for its assessment ratings.) A 360-degree feedback instrument aligned with the organizational culture allowed everyone to gain a rapid view of how they were perceived. The results were used for giving feedback and for setting actionable goals. Later on, the 360-degree feedback instrument was repeated, and this time the outcomes became a part of an employee’s annual appraisal. It is imperative to continue to reward role models publicly.

In fact, Booz Allen Hamilton is so serious about its core purpose and values that it presents VIP awards to its role models—with VIP standing for “values in practice.” A paid vacation for two, extra time off, spending money, and a beautiful engraved gift come with the honor. Suffice it to say that the rewards are huge. And the firm doesn’t just bestow one award a year on one person; it presents dozens of them each quarter. These awards are considered the highest honor an employee can achieve.

Summing it up…

Turbulence from any source or other significant change stemming from either positive or negative forces presents a unique opportunity for guiding the evolution of an organization’s culture toward one that is conscious. Having everything well documented is not enough. An implementation plan that includes the four stages (awareness, adoption, penetration and measurement) discussed in this chapter increases the odds of a successful cultural shift.

To recap, these four steps are:

1.   Identify the existing culture of your organization

2.   Proactively influence the culture

3.   Revisit core purpose and values, and reorganize them if necessary

4.   Communicate and reinforce the core purpose and values.

Once these steps have been completed, success is achieved when the organizational culture has evolved to primarily embody written and spoken norms, behaviors, and practices, and less desirable unspoken and unwritten behaviors have been left behind.

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Adapted from Riding the Tiger: Leading through Learning in Turbulent Times by Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen, ATD Press 2010

Though most leadership books are written from the viewpoint of lessons on the path to great success, Riding the Tiger provides a rare opportunity to learn from a catastrophic event that shook the foundation of a thriving global organization. In 2009, the authors, Priscilla Nelson and Ed Cohen, were flourishing as senior leaders at Satyam Computer Services, a 53,000 person company with presence in 60 countries. It all came to a startling halt when the CEO confessed to “cooking the books” and the company became known as “India’s Enron.” Based on their first-hand experiences, Riding the Tiger provides practical leadership techniques that guide the way to organizational renewal.

Riding the Tiger is about the changing role of leaders in the ever evolving world of business. This book gives you a specific, step-by-step approach to take that tiger by the tail and actually benefit from the challenges of leading and thriving during chaotic times. You’ll discover many innovative leadership techniques as you read the fascinating, powerful stories about people who’ve implemented these tools. These experiences and techniques are universally applicable wherever people in an organization are facing turbulence—whether caused by the global recession, rapid growth, mergers and acquisitions, internal corruption, generational shifts, changes in or any other changes.