What makes organizational culture change

Cross-cultural workers spend a lot of time thinking about, discussing, and examining cultures. Ethnography is a foundational skill for missionaries. But I have found that we are much less adept at understanding and describing organizational cultures, even the cultures of the organizations in which we serve. What does an effective organizational culture look like? What kind of organizational culture would lead to greater fruitfulness and well-being of our members?

Even more mysterious is how leaders can nurture the organizational culture they would like to prevail. Or can we even change or develop our organizational culture? I believe that this book begins to answer some of these questions, at least for me. Coyle set out to discover the reasons why some groups, teams, or organizations accomplish far more than what we would expect of them if we only looked at the sum total of the individual talents of their members.

His research has resulted in an excellent and fascinating book about group culture. Coyle devotes a section of his book to describing each skill. Each section includes multiple stories about great teams and organizations. Then it concludes with a set of suggested action steps for developing that skill. The first skill is all about the value of belonging. As cross-cultural workers, we are very familiar with the feeling of not belonging. Thus, we are often not able to contribute fully to the discussions and decisions in the cultures and communities in which we live.

We long to belong, to be accepted, to be valued for our contribution. We want to feel that it is not only safe to live in these communities but also safe to contribute meaningfully to its well-being.

They are more important than any other in helping new people decide whether they are going to connect and stay with this new group. Coyle talks about a call center in India that struggled with abnormally high attrition. Tim Kuppler is the co-founder of CultureUniversity. He previously managed substantial workplace culture transformations as an industry executive and was President and Senior Consultant at Denison Consulting. Contact him at Tim. Kuppler HumanSynergistics. All Rights Reserved.

Torben, I disagree with Russell. Sometimes you do have to replace a certain number of key people but my experience is you can also change culture by modelling and reinforcing what you want. At the same time you need to send clear and consistent messages around empowering the relevant dimensions of individuals.

A better solution is to recognise and encourage innovation conversations and behaviours across the business. All that said. Great sharing and you have highlighted the truth of what is happening in most organizations. Driving cultural change should be done from the top, and with clear intent and purpose and having this shared with all employees.

Walking the talk, treating individual employee with respect and trust will certainly help in this. Very often with unclear roles and responsibilities as well as lack of empowerment will make this change even tougher and near impossible. Model change comfort. Be a model for others and encourage your leadership team to develop a realistic and comfortable view of change.

His denial set a tone. It is equally important not to be seen as a change junkie. Change is fatiguing, and your staff need to feel that your strategies for change are necessary and worth their discomfort. Indulge risk. The negative connotations of risk always outweigh the positive — and should be given due diligence.

But without risk there is no opportunity. Creating an atmosphere of exploration of risks opens healthy debate in the organization. Keep the vision front and center. People in an organization are acculturated to anchor themselves in the mission of the organization, but that is a symbol of the steady state. Establish a history of successful change. Pay attention to not just the completion of your strategies, but how they are completed. The game plan was not a narrative but rather a set of standard tables—a bunch of numbers—through which McNamara managed the organization for the next thirteen years.

As a result, McNamara transformed the World Bank from a small, sleepy, financial boutique into a large, bustling, modern corporation, expanding lending more than tenfold in the course of his thirteen-year tenure. But his most lasting accomplishment is that he introduced hierarchical bureaucracy. McNamara thus arrived with a clear vision for the organization: it was to be a lending organization that was lending a great deal more money.

He had a clear idea of the management he wanted introduced: hierarchical bureaucracy. Those systems are still largely in place today and still guide management action.

However at the World Bank, he found it difficult to make his mark. He spent much of his time trying to figure out how the organization functioned. He could see that the organization lent a great deal of money, but the goal of lending—development—remained fuzzy.

Clausen relied principally on management tools, and lacked any clear vision of where he wanted the organization to go. As a result, it kept going in the same direction. The organization that he inherited had become slow, bureaucratic and unresponsive to its stakeholders. The hope was that the reorganized organization would emerge lighter, nimbler and more client-focused.

The reality was that the old culture quickly reemerged, despite the new managers and the new structures. The culture easily survived. Lew Preston came from being head of JP Morgan. As a banker, he accepted the World Bank as a bank, and in the four years that he served as president, he made no significant effort to change it. James Wolfensohn came from a career of investment banking.

Unlike his predecessors, he had spent a number of years thinking about the World Bank and in fact trying to become its president. He was a candidate when McNamara retired in , but he was told he was ineligible as an Australian citizen. He adopted U. Upon his appointment, it was reported in the press that he intended to remove the entire cadre of senior managers.