A Systematic Approach to Cultural Transformation

Lasting organizational transformation necessitates cultural change. In the absence of cultural change, a new way of doing may well temporarily exist. However, the new way of being that accompanies cultural change is essential for long-term maintenance of enhanced processes and performance.

Change Management methodologies, such as Lean Six Sigma, utilize a systematic approach to cultural transformation. Often initiatives are launched via an introductory workshop which flags up the new organizational vision and facilitates team members to articulate the cultural changes that they consider will be necessary to achieve it. Handing over responsibility for defining such changes to team members increases the team’s sense of ownership of the change process.
In order for a change initiative to succeed, there must be “buy in,” to the new way of being by the entire organization. Change agents must be savvy enough to identify likely project saboteurs and skilled enough to turn them round before they negate the team effort. Often, a good way of doing this is to leverage the influence of those known to be respected by would be saboteurs, in order to turn them around. A skilled change agent also understands how to get individual team members on board by linking the cultural change with ultimate fulfillment of individual needs.

Seasoned change consultants are skilled at sensing, “the way the wind is blowing,” within an organization. However, the fuller picture, gained from a cultural analysis questionnaire, is of inestimable value in revealing important cultural issues that may be blind spots for change agents.
Such a questionnaire should to elicit relevant information from all organizational stakeholders and should aim to illuminate trends.

For instance, the questionnaire might seek to determine whether the management team’s actions support the new working methods and whether managers lead by example. A determination of whether people are working together cross functionally to make sure that changes happen, would also be of value. Such a questionnaire is also an excellent tool for determining whether it is perceived that formal training has been put in place to close the capability gap for individuals. Further, in probing whether program objectives have been most profitably linked to personal objectives, Likert scale type questions always prove invaluable.

Following on from an analysis of the trends revealed by the cultural analysis questionnaire, a recommendations list can be compiled. After this goals must be set for cultural change at an organisational, team and individual level. The subsequent evaluation of goal attainment progress must be ongoing as no effective change process can afford to be static.
Change agents invariably face resistance to the strategy they are charged with implementing. It is not easy for attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of a lifetime to be consigned to the garbage heap in favor of what are considered to be questionable alternatives.

As such, change agents must be competent at:
• Communicating and influencing appropriately in different situations
• Recognizing saboteurs and turning them round
• Recognizing pioneers and enlisting their help
• Setting up situations where small early wins are possible
• Being open to innovation
• Diffusing potentially explosive situations
• Facilitating solution finding
• Coaching and mentoring others through identity crisis
• Confronting denials and betrayals

A top change agent must have the skills and knowledge but mostly the attitude, to persevere. However at the deepest level, in order to achieve cultural transformation, a change agent must be able to facilitate relationships in order that they compliment the change process. For example a seasoned change agent might use a person they suspect is respected by an unwilling team member to exert appropriate influence and if they do not know such a person, they will recognize that they need to do some research in order to find one.

A good change agent is constantly seeking out intra and cross-team links that serve to strengthen the change process and skilfully pitching the gains that will accrue from such alliances to those concerned. This together with the systematic approach, described, is the perfect recipe for desirable cultural change and the resultant project success that accompanies it.

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