Success in business is often determined by how effective an organisation manages cultural change. That is success is not achieved by an executive's skills alone, nor by the visible features - the strategy, structure and reward system - of the organisation. Every organisation has an invisible quality - a certain style, a character, a way of doing things - that may be more powerful than the dictates of any one person or any formal system. This invisible quality 'the corporate culture' dictates how effective the organisation is in the marketplace. Achieving cultural change to maintain a prime market position has to be a key preoccupation of every chief executive. To understand the soul of the organisation and the cultural change required necessitates us probing below the below what is visible, e.g., charts, rule books, machines and buildings and into the underground world of peoples feelings, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, behaviours, only then can the corporate culture be defined and cultural change initiatives be identified.
To provide meaning, direction and mobilisation, i.e., the social energy that moves the corporation into either productive action or destruction, requires constant cultural change to keep abreast of current management thinking and technology. Many organisations however simply do not recognise the need for cultural change and therefore this 'social energy' has barely been tapped; whether diffused in all directions or even deactivated, it is not mobilised to help the company. Most members seem apathetic or depressed about their jobs and no longer pressure one another to do well. Even cultural change pronouncements by top managers that they will improve the situation fall on the deaf ears of employees who have heard these promises before. Consequently, without cultural change being itself part of the culture, the soul of the organisation slowly dies.
Other companies show considerable energy but drives employees in the wrong direction, i.e. reinforcing dated cultures rather than seeking cultural change initiatives. Such organisations live in an immense culture change gap. The social energy pressures members to persist in types of behaviour that may have worked well in the past but are clearly dysfunctional today. The cultural change gap is the difference between the outdated corporate culture and what cultural change is needed. Without a cultural change programme to manage the cultural change gap the organisation gradually sinks into a culture rut - a habitual, unquestioning way of behaving. Sadly often there is no adaptation or cultural change, only routine motions, despite the fact that the company is unsuccessful. A cultural rut can go on for years, even though morale and performance suffer. Bad habits die hard. A cultural change shock occurs when the sleeping organisation awakes and finds that it has lost touch with its original mission.
On the other hand, one has merely to experience the energy that flows from shared commitments among group members to manage cultural change to know the power that emanates from mutual influence and esprit de corps, in such cases cultural change itself is the accepted cultural practice.
Why does one organisation feed of cultural change initiatives making it very adaptive whilst another has a culture anchored in the past? Is one a case of good fortune and the other a result of bad luck? On the contrary, it seems that any organisation can find itself with an outdated culture if cultural change itself is not managed explicitly. Unattended, a company's culture almost always becomes dysfunctional. Normal human fear, insecurity, over sensitivity, dependency and paranoia seem to take over unless there is a concerted effort to establish an adaptive cultural change programmes. People cope with uncertainty and perceived threats by protecting themselves, by being cautious, by minimising their risks, by going along with the culture that builds protective barriers around work units and around the whole organisation rather than question the status quo by seeking out cultural change initiatives, indeed cultural change itself is a threat. Also adopting a cultural change strategy to create an adaptive culture, requires risk and trust; employees must actively support one another's efforts to identify problems and sponsor cultural change initiatives. This can only be accomplished by a very conscious, well-planned and united effort at managing cultural change, the secret to which is first establishing trust!
A company's culture sometimes supports self-defeating individual behaviour that persists in spite of its many disruptive effects on morale and performance: doing the minimum to get by: purposely resisting or even sabotaging innovation; and being very negative in general about the organisation's capacity to manage cultural change. Worse, such behaviour may even include lying, intimidating, harassing and hurting others. The most detrimental behaviour in the long run, however, is persisting in once-adaptive patterns rather than cultural change to meet the dynamic complexity of the present. The challenge is to get out of the culture rut.
Many organisation will say that if they cannot manage cultural change they cannot energise resources and cannot create the innovative environment needed to survive, i.e., cultural change or die ! |
