Culture Change

"Culture change is the ‘fine whine’ of the corporate world, and it definitely generates more heat than light. It is rarely achieved because few organisations really understand what culture is, what it means to change it, and fewer still have the resolve to do what it takes."

Culture is sometimes called ‘the unwritten rules of the game’. It is an amalgam of values, practices, ‘norms’, tacit standards, and symbols. For all the softness of this description, culture is like the many-headed Hydra permeating everything that an organisation does, from the way meetings are held, to the way people talk in corridors, to the way that strategy is developed, to the way that performance is managed. Ninety percent of it is invisible to those within it: it is ‘normal’.

Attempting change, especially transformational change without tackling culture is a recipe for failure.

Given that you can’t see it, touch it, easily analyse or change it, what can you do? Future Considerations, after years of research, trial and error has pioneered an approach to culture change driven by transformational leadership development.

Here, in our view, are the critical success factors:

1. "You can’t change what you don’t see“. Our primary job is to hold up a mirror, so that the organisation can see itself afresh – and join the dots between their culture and the aspects of their performance that they are not delivering.
2. "The fish rots from the head“. The board have to take this personally, examining their own behaviour up-close. Insofar as any one thing determines culture, it is their behaviour.
3. "Be the change you want to see“. Change needs to be driven by the top-team. Jack Welch participated in 1/3 of GE’s initial “workout” sessions – that is over 100 events. A suitable critical mass is the top-150 leaders.
4. "You get out what you put in“. It takes time and effort, but the sorts of performance step-change that our clients talk about is worth it. Culture change programmes, such as GE’s ‘Workouts’ on which our methodology is loosely based, require participation in eight to twelve days of learning/ culture change events over an 18-month period.
5. "Pull out some weeds“. Culture change has to be embedded in human resources policy to have teeth. This includes performance management systems that assess executive behaviour as well as results, and ensuring that recruitment and selection reinforce the new culture rather than the old.