Ten Lessons about Transforming Your Organization’s Culture

Yogi Berra said , “You can observe a lot just by watching.”

Fortunately, I have observed a lot about successful culture change during my 30+ years of experience. Here are ten lessons I have learned while leading and participating in over 130 change and transformation initiatives.

1.??? Culture change follows behavior and performance change … not the other way around.

Adopting a new mindset can place you on a path toward a new culture. It doesn’t, however, change it. And yet, the belief that a new slogan or marketing campaign translates to a new culture refuses to die. An organization’s culture is its habits displayed over time. We do not develop performance and behavior habits just by thinking about them.

2.??? Knowledge alone will not get you there.

If knowledge led to change, no one would smoke tobacco. Almost 100 percent of smokers know that their behavior creates serious health problems. Meanwhile, nearly 12 percent of adults still smoke.

About 75 percent of workers believe collaboration and teamwork are important while 86 percent blame the lack of collaboration and teamwork for problems in the workplace. So why do so many organizations assume that sending people for training, hiring a speaker, or assigning a book to read will change their culture?

?3.??? Planned fun and teambuilding will not get you there, either.

There is no correlation between not allowing a teammate to fall from a tree in front of the group during “teambuilding” and not cutting their legs out from under them the next week in staff meeting. It is a lesson I learned when I attended my first teambuilding session almost 40 years ago that I have observed hundreds of times since. If a lack of trust is the problem, just doing a teambuilding session won’t change the culture.

Fun is trickier. Having fun at work has been found to increase retention, promote collaboration, and increase creativity in Western societies. The results are not necessarily the same in societies where cultural norms value work to the exclusion of fun. Our experience is that planned fun provides only a temporary benefit when other barriers to a positive culture are present. In fact, fun can have an undesired impact when other culture problems exist.

4.??? Slow down to go fast.

Regardless of how fast your company is today, the marketplace expects and rewards being faster and nimbler. The goal is for every single employee to operate with a greater sense of urgency and attention to strategic execution. Being nimble is about focused, intentional action not just running faster.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but your company may need to slow down in three areas to be faster and nimbler: purpose and vision; process and structure: people and culture. Here is an article from 2015 that expands on this idea.

5.??? The middle of the organization is where change and transformation go to die.

The middle of your organization is tasked with implementing change while continuing to ensure your operation delivers the promised products and services. They are the people who :

• Arrived where they are in the organization by mastering a game that is now being changed.?
• Are often the least involved in change.?
• Have seen changes come and go over their career —often with no apparent logic.

Their focus on producing results today can present as hesitance or resistance. The reality is that organizations should adopt a change strategy tailored specifically for this group.

?6.??? No one ever argues with their own ideas. That does not mean you should ignore outside help.

?People support what they help create. The ownership from relying exclusively on internal resources to design and implement culture has a dark side, however. There is an increased potential for missed deadlines, cost overruns, rework, and mistakes. Success with culture change can also be inhibited by a mistrust that people who supported the old culture have now “seen the light” and are now the experts in the new way.

?7.??? Process, systems, structure, and metrics create the environment for new behaviors to become habits.

The speakers and “thought leaders” who promise to change your culture in a single speech or training program are wrong Motivation, education, and training will not promote and sustain a culture change on their own. If they could, there would have been no need for laws to enforce wearing a seat belt.

A positive mindset is important. Effective change utilizes structure to turn good intentions into action that becomes a positive habit. In organizations (and communities), the structure is provided by process, systems, and metrics to track progress, compliance, and success.

8.??? The larger your universe, the greater the potential for disorder.

Scale matters. There are fewer complications changing the culture with a team of 10 than a team of 10,000. The principles are the same, but the execution is more complex.

It is the same with every area of business. Digital transformation is easier with 25 people in one location than it is with 25,000 operating globally. The disruption of government regulations is different in a multinational organization than with a single site operating in a single city, state, and market.

Do not underestimate the impact of operating in a larger universe. Everything will take longer and have more unanticipated challenges than you think.

9.??? Resistance is your friend if you let it.

Conventional wisdom is that resistance to change is something to be feared and avoided. In truth, the absence of resistance is the bigger problem. It means that people don’t see the change as a concern OR that they don’t care enough to give it any of their energy.

Most of your team wants to do an excellent job for the business and customers you serve. That makes every piece of resistance a legitimate concern or fear. Leaders should want to know those things.

Admittedly, there is a small percentage of people who will resist change just because they always resist change. They are not a fit for your team. For things to be better, they must be different. For things to be different, they must change.

10.? Disruption to the culture can create something beautiful or disastrous. It all depends on the choice you make at the point of inflection.

Every change effort has a pivotal moment where it can turn toward success or failure. In mathematics, it is called an inflection point and represents the moment when the curvature of an arc can go up or down.

?Here are several common inflection points that we have encountered in a culture change work:

• The organization acknowledges and deals with a previously unspoken conflict.
• A pivotal leader or group comes out in full support of the change.
• The symbol of the old ways of thinking or acting is removed or changes.
• There is a tipping point in the number of supporters for the change.
• The organization chooses not to return to the old ways of operating when a difficult problem arises.

?My father, an expert auto mechanic for over 50 years, taught me that balancing tires can be both science and art. The scientific way dismounts the tire and places it on a calibrated micro precision bubble balancer (the best technology of his time). The artistic was him placing his hand on the car and ?balancing the tire by feel . Mastering both techniques allowed him to solve the problem in every environment.

?It is the same with identifying inflection points in a culture transformation. Your best opportunity for success is pairing available tools and techniques with the ability to feel the organization in real time.

Please excuse the mixing of metaphors, but you do not want a partner who only knows one way to help you. The ideal resource can truthfully say that this is not their first rodeo while also acknowledging that every bull is different.

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?Randy Pennington is an award-winning author, speaker, and leading authority on helping organizations create and sustain cultures that deliver positive results in a world of accelerating change and uncertainty. To bring Randy to your organization or event, visit www.penningtongroup.com , email [email protected] , or call 972.980.9857.