Starting with the Truth

We are frequently asked the question “how do we improve the culture of our organisation?”.
The reason for the question is often driven from a need to see increased customer service and retention and enhanced staff engagement and retention within the organisation. 

Improvement starts with understanding what is working and what is not. It involves change, adopting new practices and behaviours.

Different types of change:

Yukl (2006) suggests that there are three general focuses of change efforts: strategic change, structural change and culture change.

  • Strategic change has to do with the direction of an organisation , its customers and products
  • Structural change involves changing roles and processes within an organisation
  • Cultural change deals with the behaviours and practices in the organisation and the underlying values and beliefs which drive these behaviours

An organisation’s culture is there, whether you deliberately shape it or not. It reveals itself in big and small decision as well as daily practices (how we do thing around here). It is impacted by the leadership, structure, strategy and systems of the organisation.

Culture is complex. Good leaders know that when they commitment to culture change they are committing to a transformational process (not a once off event) that starts with themselves and includes each member of the organisation.
Many leaders fail to adequately involve staff in this change process. This can be addressed by considering the needs of people in times of change.  

People in transition have definite needs:

Clawson (2007) stated that people in transition (during organisational change) have four specific needs (4Ps).
In order to encourage participation in the change effort each of these needs are to be addressed;


Purpose  - why are we doing this?, what is the pain?
Picture – where are we trying to go? 
Plan – what is the plan to get there?
Part – what part do I need to play? i.e. individual role

 

Starting the 4Ps with the Truth

An important starting point to improving the culture of the organisation is to understand the present state.
A leader’s role is to identify and articulate the truth of the present situation. The leader’s assessment must be congruent with the view of others. It is unlikely that total agreement will exist but the leader’s assessment must be fairly close to the overall view of the organisation if the purpose and picture of the new direction are to be accepted.

Once consensus is established, agreement on the plan for improvement can proceed.
An excellent way to discover and agree on the truth of the present situation is to complete a culture survey of all employees.
The survey will provide quantified and qualified data from which to summarise a true assessment of the organisation’s present situation.
Since the data comes directly from the staff leaders do not need to guess at the truth, only to understand the issues.

 

People Axis supports organisations in conducting Culture surveys and determining a 4P strategy appropriate to the unique requirements of the organisation and survey results.
For information on People Axis Organisational Culture surveys visit Organisational Culture Change OCI/OEI.