Changing corporate culture -- put the term into Google and you'll find big companies and consultants offering theories, case studies and help. Very often leaders in businesses large and small equate change management with culture change. Let's examine what kind of change they're talking about, and let's see if we can describe it in plain English.
What is Corporate Culture? Webster's Dictionary defines corporate culture as "the shared values, traditions, customers, philosophy, and policies of a corporation; also, the professional atmosphere that grows from this and affects behavior and performance." Got it?
Do the Google search mentioned above and you may get to read about multi-layered belief systems and organizational psychology and other things that I don't have enough advanced degrees to understand.
Ask people for their definition, and you'll get a variety of responses. The most common one may well be some variation of "I'm not exactly sure, but I know it when I see it."
Do you like simple, straightforward explanations? Me too. Here's one for corporate culture: it's the experience, the feeling you get when you either work for an organization, or when you do business with the organization as a customer.
If you're a leader looking to change the performance of your organization, you need to determine whether you're fixing a few broken processes or changing the culture. Changing corporate culture is fundamental and thus more difficult. But if you pull it off, changing corporate culture can produce breakthroughs, step function improvements in your performance measures.
Two Views of the Culture In the simple definition offered above, you noticed that corporate culture is comprised of what employees experience, and what customers experience. These are two distinct views, and while one impacts the other you need to address each view uniquely.
Ideally, you want to believe that if you make everything right for your employees they will take care of your customers. There's some truth to that. Herb Kelleher attributes his success at Southwest Airlines to focusing on "employees first, customers second, and profits third".
He's wise, but pay attention to what he didn't say. He did not say take care of your employees and they'll take care of your customers and you'll make money. He's too smart for absolutes. There's an order to things, and based on results he's got the right order for his business. You still need to pay attention to all three things.
The Employee Perspective Employees describe culture as "what it's like to work here". Indeed job seekers are always wondering exactly that as they research potential employers. Their definition of culture may be impacted by:
Office layout
Dress code
Social environment
Pay for performance (or not)
Advancement Opportunities
Stress Levels
Accountability (team, individual, management)
Availability of training
The Customer Perspective
For the customer, your culture is "what it's like to do business with you". Terms that may show up in their description of your culture could include:
Quality of Products
Service Levels
Responsiveness
Value
Supplier behavior vs. Partner behavior
People - their attitude, their skill level
You can probably add to each list ( and you're invited to do so by commenting or contacting the author!).
What's the Point? If you don't know what your culture is, how are you going to change it? Many of the cultural characteristics described above can be measured. Others can be clearly described.
The leader who can articulate specifically what needs to be changed in corporate culture will most likely succeed. You know the other side of that coin.
Changing corporate culture won't be easy, mostly because it's about changing attitudes and behaviors and some people aren't going to go with you. The clearer you can be with defining (and quantifying) what's to be changed, the more quickly you can help those people find something else to do and get everyone else engaged.
The organization that isn't changing is dying. To learn more about Strategies for Managing Change, visit www.thomasjodea.com.
Tom O'Dea has over 30 years of IT experience, with 20 years of senior leadership in IT and Professional Services with multibillion dollar corporations.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
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