When the time for organizational change comes it is almost always the result of two circumstances: the ship is smoking or on fire, or the ship’s on track and leaders chose to change before they have to.
The second circumstance is rare, leaving the first as the dominant driver for change. Regardless, the end goal of both motives is the same – enhance performance.
And when performance enhancement is wanted the generic tool that almost all organizations go to is change management. In other words: pick a different future, figure out where we currently are, and then make new plans to close the gap. It sounds airtight. There’s only one problem – it doesn’t work. And yet almost all organizations who desire significant change continue to go back to this bankrupt approach. Why?
Changing Strategy Doesn’t Change Culture – and Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
Look, you and I and most other leaders will gravitate to any process that is tangible, measurable, and can be shown on paper: realigned charts, robust reports, revised numbers, new visions that replace old visions – whatever we can get our hands on that says we “got our money’s worth” out of those consultants. However, almost all of these concrete things that we can measure, and then go to work on, are the results or the by-products or are the circumstances created by the culture. It is the culture that is the source of most of the circumstances and unwanted results. Dealing only with the circumstances is like putting electrical tape over the oil light or having a baby to fix a marriage. Unless we deal with the actual source of the problem the experience will continue to be some version of the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just try this on.
How many times have you strategically planned, run a retreat, did a SWOT analysis, sent out surveys, profiled peoples personalities, team built, gotten a consultant’s report, brought in a speaker, and so on?
What are the real results that you have achieved from these actions?
In most cases the results are incremental gains (at best) not transformative shifts in culture. And because of this pervasive experience leaders then say that “fundamental change takes time”. Not so! You are using tools and processes NOT designed to impact culture. When you go to MacDonald’s and ask for a car, and then don’t get it, you don’t say – “well it takes time to make an automobile Vik!” Stop using the tried and “true”, commonly available, easily accessible, and know commodity know as change management for something it is completely NOT designed to address – cultural transformation.
Most change management is not designed to deal with culture – it is designed to deal with the symptoms of culture – the structures and the processes set up by and run by the culture. A new org chart with new titles doesn’t produce new thinking, it usually produced a temporary disruption to business as usual, some confusion, and something that will one day be considered “a flavor of the month”. Whether I now sit to the left of you or the right of you has, on its own, rarely made any significant impact on the paradigm that got our organization in this pickle in the first place.
If people want to affect dramatic change to the morale or culture of their company, something entirely different is needed. And that thing is a transformative process that is designed to address the culture of a company. And what else is the culture of a company but the way that a particular group of people thinking, speak, and act in common. In other words a culture is “how we do things around here”.
There are a relative handful of groups or people skilled at effectively getting an organization to this bedrock level of its existence – it’s cultural paradigm; we are one of them and we do this with unparalleled speed with penetrating impact. If and when you are ready to break the predictable orbit of change management and are ready to generate a powerful corporate culture that will stand the test of time – we are a match.
