Making change stick (Week 1 Recap)

“Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed – the culture reflects the realities of people working together everyday.” – Frances Hesselbein

Today, I just want to summarize the 3 dimensions of culture I covered this week.

#1: Power Distance is the degree to which people believe in the equality in the distribution of power. In cultures with low power distance, people see their contribution to decision-making as a norm. Leaders in such cultures and organization lead through consultation and participative decision-making processes. However, in cultures with high power distances, people expect their leaders to make decisions and the rest just follow. Leaders in such societies or organizations tend to be autocratic and directive. Power distance affects the kind of sponsorship and leadership models that you will need to employ when implementing a change in any environment.

#2: Collectivism/individualism: Collectivism/individualism is the degree to which an individual's self-image and relevance is derived from his/her community, associations and/or relationships. Individuals in high collectivist/low individualist cultures exhibit usually base their self-esteem on the relationships, associations and groups they belong to. However, cultures that are low collectivist/high individualist see personal achievements, and personal goals as the basis of their self-esteem. Lack of understanding of how this dimension works can lead to avoidable resistance. For example, I almost ran into trouble when I was project and I suggest that we motivate individuals in a high collectivist environment, luckily I had a Team Lead tell point-blank that "We recognize only teamwork here!". So we basically change our approach of giving out the awards.

#3: Uncertainty avoidance describes how much a culture seeks to avoid and mitigate uncertainty. Societies with high uncertainty avoidance strive for structure, rules and processes. Members of such societies or organizations are uncomfortable with ambiguity or lack of clarity and can become stressed when they encounter anything that is not very clear. Meanwhile, those who are in cultures that are low on uncertainty avoidance are comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty and thrive in highly unstructured environments. Uncertainty avoidance is ranked the cultural dimension with the most impact on project success by participants in a Prosci survey in 2015/16 underlining the importance of this dimension. Therefore to enable transformational change, change leaders and agents have to be familiar with how uncertainty avoidance works amongst stakeholders.

In conclusion, leaders agree that culture has great impact on the success/failure of their projects but unfortunately when it comes to project execution, adequate attention is not given to culture thereby setting up the project for failure. By understanding these dimensions, you can know how to include the necessary processes and tasks into project execution to make your next project or change initiative more successful.  More next week.