Understanding and preparing for effective cultural change.

Culture is a well-used term in business but McKinsey’s definition as “how we do things around here” is probably still the most accurate. This factor critically affects any organisation’s ability to efficiently respond and adapt to shifting market environments so in many cases, culture may have the largest single impact on success. Because of this, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to pinpoint the elements of an effective organisational culture and to identify the way we might change a culture that is failing.

“The Cultural Web” was developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992 and provides a useful framework for understanding the components of organisational culture. In the context of membership organisational change, it further underpins the need for a “whole systems” approach to development and change. Johnson and Scholes defined organisational culture as being evidenced within six primary areas.

1. Stories: The past events and people talked about inside and outside the company.
2. Rituals and routines: The daily behaviour and actions of people that signal acceptable behaviour.
3. Symbols: The visual representations of the company including logos, office design and the formality of dress codes.
4. Organisational structure: This includes both the structure defined by the organisation chart and the unwritten lines of power and influence that indicate whose contributions are most valued.
5. Control systems: The ways that the organisation is controlled including financial systems, quality systems and rewards (i.e., the way they are measured and distributed within the organisation).
6. Power structures: The pockets of real power in the organisation. This may involve one or two senior leaders, an entire group of executives, or even a department. The key is that these people have the greatest amount of influence on decisions, operations, and strategic direction.

Do I really need to change the culture?

Even senior leaders in membership organisations might be unclear about whether the incumbent culture is healthy or needs to change. This is especially true for new leaders without long experience of the six elements listed above.

A good starting point would be to initially consider a simpler definition of culture than that defined by Johnson and Scholes. For most organisations, culture is just a reflection of the values, beliefs and behaviours held by the people in the organisation. This explains why culture can differ from team to team or department to department and arguably therefore, why it is hard to change. Not everyone is starting from the same place and most people aren’t clear on the precise destination.

Every leader we speak with in the membership sector paints a similar picture of their ideal culture: open, embracing of change, customer centric, entrepreneurial and continuously improving. They want a culture that unites people around the achievement of a common purpose to support their organisational goals. The reality however is that many of these leaders also report how their current culture acts as a hurdle to these objectives.

If this is the case in your organisation, you are facing this same dichotomy between theory and practice and yes, change is essential.

Affecting cultural change the right way

Changing the culture of an organisation can be a challenging process. Success demands a systemic approach to organisational change rather than tackling people, process and technology change as separate strands. It also demands that people be supported by a method that allows them to affect change that simultaneously benefits themselves, the customer and the organisation.

This win/win approach is obvious but the steps to achieving it are far more complex. To adopt the correct systematic approach, you need to:

• Ensure you fully leverage technology as an enabler of change to drive the desired outcomes.
• Put change management skills and tools at the heart of the programme, to ensure success and sustainability.
• Provide a flexible model to help you identify capacity and specialist skills gaps and address them before they impact your change programme.
• Align all your change project activities with your membership organisation’s goals and objectives.

The starting point for any change is knowing where we are now and understanding exactly where we need to get to. We must also precisely understand our readiness for change. But this in itself a complex challenge.

Can our free diagnostic tool help?

Intercloud9 has developed a Change Quotient (CQ) test to help you solve this challenge and prepare in the right way. The CQ test results will assess your current change readiness against the key drivers for change and provide you with insights into where to focus your change activities. This is a free service, whether you’re a client of ours or not.

Within the CQ test, the key drivers for change are defined in four ways:

1. Need: How big is the desire for change?
2. Will:     How much energy is there for change?
3. Skill:    How able is the team to drive change?
4. Time:   How much capacity does the team have to enact change?

Where to get help

Intercloud9 is obsessed with helping membership organisations to deliver change successfully. We work only within the membership sector and over the years, our team has supported more than 50 organisations with a total of 38 million members. We also have decades of experience working with leading vendors in the industry.

This gives us unique insight into avoiding pitfalls, ensuring all stakeholders and appropriately engaged, and helping organisations to achieve the outcomes they need.

Our approach is underpinned by a solid focus on change management and designed to ensure clients achieve their objectives. We aim to bridge the gap between organisations, their technology partners and their vision by providing a one stop shop for all things change management. Learn more at www.intercloud9.co.uk.