Change management needs to happen at all levels of an organisation. While the Executive Management Team sets the organisational tone and culture change direction, Senior Executives on the frontlines, Managers in middle management, and Team Leaders also play critical roles. Helping them understand and advocate the reasons for change – “the Why?” – and arming them with tools, training, mentoring, and support will result in organisations that can withstand and prevail through times of disrupted change.
Leaders are often aware of the internal cultural issues and roadblocks to change within their organisation or teams but spend too much time dealing with the problems that these issues create. These problems may include internal politics, high employee turnover, low employee engagement, teams working in silos or a lack of accountability and ownership for mistakes; just to name a few examples. Many Leaders believe that their existing values or behaviours – the type of culture they wish they had – would resolve many of these problems and set a new perspective or future direction.
Developing, leading, and managing organisational cultural change is extremely challenging – it is a long-term project, mistakes will naturally happen, and members of your teams are likely to “resist the change” – but this is about the learnings and outcomes-based journey. The accountability of your teams results rest with the leadership but if you are ignoring the inherent cultural issue, both your teams and their results are suffering.
What are the different types of Organisational Culture?
Aligning an organisation’s strategy with its culture reduces the disruptive nature of the change, but it is still a change. Of course, spectacular results will not happen overnight. Expect a gradual development, albeit a slow uptake to cultural change and not a revolution. Culture and strategy work in collaboration for success, but in a balanced and efficient manner.
It also involves sustaining and embedding new change within the organisation’s culture and processes. A key to success is a leadership style that gives employees opportunities for input and engagement in the change process and promotes the change journey; one that feels achievable and rewarding for everyone.
With facilitating Change Management, there are three (3) objectives that Leaders must consider:
1. Recognise the self-awareness of the Change journey
Sounds remarkably simple! For many C-Suite Executives and Leaders, the self-awareness of what is going on around the organisation can be challenging and to recognise the appropriate signs. Engage with your front-line management and cascade the Communication Plan and messages down, across and throughout the organisation – so that everyone understands the “Why” and the “How” of your new change initiatives. Then, spend time developing the Strategy Plan and help your teams with implementing the change.
2. Communicate accurately and positively about the Change
Executive Management Teams, Leaders and Senior Managers need to be consciously aware of how they are talking (and communication methods) about change. Ensure your teams, stakeholders, and employees know what is happening, and how their actions and discussions influence their colleagues. Sharing the anticipated changes and how they can work with the leadership to move effectively through the change positively – by reinforcing the change messaging and even how to do it informally.
3. Lead with introspection, not authority
Leaders are very self-aware of their actions and perceptions, and therefore must lead with introspection, not authority. Navigating change is not easy, and those who are considered the best Leaders are those people who understand their status and power but use these factors to help others (feel safe) with change. Managers often are not aware of their innate, implied authority; thus, the leadership aspect of Change Management and leading with introspection is important.
Leaders cannot manage or transform their cultures in the same old ways. Culture transformation starts with four (4) actions – fostering understanding and conviction, reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms, developing talent and skills, and role modelling – all are critical for changing and then sustaining the mindsets and behaviours of employees that build towards high performance, with implementing change initiatives.
How leadership aligns Change Management with strategy and structure?
Many organisations are adapting to market conditions, customer expectations, and new legal regulations, but simultaneously being forced to develop new strategies and change their business structures. However, for those changes to be successful, the organisation’s culture needs to be critically in alignment with its strategy and its structure – this process requires a culture change.
But some Leaders believe that cultural change is simply too complex – to be managed or implemented or that it takes far too long to yield any measurable results – and to make it worth the future investment. To manage culture change, the first step is to observe and understand your organisation’s culture as it is now, and to determine which values will best align with your culture strategy and structure. Leaders who understand that cultural change can be planned, aligned, and managed will gain a significant advantage over their competition.
Driving cultural change requires both active and intentional leadership. Whether you are looking to change the culture of an entire enterprise organisation, a Business Unit, a department, a team, and upon deciding what your cultural values need to be, then start the design of a Cultural Change Plan by using these five (5) steps to manage the process:
1. Quantitatively measure the current cultural values
The first step to navigating culture change is knowing where your current culture stands. Simply, this means what your employees believe your organisation’s current values to be. This allows an indication of – How much change is required? Who may be accountable? How to track your culture change more precisely and comparative performance over time?
Cultural values are preferences that people have for how they navigate life. These values indicate how people prefer to interact, communicate, plan, and complete work tasks. By understanding and comparing your individual preferences with the preferences of other personnel, then you begin to develop insights that can help you improve your own interpersonal effectiveness.
2. Alignment of culture, strategy, and structure
Ensure that the culture change fits within the organisation’s business strategy and that both align with the organisation’s structure (systems, policies, and procedures).
Changes will be deemed appropriate and thereby help support the new culture. Supporting change and innovation objectives are critical to the success of culture change initiatives. The areas to consider relate to internal reporting relationships, role descriptions, Human Resources recruiting practices, performance appraisal and objectives, reward or compensation structures, professional development, and training plans.
3. Intentionally ensure stakeholders and employees participation
Change cannot succeed without the effective involvement and motivation of its people. Throughout the organisation, active participation can range from individuals offering ideas, solutions, and collective feedback on new concepts, but also joining project teams or taking part in team meetings to design (and build) the new culture framework and organisational structure.
This participation to change uses a balanced approach, since input from a wide range of personnel (roles, authority, and skillsets) can generate excitement and increased motivation to change. When employees like what they see, they will want to be involved! However, ensure from a Risk Management point of view that a separate change structure exists or put one in place (e.g., Change Sponsor, Change & Risk Committee, Change Management Team) that can make timely and clear decisions to prevent delays with key project actions.
4. Communicate and demonstrate the validation for change, repeat again and again, then…again!
Frequent and copious communication — both upward and downward — is necessary during the change process. Leaders use words and actions to convey the vision of the desired future and repeat the message format but much more often than you may think is necessary. In general, most Leaders underestimate how many repetitions (there are numerous instances) of the core message and for the message to sink in with their employees.
With Leaders demonstrating their constant commitment to the future state and by modelling appropriate role behaviours, this illustrates an unclouded vision and provides vivid images of what this new culture will look like. Using new language creates memorable images. Success with culture change is driven by Leaders who are singularly and visibly dedicated to change.
5. Manage emotional responses – Leaders and your employees
Leadership effectiveness with introducing change initiatives is critically related to the use of emotional intelligence. Your employees emotions have a strong influence on how they approach or negate change and the belief in the future direction. Leaders need to be analytical (with the assessment) and deploy strategy with both their emotional messages, as well as their cognitive feelings.
Predicting the response of your employees to the change requires a conservative approach. This is about “reading the room” by paying attention to the mood and reading their emotions. Empathise and engage in perspective-taking dialogue – by managing the feedback, anxiety with change, periods of anger, listen first before responding, and the need for emotional regulation of the change purpose – that can naturally arise at critical points in a culture change. Most importantly, always demonstrate (with patience, resilience, and purpose) the role modelling of the culture change that your leadership is trying to create.
Summary
So, how best to embed change and set your culture change direction? Well, if you reflect on the areas where your teams performance can be improved, then – What behaviours do you currently tolerate that you know affect performance? Would a few key behaviours or addressing specific changes to organisational culture, help improve your results?
Organisational culture has a significant impact on how your enterprise approaches its work, its corporate brand, and whether it achieves its goals and objectives. With your team’s working styles and increased level of collaboration required, then the respective changes your business is going through will determine the most appropriate culture type. Regardless, it has become increasingly critical for Leaders to provide a positive employee experience and be AGILE with their approach to succeed with implementing change.
With diverse types of organizational culture, your Leaders will understand which type your organisation aspires to have and what must change to make the change transition. Leaders also know they are influencers and change agents in shaping organisational culture. Most importantly, Leaders ensure what change initiatives would be most beneficial to the organisation, stakeholders and employees based on their current culture and / or the culture to which their organisations aspire to be.
Whilst constant change may seem monumental to achieve success, it is not as daunting as you may at first think. Start the reflection process, decide who needs to come along for the change journey, and develop the Strategy Plan for communicating next steps!
Need some guidance on your next steps? Let’s start a conversation…