Change behaviours to change the culture

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The challenge of ‘culture' appears on the business radar when it no longer supports business direction. For instance, you learn customer satisfaction scores are falling, even though quality remains high - which might indicate your culture is ‘product focused' rather than ‘customer focused'.

Culture can be described as ‘how we do things around here'. It's an outcome of collective behaviour, but also the force that shapes it. Most new employees probably ‘go native' within the first six weeks of joining.

Change the culture!

Organisations that say: ‘We need to change our culture' often demonstrate particular cultural norms:

don't rock the boat
keep information to yourself - it's power
kook busy when you're not
undermine those who suggest new ways to do things
don't trust anyone who seems sincere.

There is no single 'right' culture because the best culture for your business is one that supports the business direction. When this isn't happening, leaders generally respond by saying: ‘We need to change the culture.'

But tackling culture by itself does not work. Instead it's better to work on the specifics of behaviour - culture's building blocks - rather than on the generality of culture.

Change the behaviours

To move an organisation's culture, people need to work in new ways. When behaviour changes are expressed in terms of the work people do, it's much easier for people to understand the changes needed. Specific behavioural change is also much easier to monitor than broad cultural statements.

Direction: confirm with senior leaders their expectations of the new culture
Diagnosis: use climate surveys to map perceptions, understand the gap and identify issues
Do the work: bring staff on board with the new ‘way to do things here' through effective leadership, communication and engagement
Progress follow up: create ongoing reviews to measure the consistency of the new behaviours - and how embedded the new culture has become

Develop the organisation

An example list of cultural norms in a flexible, responsive organisation include:

respect others as a source of valuable insight
take personal responsibility
initiate change to improve performance
speak about your organisation with pride
help and support other teams and individuals.

Team development: part of changing ‘the way we do things' is to work through teams, as they are a key mechanism of reinforcing behaviour. Expressing new behaviours in terms of what is expected when working together is particularly powerful.

Leadership development: leaders at all levels have a strong influence on the organisation's culture, as cultural ambassadors. Leadership development programmes provide an important mechanism in ensuring leaders understand what is required of them - and why.

Examples of working differently to change culture:

move to open plan offices, removing a traditional departmental focus
create a business unit to develop new customers
establish common business processes and redesign the management information system
work together to solve business problems.

‘Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass. You don't see it but somehow it does something.' Andre Malraux