Is Your Leadership Ready for Culture Change?
There is often a large gap
between how an executive will define their corporate culture and how their
stakeholders define it. The easiest way
to determine the perception of your culture is to ask. That may be the hardest thing to do in an
organization for two reasons: you don’t want to hear the answer and you aren’t
ready to make any changes.
If that is you, you are not
alone. Culture is one of those topics
that many like to dance around. It is
often the elephant in the room at executive meetings. When it is brought up, most will agree that
there are some cultural issues, but as a topic of conversation it rarely rates
an in-depth look. Culture is a reflection
of leadership, and leadership doesn’t want to look in the mirror and see a
monster staring back at them. Nobody
likes to feel like they are causing issues in the company, especially if it is
their company.
Defining culture can be an evasive
task. If someone asked you to describe
your personality, it would be almost as difficult. We can all use relatively ambiguous words to
describe ourselves, or we choose words that are fitting to the
conversation. The difficult thing about
defining a culture is trying to quantify that definition. We hear all day long about using data to
drive change, so how do you empirically define your culture.
The first step to recovery is
admitting you have a problem. I realize
that sounds a lot like a twelve step program, but it holds true here as it does
there. All of the tools in the world won’t
help you fix your problem if you aren’t able to be honest with yourself that it
even exists, much less plays a major role in your organization. Even admitting the problem won’t help if you
aren’t ready to understand the depth of the issues or prepared to develop
strategies to change them. Before any
culture change can happen, there are hard, honest and often difficult
conversations that need to happen. If
you can’t make it through that step, you won’t go any further.
The good news is that for all of
the bad press that corporate culture gets, there is a path to improvement. This path takes you on a journey through
different phases with the end result being a direct reflection of the honesty
and desire you have when you start your journey.
Enlightenment – This is the first step on often the most difficult
of the journey. If this phase bounces
back and forth between enlightenment and denial, don’t feel alone or bad. Keep pushing until you are ready to continue.
Discovery – This is the stage of the journey where you find out
just how big of an impact your culture has on your stakeholders. You will need to ask the questions that you
are sure you are ready to hear the answers to and be prepared to make necessary
changes.
Engagement – To truly engage your stakeholders, the most important
thing you can do is become credible. If
any of them feel that you aren’t being honest, candid and self-aware, you will
have a much more difficult journey.
Delivery – You know you have an issue, you are aware of what that
issue is and your stakeholders are ready to support you. Now is time to deliver. Show the stakeholders that you mean what you
say through your actions. Bring your
plan to life and work through those issues.
Like any other change, this isn’t
a solo act. This is one of the most
difficult things to do, and trying to do it alone can lead to frustration and
potentially deeper issues. Find an
expert. This is one of those things that
requires objectivity. Align yourself
with an advocate that isn’t involved with your day to day activities. There is nothing wrong with asking for help,
especially if you mean it.
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