We are undertaking a fundamental cultural transformation as part of the strategic realignment of our organisation. Our managers face significant challenges in supporting the degree of change that this entails. How can we best support our managers in helping them bring about cultural change?
Q. We are undertaking a fundamental cultural transformation as part of the strategic realignment of our organisation. Our managers face significant challenges in supporting the degree of change that this entails. How can we best support our managers in helping them bring about cultural change?
– HR manager, accounting
A. Culture change means “changing the way we do things around here”– which is the current ‘organisation speak’ for culture.
In organisations, culture most commonly refers to the nature of decisions made primarily by management, to solve problems related to the business of the organisation. It includes the information gathering, consultation and other processes that underpin decisions, as well as the unspoken rules of what is legitimate, credible, appropriate, valued and available to the managers and staff of the organisation in going about this important work.
A culture change occurs when some or all of these important unspoken rules and systems for working in a familiar way are disturbed.
People at all levels of an organisation respond to culture change best if they know two things with certainty. The first is that, regardless of the changes being made, their lives will not be damaged, their plans put at risk, and their basic way of life not substantially destabilised. Caring is the word used for this concept.
Secondly, people at senior levels of the organisation responsible for wanting/implementing the cultural transformation need to present the nature of the problems faced by the organisation in the most transparent fashion possible. They also need to be open about the way they have interpreted these problems and the reason they have chosen the particular cultural transformation as a solution to the problems.
One of the more effective ways of thinking about the role of the manager in a cultural change is to delineate between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. Given that ‘what’ must change may not be negotiable, managers can still be free to share the ‘how’ it changes with their people.
Listening to and incorporating the concerns and suggestions of staff can ease the sense of powerlessness, hopelessness, despair or angst they may be feeling. Much operational and anecdotal evidence demonstrates that human systems respond best to practices that ensure people who are most impacted by change decisions have an opportunity to have real and substantive input about how their lives might be impacted. If employees feel they have some say, some sense of control over important decisions made by their employers that may well materially affect them, they are more likely to participate constructively in the subsequent activities.
There is even some evidence that people who feel cared for and are appropriately consulted or informed about matters that have consequences for their lives, are more likely to co-operate in the development of those changes, even to support them.
For managers then, the challenge of culture change is to have courage. Understand and communicate the ‘what’. Let go of some of the ‘how’and share it with those to whom it really matters! Seek input from those most affected, offer reflection and consult for best outcomes.
By Karen Morley and Phill Boas, Associate Dean and program director of executive programs, Mt Eliza Centre for Executive Education at Melbourne Business School. Tel: 1800 00 66 80. Web: www.mbs.edu/mteliza.
