In Order to Manage Culture, You Must Understand It
A crucial part of any organization is company culture. It can be the difference between success and failure. It enables or inhibits the capacity to hire and retain staff, as well as impacts productivity and profitability. Culture is seen and felt in a business. When it is not strong and positive, it works against you, and everything is more difficult.
Culture needs to be defined, shaped, and nurtured in an organization. It is important that all stakeholders play a proactive role in its development. A company’s culture is the embodiment of its values, goals, and ethics. There is one element that all organizations should have at the core of their culture, and that is reward and recognition. Building your culture around the principles of recognition and reward is an incredibly impactful way to ensure that company culture contributes to the success of the organization. This article takes a closer look at what culture is, and how to change it.
What Is Culture?
In order to manage culture, you must first understand it. In short, it is what happens when nobody’s looking. Culture is solely shaped by what is rewarded. Culture is shaped by many aspects including history, experience, norms, fears, goals, and dreams. It is both fragile and strong at the same time. It can change without warning. It can be influenced by a change in the organization. It is impacted by things your team experiences. Culture can also be heavily shaped by changes in strategic direction and advances in technology. It can happen to you or you can plan for it. Culture can provide a strong, solid guide for everyone’s actions and how they should be delivered. It can be shaped to work for you by rewarding the behavior you want. Culture is patterned after what people talk about, but it is shaped by what is rewarded.
Positive change happens when you tell people what will be different, measure the things you are trying to change, and ensure execution within each person’s role. If an excellent employee gets recognized, rewarded, or promoted, the message is that excellence matters. The opposite is also true, and when it happens, the culture demonstrates acceptance of mediocrity. If allowed to continue, the message can encourage careless risk-taking and non-compliance.
So, How Is Culture Changed?
Culture should be shaped or enhanced when the organization raises expectations in an effort to be more competitive in the marketplace. Making changes that can enhance profit usually involves a change in the way things are done. The assumption is that some change is both needed and desired by the organization. Proactively, a team of leaders or managers can make a planned culture shift to support the company’s goals and strategic direction. In order to do that, leaders/managers should plan for the change. They should be aware of what is happening and be prepared to respond according to plan.
Your impact on culture may depend on your position and is best done with efforts to develop a strategic plan for growth.
• If you are in a C-Level position, you are situated to greatly outline the plans for culture change. You have a wide influence that can impact culture change on a systemic level by setting expectations and adjusting how behavior is measured and supported wherever possible.
• If you are a Business Unit Leader, you have a lot of influence over the way things get done (when nobody is looking) in the areas you oversee. You can directly shape what is done across your team, and you can influence the next level of leadership regarding the need for systemic change to support culture enhancement.
• If you are a leader within a business unit, your impact on culture is to align the actions of your team to the things the organization has highlighted as important. You are also able to influence business unit leaders in areas where they can support your team better in making the change.
To understand culture enhancement, think about playing a game according to established and well-known rules. In most games, points are accumulated when players score. In organized games, there may be a referee to enforce the rules and a coach to help people play most effectively. In most games, the scores enable the win and lead to recognition. When a rule changes, there is extensive communication with the players, coaches, and refs to enable understanding of the change and to ensure the game is now played according to the new rules. With culture, you must set the rules of the game to reflect the way you want it to be played. You must proactively communicate changes.
Employees and associates need to know what is expected. The people making the change should be very clear on what new behavior is desired. The established expectations should be communicated to all members of the organization. People should be told what to do, why they are being asked to do it, and specific instructions as to how it should be done. This will likely include education and training, which together create a rich environment of teaching. Goals must then be established and linked to incentives.
Effective culture enhancement depends on planning to incent, reward, and recognize employees or associates to achieve the expected (maybe new) goals. Incentives can be tangible, such as raises to base compensation, bonuses, and other financial rewards. They can also include promotions, recognition awards, prizes, or perks. Incentives can also be intangible, such as better job satisfaction, less confusion, and making their jobs easier. Whatever the reward, it should guide behavior to meet the goals. Metrics come into play here, as that is how an organization keeps score. When culture is linked to metrics, people do more of what is rewarded and less of what is not. Now, let’s look at the responsibilities of game personnel. The referee is the one who points out when a person is not playing by the rules. This is a function of leadership and should be done by anyone in the organization who manages others. The coach is the one who helps players improve.
Teaching is a responsibility of leadership, both formal and informal. Anyone with a supervisory position or who manages or leads others in any way should be tasked with helping employees play better in the new environment. In some cases, informal leaders will also be asked to teach. In short, the “game” must be set up to be played the right way, allowing “players” to understand and meet expectations and ensure that culture is actually enhanced at the same time. This allows the organization to embrace the change.
The Six Steps Changing Company Culture
1. Plan – consider necessary changes to the culture in any planning work done by the organization. 2. Dialogue – talk openly about the changes to get input and ownership.
3. Change Process – make the process changes necessary to support the new direction, which also lays the groundwork for the needed culture enhancement.
4. Communicate the Change – tell everyone what is changing and why. Train impacted employees on the new processes. Teach everyone what is needed in the new environment.
5. Develop Success Measures – understand how and when you will know the desired changes are happening.
6. Ensure Execution – recognize when people make the changes or deliver the desired behavior. Teach/Develop/Mentor those who do not. Address performance issues if efforts to teach still do not change behavior.
These six steps comprise a Roadmap for culture change within an organization. In order to achieve it, you will need commitment. If you can’t demand it, you will need to influence it.
How Can You Influence Your Organizational Culture?
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