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Three tips: Successfully shaping cultural change
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How often does the actual corporate culture with its practiced values and beliefs get in the way of a company's successful launch on the market? And how great is the desire of management or consultants for the workforce to adopt a different attitude to their day-to-day work? So a cultural change is needed. A good thing in itself. But why do so many cultural change projects end up as cynicism promotion programs? We show you the three most common mistakes - and tell you how to do it better.
Tip 1: Make a proper diagnosis before starting the cultural change.
It's not a joke, it actually happened: The sickness rate at a production site was very high in relation to the industry average. The personnel development team quickly identified the cause. They discovered the issue of leadership skills. A management development program was quickly set up for the affected area. The results were impressive: the sickness rate fell significantly. There was cause for celebration. But after just a few months, the sickness rate climbed back to its original level.
What had happened? Before the management program began, an airlock had been omitted during renovations for cost reasons. In winter, the cold draughts led to an increase in colds among the workforce. When the management program came into effect, the warm spring and summer months arrived - and the number of colds decreased. The management program was successful. Until the fall. Then it got cold again.
The example shows how important it is to differentiate between perception and judgment. And how detrimental interpretative shortcuts can be. Perception, the unbiased view, must be trained again and again. It is the starting point of human knowledge. The most important lesson from this example is that a proper diagnosis is needed before the desired cultural change can begin.
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Mistake 2: Ensure a value-free analysis of dysfunctional values and attitudes.
With regard to the corporate culture, there is often a desire to change individual attitudes or values. A few typical examples may illustrate this:
- The management of a company complains about a lack of team spirit, as the resulting conflicts and frictional losses hinder joint value creation.
- In another company, a lack of creativity and co-entrepreneurship is paralyzing innovation.
- A third company is bothered by the fact that employees lack any courage and take responsibility.
These three examples show that changing values and attitudes can be an understandable desire. However, caution should be exercised with the hasty derivation of measures, such as prescribing a new seminar program. Even the best training program will fizzle out if the systemic framework conditions are not right. First of all, it is essential to reflect on how dysfunctional values and attitudes come about or are promoted. What does this mean in relation to the examples mentioned above?
Example of team spirit: If a company rewards individual performance with elbow grease and promotions, this is unlikely to contribute much to team spirit. High bonus payments also promote egocentric performance instead of teamwork. In this case, cultural change cannot succeed without taking into account the social behavior of the beneficiaries, for example.
Example creativity and co-entrepreneurship: Teams often live under the unconscious assumption that managers must have the better ideas because they are paid more. And managers often feel called upon to prove this in every meeting. This creates a vicious circle that has a negative impact on the team's ability to develop ideas.
Example of courage and responsibility: If the manager's signature is required for even small decisions, such as the purchase of specialist literature, this is likely to stand in the way of free development and the assumption of responsibility by employees. This can also be assumed if, for example, the decision on a training measure is not only made by the manager and employee, but also requires the approval of purchasing and HR.
Mistake 3: Diagnose and design processes in dialog - not in an ivory tower.
To ensure that the desired cultural change does not degenerate into a cynicism-promoting program, you should not jump to conclusions. It is important to analyze carefully. It is just as important to bring employees from all areas and hierarchical levels to the table. The following steps have proven successful in many cases (see Friedrich Glasl et. al, Professionelle Prozessberatung, Stuttgart-Bern 2014):
- Process description: How exactly does the process work? Which tools and systems are used to handle the processes?
- Who plays which role in the process? Who has what authority and what responsibility and does exactly what?
- What implicit and actually lived beliefs do the processes follow?
- Does this correspond to the desired values and behaviors?
- Which values and behaviors should be anchored in the future?
- What does this mean for the functions and roles to be redesigned?
- How can the processes be designed in the future?
With the answers to these questions, you have the raw material in your hands with which you can shape a sustainable cultural change.
Cultural change: How to make blind spots visible with external help
Without a doubt, the careful analysis of implicit values is a particular challenge for company employees. It is therefore often advisable to obtain an external perspective. An external perspective makes it possible to identify the blind spots in the actual and desired organizational culture more quickly and reliably. It may also be easier for an external force than the workforce to identify systemically counterproductive interdependencies.
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Deutsche Interim AG is happy to provide you with a wide range of experienced interim managers to guide you through the adventure of cultural change.
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