WHAT BILLIONAIRE OWNERS & EVERY CXO MAY WANT TO KNOW RE: CHANGING CULTURE

In Washington D.C. (on ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption") Tony Kornheiser & Michael Wilbon are smart to worry: "can the new head coach (Ron Rivera) overcome all that is wrong with that franchise?"

If you believe culture change happens by firing the culture scapegoat and hiring a culture savior then: 1) you don't understand how culture works 2) you're blissfully optimistic and/or 3) you are setting up your next culture scapegoat.

When it comes to investing in culture transformation (at the top of most organizations) there is misunderstanding, misalignment and a mismatch between the scale of the intervention and the diagnosis of the condition (this applies to the NFL too). Better outcomes require getting better at calibrating confidence with understanding. Taking ownership of better outcomes invites us to separate confidence from optimism.

I'm confident that the Washington Redskins' investment in new head coach, Ron Rivera, and his new group of players/coaches will bring new standards of purpose and performance to the product on the field. Mr.Rivera is a proven NFL pro.

By also firing Larry Hess and front office personnel (e.g., Bruce Allen), owner Dan Snyder makes a statement about the organizations commitment to changing culture. A much needed culture change according to the Bleacher Report: "When you feel the need to declare that your org's culture is 'damn good,' said culture is probably damn bad. The Washington Redskins have been an embarrassment for the vast majority of this century, and when team president Bruce Allen spoke of that supposed 'damn good' culture in October, he further embarrassed himself and his employer." 

The leadership team's commitment to culture change may be "sincere" - but quite often, executive teams aren't "serious" about investing in the deeper work required for the "big T" of culture Transformation. Most executive teams unconsciously (with great optimism and hubris...void of curiosity) settle for the "little t" = they make big strategic declarations, mash together a variety of changes and hope for the best.

Optimism about culture change is negligent at best & self-sabotage at worst. This is a costly and preventable data & analytics lesson learned repeatedly, by corporations and private equity firms alike. In a recent PwC research report the data revealed that in 100% of the merger deals, where significant value was lost, the senior leaders (in corporate and private equity firms) all report that culture issues were the cause.

In 100% of the deals, where significant value was lost...senior leaders all report that culture issues were the cause.

The data veracity on this topic is unavoidable, yet many seem to ignore it. They report culture as being critical to business success however, few truly understand it (but they proceed as if "this time" maybe it will work out.)

Yes, swapping out key personnel would suggest that ownership is indeed very serious. But culture change is more complex than that - culture won't be "fixed" by simply merging the new team of leaders into the existing system.

Unhealthy organizational cultures, experiencing chronic change are metaphorically similar to chronic medical conditions (e.g., heart disease, diabetes, obesity)... they do not have a single root cause for the condition —it is instead a combination effect of multiple genes plus a variety of lifestyle and environmental factors. Chronic conditions caused by many contributing factors are called complex or multifactorial.

We all like to believe in the legend of a "celebrity Leader/Culture Messiah" but no matter how successful and strategic the new leader is (individually)... the organizational culture eats everything.

The Culture Messiah paradigm perpetuates a host of ownership excuses and myths around culture's intangibility, difficulty, and resistance to change. Even if sometimes the myths occasionally appear to be true - perpetuating them is a practice of surrendering to them which is obviously not effective when it comes to changing business performance. Previous success (on the field and/or off the field) doesn't mean you understand how culture works let alone know how to effectively close the gap between your current culture and your ideal culture.

Culture change is multifactorial but it is not a "black box" - there is a data-rich, very agile, efficient and expert way to build a more constructive and courageous culture for next level performance and growth. Figuring out what matters in the off-the-field data (i.e., organizational culture and climate data) should be just as hot of a topic for the front office, as the NFL's analytic revolution around on-the-field data.

Unless the key leaders of the organization are curious/humble enough to learn more about all of the potential causal factors of the current culture (i.e., Human Synergistics OCI/OEI)...the unhealthy, chronic condition will only get worse over time. Simplified data models can help leadership teams start strong - vs. just banking on optimism. Without strong clarity and alignment, you're signing up for a vicious circle of unnecessary suffering & disappointment.

Optimism and surrender are coping mechanisms. They are amateurish and ineffective approaches for living successfully/optimally with a chronic condition. A new approach is needed to support leaders responsible for changing culture and integrating/merging separate cultures more successfully. Play the odds - for a fraction of the value being lost, you could dramatically increase your odds of winning by investing in the emerging best practices associated with the "big T" of culture change.

Most of us have the optimism bias. Bias isn't the problem - pretending that we don't have counterproductive bias IS the problem (the No. 1 business challenge from which all other business challenges are born).

If RiverBoat Ron got his nickname by learning to win big with on-the-field data analytics (overcoming legacy 4th down biases)... then maybe the Washington Redskins leadership team can help owner Daniel Snyder learn to win big with off-the-field data analytics too. Maybe he'll become known as: DeepLearning Dan? BigData Dan?

I'm confident that "Ron Burgundy" & "Adaptive Dan" can learn to win together - but I'm not optimistic :-)

---- Raphael Louis Vitón (Raff) is a global transformation lead, culture change specialist, and executive coach with Axialent.com, integral leadership facilitator with Stagen.com, innovation graduate professor @CEDIM design school, former innovation strategy consulting firm owner; corporate strategist/expat and a bilingual, first generation Cuban-American living in the Chicagoland area. He co-wrote the book: "Free the Idea Monkey to Focus on What Matters Most"; his articles have been featured online in Bloomberg Businessweek, Wired, Forbes and he has been quoted/mentioned in a variety of books on innovation, performance and change. If you are curious about his work, up for an integral jam session/ treasure hunt or interested in engaging him for an assignment, visit raffviton.com and/or subscribe to his monthly insight email: "We're Always Strengthening Something..."