Culture Archives - txgnosis

Consulting Business Growth Pains and Digital Implementation Case Study

cncrzz — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:52:00 +0000

How a Consulting Business Leveraged Culture for Digital and Proposition Growth

A sustainability consulting business had growing pains. It based its central propositions upon reducing both energy costs and carbon emissions. The executive team and founders could see the opportunity, but their different styles caused friction to the extent that the company’s future was in jeopardy. Additionally, to realise their vision, they needed support to embrace the digital opportunity that would extend their service offerings.

Creating a Foundation

We embarked on a process to address the acute cultural issues within the executive team. Each executive was given clear responsibilities with autonomy, to ensure that effort was as productive as possible. Alongside this, we also instilled the need to be accountable. This led to greater freedom and trust. It became clear that each executive brought the same values but different skills to the business. From this much more robust platform, the road to expansion became clearer and frictionless.

Embracing Digital

We then reviewed the opportunity to embrace digital. For a consulting business, this can be a mixed blessing, and there is often a fear of commoditising expertise. We countered this with an inclusive dialogue with the professional teams. In doing this, we formulated a data strategy and machine learning plan to supplement skills and increase the consultants’ value to both their customers and the business. A technology team was created and integrated with the professionals. In little time mini-mum viable products were produced. A positive RoI was achieved in the first 12 months, operating on a secure, robust, scalable platform.

New Propositions

In turn, this created opportunities for new propositions. Together, we implemented a new proposition process and the digital transformation of their service lines. A unique flagship proposition was launched to leverage the consultants’ skills so they could add insight and interpretation to information produced as a result of the data strategy. In turn, this made each consultant more valuable, moving them away from data reporting to advising. Revenue per employee significantly increased.

Culture Again

By tuning the culture to embrace the principles and the proposition of the business, we catapulted digital into the front line. At the end of the programme, the digital platform supported 90% of the business’ revenue, created new propositions, increased revenue per employee, integrated digital into the culture, captured millions of data points daily as the foundation for consulting insights, and contributed to staff retention and expansion.

But even more importantly, it changed how their clients could improve their businesses to reduce carbon emissions and energy cost.

Download the Sustainability Consultancy Case Study.

The post Consulting Business Growth Pains and Digital Implementation Case Study appeared first on txgnosis.

The Seven Signs of Successful Business Life

cncrzz — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:47:00 +0000

The Seven Signs of Successful Business Life

We often use biology as a metaphor for business, using such terms as ‘culture is its beating heart’ or ‘let’s bring this initiative back to life’.

To determine whether something can be considered life, biologists use the seven signs of life. Can we also use these to test the health of a business? Do the seven signs of life become the seven signs of business health? If so, what do they tell us about the success of our business?

Perhaps most importantly, how do we harness their wisdom to build a great business? After all, people want to be part of a business that has life in it.

Many of us learn these seven signs at school but, if like me, you don’t remember everything you’ve been taught; here is a reminder of all seven (skip ahead if you know them).

Seven Signs of Life

Respiration – unlocking the energy that we have stored in our body

Nutrition – absorbing food so that we can grow, be strong and be healthy

Growth – progressing through the stages of life but also grow in size and shape – replenishing, replacing and enhancing the body

Sensitivity – sensing and responding to changes in the environment

Movement – moving to exploit opportunity or counter threat

Excretion – removing the waste products we don’t need

Reproduction – creating offspring to ensure the survival of the species.

Seven Signs of Business Life

When we translate these into our business world, do they show how effective and successful we will be? Let’s take a look.

Respiration – how our business uses resources to produce and deliver its proposition – effectively our business operations (or operating model). But more relevant is how effective and efficient we are at using these resources. Do we waste them, do we use them optimally, what costs do we incur?

Nutrition – how we source our resources (raw materials and people), ensuring that they are the best for our purpose, propositions and operations.

Growth – how we grow rather than stagnate or decline. Growth propels us towards our purpose, fulfilment and impact, as well as the more traditional financial features of growth.

Sensitivity – how we understand our market, knowing its context, direction, dynamics, needs, regulation, competition, etc

Movement – how we respond to the market, how dynamic we are in adapting to these needs

Excretion – how we deal with the un-needed by-products of our business. Along with nutrition and respiration, it has a significant impact on the environment. This impact is measured not just by the value we bring but also by the damage we cause to the environment and people.

Reproduction – how we create new versions of our propositions through innovation, bringing them to market and making them successful. We can take it further to measure how we continually advance to deliver our purpose, instilled with the values that we hold dear.

The seven signs of life provide a valuable view on how successful we’ll be as a business: whether our people will be fulfilled, our customers prosper, and our results flourish.

Harnessing the Power of Wisdom

All businesses are a combination of People, Propositions, Practices and Performance. We can use our seven signs to measure our attitude towards and success across these 4Ps. And as such, the seven signs are good indicators of the health of a business.

Of course, measuring is not the point of business. What we’re all really interested in is being enduringly successful by relentlessly driving towards our purpose. Measures allow us to understand where we are on that journey.

Moving from measures into action, here at txgnosis, we use a range of 24 factors to guide businesses towards success. In our eyes, a successful business is unstoppable, captivating, thriving, boundless and eternal. We call this the irresistible business.

These 24 factors give greater resolution than the seven signs of life that we’ve discussed here. We group them into four key areas: Context, Culture, Capability and Control. Together they are the 4Cs. As we guide you through the framework, your business becomes unstoppable, captivating, thriving, boundless and eternal. It becomes that irresistible business that delivers perpetual life to itself and all those around.

Becoming irresistible isn’t easy, but it is a whole lot easier using a framework with tried, trusted and proprietary techniques. So we deliver the business where people are fulfilled, customers prosper, and results speak for themselves.

Conclusion

Using biology as a metaphor for business is particularly useful. People can easily relate to it and use it to understand better the dynamics needed to become irresistible. This holds true for the seven signs of life as well.

Metrics, though, aren’t enough. We need to sense the environment and business context, grow through effective nutrition and respiration, move to where the best outcomes will happen, reduce our harmful impact on the world and create improved and innovative propositions.

At the end of the day, people want to be part of a business with life in it.

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Why Kids are Better at Work Culture than Adults

cncrzz — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 15:41:00 +0000

Why Kids are Better at Work Culture than Adults

Kids and Culture

Why are young children more culturally effective than adults? If we understand this, then we can equip people to perform better in our work culture.

Culture is the collection of behaviours and artefacts that motivate us to act in a certain way. Culture is true to itself; people will behave the way the culture determines. It might not be the culture you want, but it is your culture. To misquote Edwards Deming, ‘Culture is perfectly formed to give you exactly the behaviour it produces.’

So, when you have a culture that needs to change, how do you motivate people to adapt their behaviours?

Kids are Smart, in ways we’ve forgotten

Peter Skillman ran a well-known experiment (the marshmallow challenge) for different groups of professionals, CEOs, MBA students and nursery school kids. They had to build the tallest structure they could get out of spaghetti, sticky tape, string and a marshmallow. The result? ‘Kindergartners, on every objective measure, had the highest average score of any group tested.’

This raises two fundamental questions:

Why was this? Why, with all the adults’ experience, skills, and maturity, did the youngsters beat them all?
What does this mean to how we work effectively and make a great culture to get repeatable success in our work life?

How we Operate in a Grown-Up World

To better understand this, let’s look at a Behavioural Science model called SCARF – Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness1. SCARF is used to understand group dynamics. As adults, we’ve learnt to assess these dynamics before becoming productive2. And this takes time in a new group. An essential thing about SCARF is that it taps straight into the brain’s primary threat and reward circuits – the minimise threat/maximise reward instinct. And that means, once learnt, it is hard to dislodge.

Kids have no such issues. They don’t care about social standing and get straight to the task of rapidly developing, collaborating and learning.

So, let’s see how SCARF could play out in any group interaction, including the marshmallow challenge. The way we think, collaborate and interact in groups is driven by how we fit within them. These are largely learned behaviours over many years. And they tend to accumulate layer over layer. As Shrek said – “Ogres are like onions… …ogres have layers”. People in social/collaborative situations have layers of behaviour as well. On the outside are the cultural artefacts that our society places on us (and we buy into, so we perform effectively within it). If you’re not convinced that this is the case, think about how our different cultures around the world have responded variously to Covid-19. Or take a look at The Culture Map, a book about working with international cultures.

Cultural Layers

Beneath this outer layer is a bunch of competing cultures – our home cultures, social cultures, and work cultures. How they work together, how they cause friction all contribute to our sense of wellbeing and stress. And our personal sense of identity. And across all of these, we’re trying to figure out how we fit in, become productive and enjoy our time.

Most cultures need to embrace change through continuous learning and becoming relentlessly ambitious. This will start to build the agile mindset required to deliver responsive change. Ambition drives the vision higher, and continuous learning increases the capability to deliver it.

Inhibiting Groups

With the SCARF model, you can probably see how it plays out in your groups. How your Status impacts promoting and challenging ideas; how your Certainty (or lack of it) impacts clarity and courage; how your Autonomy allows you to get on with tasks; how your Relatedness creates openness or barriers; and how your Fairness allows judgement and equality. How you behave and react because of SCARF is dependent on the culture of the group you’re in and the other groups of which you’re part.

Freeing Groups to Perform

How do we solve this puzzle of SCARF reducing productivity? We need to create a positive atmosphere of psychological safety where team members (from the smallest team to the organisation as a whole) are steeped in understanding that their groups are safe places to work within.

With SCARF, Status and Certainty frequently has the highest priority, but Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness should come to the fore. We see that most selfish or fearful groups focus on Status, Certainty and Autonomy, followed by Relatedness and Fairness. But in psychologically safe environments, the priority should be reversed. Teams should promote Relatedness and Fairness while providing security with Autonomy, Certainty and Status.

So, we need to:

Increase the vulnerability and humility of the group to reduce the need for Status and Certainty
Introduce fun and play into the workplace – work should always be fun but not a joke; fun should never be at someone else’s expense
Reduce structure in interactions – collaborate where everyone knows they’re equal and valued, even though an individual will be accountable for the decisions
Create a clear sense of purpose that overwhelms the emotional needs of the individual.

And this is psychological safety. But it shouldn’t be a safe place without conflict through fear of offending, but a place where conflict happens without retribution or invective and is supportive.

Also, remember that the life of a workgroup starts way before the group is formed. It begins in recruiting, onboarding or in other groups, through organisation and power structures, to policies, purpose, role models and reward systems. These are where the seeds and expectations are sown.

Giving examples of effective systems can be dangerous, but a classic of our time is Netflix. Please don’t try to implement their culture. Understand it: why it succeeds and who owns it; but find your own way of making culture work for your unique circumstances and particular Purpose and Values.

Conclusion

In summary, it is crucial to understand what drives behaviours, what are instinctive reactions to threat and reward so that you can design and continually improve psychological safety in your groups. The SCARF model shows that these facets are not held lightly, and so the psychological safety in a group must be robust and trusted. It also gives you a model to unbundle the complexity of behaviours and feelings within a group.

And if we do this well, we can become unencumbered like youngsters, but with the advantage of our experience and understanding. Imagine what a positive force we would be!

More?

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1. SCARF:

Status – is about relative importance to others

Certainty – concerns being able to predict the future

Autonomy – provides a sense of control over events

Relatedness – the sense of safety with others

Fairness – The perception of fair exchanges between people

Read the original research article.

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2. In a group, we spend a lot of time figuring out how we fit in. Bruce Tuckman’s Forming-Storming- Norming-Performing stages of group behaviour from back in the ‘60s is still relevant. This models how groups become productive once their behaviours are synchronised through a common purpose.

Read the original research article.

↩

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The A to E of Making Culture Great

cncrzz — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 15:38:00 +0000

The A to E of Making Culture Great

Culture is fundamental to the success of any organisation. Because people make the key decisions in every business, how they behave and the values they hold have a huge impact. However, changing culture isn’t simply a matter of implementing a new project or programme.

So, let’s assume our culture needs an upgrade or renewal. What comes next? We need to create the right environment for culture to thrive. And to understand the necessities of embedding good culture we’ve created its A to E.

Expression

Let’s start at our goal. Our end point is to have a great Expression of culture. This will catapult a business towards its purpose and strategy.

From here we explore the A+B+C+D of Culture implementation.

Architect

We inhabit a culture like we inhabit the built environment; living and breathing inside it. So, we architect it rather than simply design it. Like a building, culture has a profound impact on how people work, play, relax, learn, etc. Culture also has the enduring, tangible impact that a building has. Don’t wait for culture to happen – we must make sure we know what we want, what it looks like and how it fits the context of the business.

Believe

To make a success of culture, architecting it is not enough. We have to believe in the culture. Belief is knowing that something is right or true – often through experience. It is an important first step in commitment and engagement. Without belief it is impossible to be motivated. We need to believe in the culture and believe that it can succeed. Fortunately, we can motivate ourselves and others to believe in a number of ways.

Care

In addition to belief we have to care enough to do something about it. Culture demands and always receives an emotional response. This of course can be positive or negative. It requires something more than the external motivation from the Believe step above. It requires internal motivation – the motivation that drives us from within. How many times have people believed something to be true, but still didn’t do what was required? This is often because they didn’t care enough. Without the right emotional commitment our architected culture won’t succeed.

Drive

The right culture, believed and cared about must be driven forward into reality. We must be intentional about culture implementation, it won’t just happen. Diligence is our watch-word. We have to design the right artefacts that will ensure the culture and its behaviours are lived out by everyone. Once designed they have to be implemented diligently, earnestly and with total immersion across the whole organisation and beyond. Even after implementation culture suffers entropy and needs to be constantly driven to remain successful, relevant and sustainable.

A+B+C+D=E

So, to create a successful expression of culture (which is essentially how people behave) we need to architect the culture. We then need to ensure everyone believes and cares. And finally we have to drive the belief and care to express the culture well.

Together, A, B, C and D will deliver a great Expression of culture.

Of course, getting the right culture is another subject and that is why we’re here to help…

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What is Cultural Debt and Why Deal with it?

cncrzz — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 15:28:00 +0000

What is Cultural Debt and Why Deal with it?

Cultural Debt

Culture is an asset in every business. It is something we need to maintain if we want to realise its full benefit. At times we create cultural debt. What is cultural debt? Why and how do we create and repay it?

Company versus culture

We’ve seen it all before. Working late, long hours, under stress to achieve a deadline that we don’t have much affinity with. And because of the project’s importance, those in authority try to micro-manage despite our track record of consistent delivery and achievement. Where’s the motivation? Where’s the trust? We see real fear in action and, under stress, people pin their true colours to the mast. Where does that leave us and our relationship with the company?

Culture is an asset

Culture is undeniably an asset (highly valued or otherwise). In fact, it is a key business asset. Enhancing its value is right – we achieve our personal and company’s purpose better. But we can also borrow against it. The scenario above is an example of this. Cultural debt is when we make a decision that borrows against the culture of the organisation – a promise that is broken.

Generally, this isn’t an issue and probably most of us expect it to happen once in a while. But what are the consequences if not addressed?

In a positive culture the asset will be replenished quickly by the experience the team has going forward – the debt will be repaid. Bear in mind that both the company and leaders need to repay it.

Unpaid debt leads to long term issues

When cultural debt becomes longer term (or structural), additional issues need to be identified and addressed. Structural debt could be continuously repeating short-term debt. It could be behaviour which is negatively counter-cultural (asking people to deviate from the company values for example) or having a culture that won’t yield the right results (e.g. being highly autocratic where only collaborative will work). And behaviour is the key to this. If we can spot where behaviour is at odds with the culture, then we need to deal with it.

Often people rally round so we don’t notice the cultural debt is still outstanding. They hide their feelings and carry on regardless. However, that is not a positive sign. Because below the surface resentment has increased and will rise more readily in the future. Actually, what is eroded is trust: trust in the company and trust in those in authority. We need to address this in a proactive way and not assume that it has gone.

Responding to Cultural Debt

So, what should we do as leaders? Be aware of what we’re asking others to do and how it is both us as individuals and the company that should repay the debt. Repay in a way that will have short- and long-term impact. Next time they’ll know they’re investing rather than being taken advantage of. I don’t mean we should become transactional about this, and indeed, treating this whole situation as a transaction won’t improve the situation. Relationships aren’t built on transactions; they’re built on trust. And at the root, culture is all about trust – trusting both the company and those part of it to behave in a certain way.

Ensuring culture remains a valued asset requires some clear actions.

Embrace culture as a real asset that needs nurturing
Articulate what a great culture for your business means – think about purpose, brand, trust, etc
Architect the culture so that drives the business purpose, and people can thrive within it, experience it and draw sustenance from it
Understand how, where and when cultural debt happens and put habits and behaviours in place to restore it
Communicate to understand that all is well with everyone who inhabits the culture
Consciously and continuously improve culture to ensure its value is maintained.

A Final Word

In this article, I’ve concentrated on the relationship between the business and the employee. But, cultural debt happens with all stakeholders: customers, investors, regulators, suppliers, influencers. And this debt should be repaid by the business and the individual. Don’t you wish some of the issues in your business relationships had better closure?

The post What is Cultural Debt and Why Deal with it? appeared first on txgnosis.

Performance versus Culture

cncrzz — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 15:15:00 +0000

Performance versus Culture

Performance can’t create great people, but people can create great performance

How do you see your business?

Like this?

The impact of culture in business

Why is culture so important throughout a business? Why is it more important to focus on culture than performance when building a long-term business?^[1]

Every business is centred around people. I’m hard pressed to think of any businesses where people aren’t at the heart of decision making and implementing. And if we believe this then the way your business behaves will be the sum total of the way your people behave. It is this behaviour that produces the consequences (intended or otherwise) of the business. These consequences include value creation which is good (delivering the purpose and products of the business). But they also produce wasted resources because of sub-optimal performance. This waste includes people effort but also other resources and assets not being optimally employed. Improving culture reduces this waste.

Culture trumps Performance

Despite most business metrics being performance related we can see that businesses don’t centre themselves around performance but people. Performance can’t create great people, but people can create great performance. And yet, so much effort is built around achieving performance but not addressing the key issue of how we make it sustainable and enduring. Can you think of any business initiatives that have produced initially great performance and optimism, only for this performance to wither and die soon after? People, as wonderfully diverse as they are, rely on something to knit themselves together for the long term good. A performance focus only delivers short term results plus individual burn-out, attrition and resentment. It doesn’t deliver long term improvement. But a focus on culture does deliver long term performance and creates a long-term asset – see our thoughts on Cultural Debt.

The impact of Culture

As an example, we worked at a highly acquisitive business where integration was a real challenge. It was in constant change. Each acquired company came with its own culture. It was given increased revenue targets because it had a larger salesforce to sell through. This continual focus on performance didn’t address the parochial and local cultures that companies brought with them. As a result, revenue didn’t increase, and it wasn’t until we introduced a new culture across the business that the performance increased in line with expectations. Only by changing the culture were we able to consistently increase the revenue and performance. Taking hearts and minds with you on the journey is so important and this can only be done with the right culture.

And the word is spreading about how important culture is. A recent survey found that more than half of people consider culture more important than salary when looking for a new job. This percentage increases for millennials where 66% of people consider culture to be more important than salary. And 77% consider the company’s culture before applying for a job.

Finding the right behaviour

So, if we pivot the success of a business around the behaviour of people to produce the right consequences how do we ensure the right behaviour? Behaviour is largely driven by how people are motivated. Motivation can take many forms and has to include the notion of “Predictably Irrational” as well. People don’t always behave as you predict, but you can motivate them with a useful degree of certainty. And if you choose the right people they will come with many of the right motivations (think here of recruiting for attitudes, character and beliefs).

Motivating People

As well as internal motivators, people are also largely motivated by their peers, employers, markets and customers all the time through regulations, rewards, organisation structure, procedures, ethics, values, etc. This is nothing new. What is new for many is how culture can be intentionally architected rather than produced as a set of performance-focused, piecemeal initiatives. And when we speak about improving culture, we don’t just mean improving team leadership skills. That is important, but by itself would be like training a grand prix driver to perfection without giving them a car to race. What we mean is a culture that is architected for the high performing team to work within and take forward.

The purpose of culture

It is worth noting what the purpose of a culture is. We’ve seen a lot of companies that focus very much on the employee experience and describing culture as ‘company benefits’ or ‘feel good factor’. While clearly culture needs to focus on people, the ultimate goal for most businesses is to sustainably drive the performance towards the purpose of the company. We only have culture because of people, but we don’t have culture only for the people.

Culture isn’t just about good teams either. If you build culture across the business, rather than just at the team level, you’ll get consistent, effective, enduring performance as the consequences of behaviour. This will be transferrable into your brand experience by people inside and outside your company.

Let’s dig a little deeper

People are core to your business success and work towards goals because of a complex relationship with the organisation they’re part of. People are not machines and cannot be programmed to work like them. There is tacit goodwill between people and the business, which creates the culture that drives them both.

People are motivated to behave in a certain way because of various stimuli. These can be as simple as contracts and rewards or as complex as herd mentality, internal drivers, external influences, beliefs, values, character, etc. At one end of the spectrum businesses adopt a culture that maximises short term benefit and can treat people as expendable assets that need to be constantly renewed (ever worked for a company like this?). At the other end of the spectrum are businesses that put their people on a pedestal and won’t implement any changes for fear or upsetting their cherished asset (ever worked where fear of change is an overriding characteristic?). Most organisations need to be somewhere in between.

Culture creates the motivations and behaviours to drive the consequences (outcomes) that you want. People see culture in action by the behaviours that people exhibit. You can architect the culture to achieve this.

Just because I’ve reduced business to three artefacts (motivation, behaviour and consequences) doesn’t mean that we should treat people poorly or be manipulative – quite the opposite in fact. Creating a culture where manipulation thrives will drive a particular set of poor consequences (think Machiavelli). Conversely, people are unique and bring their own history and influences into the business and their work. So, use culture to build diversity and inclusion into the fabric of the business. These three artefacts shouldn’t suggest that culture architecting is straightforward – it isn’t, but with the right framework in place it is both effective and rewarding.

While culture is hugely important to long term success it needs to operate within the context of your business – its purpose, market, strategy, etc. It also needs to be coupled to the capabilities of the business and its ability to make decisions and control outcomes. We use our 4C Framework to make this all happen – where Context, Culture, Capability and Control work together to make the business perform at its best.

Conclusion

Culture has a huge impact on the long-term success of a business. If you’re looking to create an enduring business, culture has to be at its centre. But it has to work for the business in tandem with its context, capability and control (4C Framework). Trying to move the business forward without architecting the right culture will result in poor performance and reduced corporate lifespan.

[1] Beyond Performance 2.0 p48 | ISBN 978-1-119-59665-3

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Using Culture to Drive Transformation

cncrzz — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 17:51:00 +0000

Using Culture to Drive Transformation

During the last couple of decades, the theory around delivering change has become increasingly sophisticated and, in larger organisations, ubiquitous. And yet we still seem incapable of delivering the change we want within the boundaries of time, cost, quality and value constraints. Despite the commoditisation of change skills, the number of tools and templates available to manage or control, and the depth of thought capital, there is something missing.

Cultural Drag

I recently had dinner with a newly retired senior exec of a FTSE 100 company. Someone who had both driven and seen change from the highest levels; understanding how it affects the bottom line, both short-term and sustainably. Among the normal conversation – state of the nation, holiday destinations, etc. – we got onto the subject of transformation and change.

We both felt that the biggest challenge in invoking and cementing change is Culture. It was variously described as ‘permafrost’ and ‘an anchor dragging on the seabed, slowing the ship down’. Melting the permafrost or weighing anchor are decisive in successful transformation.

Those at the sharp end of the business often see the need for change; as do the business leaders. But in the middle, the culture permafrost blocks progress. The trouble is that the culture has ‘always been successful’ and is ‘our recipe for success’, or ‘that’s just how we do things round here’. Changing the culture causes fear and confusion, because people can’t often define or design it, let alone implement it.

Cultural Fix

Every organisation has a culture; whether designed or not. Not addressing culture during change will deliver mediocre results at best.

So, here’s a quick guide to dealing with cultural change:

Implementing Cultural Change

Start at the top – not just at the exec level but at the board as well. Execs and Non-Execs have to start behaving in the way that they hold-up to be right. Anything else comes across as cynicism about the value and beliefs espoused. To put it another way, whatever culture pervades in the board will be felt long and hard by all others in the business. Yet how many senior execs and NEDs actively participate in culture design and implementation?
Make culture the centre of transformation. Why are we changing culture? If we understand the context in which our business works, the capabilities required to execute strategy, the control necessary to drive and measure performance then we need an architected culture that will improve the transformation but also make change sustainable.
Map the Culture. Culture isn’t an abstract notion that somehow binds people together. It is a tangible set of artefacts that can be described, moved, shaped and implemented. Everyone feels how an organisation behaves. Are we saying that we cannot define this? Often times, we just don’t have the tools to understand and describe culture. How do we see culture in the organisation? It manifests itself in the organisational structure, power bases, resource investment, policies and procedures, accountability and empowerment, brand and reputation, diversity and inclusiveness, stakeholder management, communications, supplier management, etc. Ultimately, each relates to specific cultural artefacts that can be understood, configured, implemented, measured and improved. And if this can be done then by definition, culture can be intentional. And that is good.
Understand where culture needs to change – what is being done right and wrong, what needs improvement? Are you held back because of cultural idols and habits? How does culture impact corporate behaviour?
Define the catalysts and carriers to changing culture. What is it that we do to change culture? How do we exhibit and implement a new culture? Stories, role models, heroes, social networks, etc all can be used as vehicles for culture change.
Create a movement to get momentum. Movements start small and with emotion – where the movement starts is important. It needs to be given authority from the top, but have enough independence to carve out the required identity. Often, an acquisition is used to import culture. Remember, just telling people to change culture rarely works – and the ‘ambient culture’ always fights back.
Measure Culture’s effectiveness. How do we measure the impact of culture? How do we know it has changed and what impact should we expect – internally and externally? Reputation; share price; employee attraction and retention; new, expanded and retained customers; productivity? Each measure should map back to the original reasons why culture needed to be recast.
Multiple cultures, common values. How do cultures relate to values? In a successful, but diverse or global business, different cultures will be different expressions of the same values. Poor examples are when different cultures are expressions of different values. In this case it is very hard to bridge gaps between cultures – there is constant friction across cultural boundaries. Imagine the impact of this beyond the business as well. You may well have a supply chain with different cultures, but do you want a supply chain with different values? You should not accept different values – the cost of doing business internally and externally is too high.

Dealing with the cause not the symptom

I have noticed an increasing number of Transformation Programmes now include an explicit “Ways of Working” theme. Often, these initiatives are designed to drive better relationships between discrete business functions, to encourage decent behaviour in the work place. Whilst these might address some obsolete management practices or acceptance of inclusivity and tolerance, they miss the mark and tackle symptoms rather than root cause. Does the recognition that people’s behaviour and working practices need to change, point to a deeper need to recast the essence of the transforming organisation; its Culture?

People have shied away from addressing culture within their transformation programmes simply because of awareness or because it is difficult to architect and implement. For many this has proved to be a catastrophic omission. However, success awaits those that use a framework of tools and techniques. Architecting and implementing culture isn’t hit-and-miss.

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Changing Culture – Architect then Implement

cncrzz — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 14:38:00 +0000

Building Agile into Transformation

Transformation – Get Culture Right from the Start

During the last couple of decades, the theory around delivering change has become increasingly sophisticated and, in larger organisations, ubiquitous. And yet we still seem incapable of delivering the change we want within the boundaries of time, cost, or quality. Despite the commoditisation of change skills, the number of tools and templates available to manage or control, and the depth of thought capital at our disposal, there is something missing.

Cultural Drag

I was dining with a recently retired senior exec of a FTSE 100 company. Someone who had both driven and seen change from the highest levels; understanding how it affects the bottom line, both short-term and sustainably. Among the normal conversation – state of the nation, economic outlook, etc. – we got onto the subject of transformation and change.

Yet, every organisation has a culture; whether architected or not. Not addressing culture during change will deliver mediocre results at best.

Cultural Fix

So, here’s a quick guide to dealing with cultural change and a culture of change:

Start at the top– not just at the exec level but at the board as well. Execs and Non-Execs have to start behaving in the way that they hold-up to be right. Anything else comes across as cynicism about the value and beliefs espoused. To put it another way, whatever culture pervades in the board will be felt long and hard by all others in the business. Yet how many senior execs and NEDs actively participate in culture architecting and implementation?
Make culture the centre of transformation. Why are we changing culture? If we understand the context in which our business works, the capabilities required to execute strategy, the control necessary to drive and measure performance then we need a defined culture that will improve the transformation but also make change sustainable.
Map the Culture. Culture isn’t an abstract notion that somehow binds people together. It is a tangible set of artefacts that can be described, moved, shaped and implemented. Everyone feels how an organisation behaves. Are we saying that we cannot architect this? Often times, we just don’t have the tools to understand and describe culture. How do we see culture in the organisation? It manifests itself in the organisational structure, power bases, resource investment, policies and procedures, accountability and empowerment, brand and reputation, diversity and inclusiveness, stakeholder management, communications, supplier management, etc. Ultimately, each relates to specific cultural artefacts that can be understood, configured, implemented, measured and improved. And if this can be done then by definition, culture can be intentional. And that is good.
Understand where culture needs to change– what is being done right and wrong, what needs improvement? Are you held back because of cultural idols and habits? How does culture impact corporate behaviour?
Define the catalysts and carriers to changing culture. What is it that we do to change culture? How do we exhibit and implement a new culture? Stories, role models, heroes, social networks, etc all can be used as vehicles for culture change.
Create a movement to get momentum. Movements start small and with emotion – where the movement starts is important. It needs to be given authority from the top, but have enough independence to carve out the required identity. Often, an acquisition is used to import culture. Remember, telling people to change culture rarely works – and the ‘ambient culture’ always fights back.
Measure Culture’s effectiveness. How do we measure the impact of culture? How do we know it has changed and what impact should we expect – internally and externally? Reputation; share price; employee attraction and retention; new, expanded and retained customers; productivity? Each measure should map back to the original reasons why culture needed to be recast.
Multiple cultures, common values. How do cultures relate to values? In a successful, but diverse or global business, different cultures will be different expressions of the same values. Poor examples are when different cultures are expressions of different values. In this case it is very hard to bridge gaps between cultures – there is constant friction across cultural boundaries. Imagine the impact of this beyond the business as well. You may well have a supply chain with different cultures, but do you want a supply chain with different values? You should not accept different values – the cost of doing business internally and externally is too high.

Dealing with the cause not the symptom

I have noticed an increasing number of Transformation Programmes now include an explicit “Ways of Working” theme. Often, these initiatives are designed to drive better relationships between discrete business functions, to encourage better behaviour in the work place. Whilst these might address some obsolete management practices or acceptance of inclusivity and tolerance, they miss the mark and tackle symptoms rather than root cause. Does the recognition that people’s behaviour and working practices need to change, point to a deeper need to recast the essence of the transforming organisation; its Culture?

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