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Corporate culture rules corporate change
By Nancy Clark of national capital SCAN
Employees watch what organizations focus on, what is measured, what has resources deployed to it and who gets promoted. What they see is what they will emulate if they want to get ahead. Your organization is stating that it’s going to change the corporate cultural. No problem, you just have to wait it out and that idea will drift by the wayside – just like all of the previous “change initiatives”. We should start by understanding what organizational culture is. Culture, in particular corporate culture, is the personality of the company. When you get to know someone you can then describe personality. He is stubborn, she is friendly etc. Corporate culture is essentially the same as someone’s personality. This company supports its employees, encourages new ideas, hires the brightest, etc. It is the pattern of shared beliefs and values and a set of certain norms of behaviour. Once employees have been working for the same organization for years it is often difficult for them to be able to see and describe the organizational culture for it all seems so normal to them. One way to find out about a company’s culture is to ask all of the new hires. Employees with fresh eyes are still adjusting to the ‘norm’. Understanding corporate culture is often overlooked by leaders when they have a change that they wish to implement. Most change initiatives fail when an organization introduces a change into the ‘old’ culture and leaders do not consistently walk the talk nor understand employees’ view of the existing culture. There are many reasons why change initiatives fail. Dr. Linda Duxbury is one of Canada’s leading workplace health researchers and has done a vast amount of research on change management and organizational culture. Her research has shown that corporate change can take from five to ten years depending on the kind of change being implemented. Most organizations do not have the patience to take this time to really bring about change. Leaders move on and the new leaders have their own initiatives to undertake, without seeing the previously prescribed changes through. One of the keys to successful change is stable leadership. Employee and management workloads are overwhelming most of the time, which results in lack of time to really learn and apply any change. It is simply easier and quicker to behave the way we always do. Cultural change around an organization’s values will often fail by not measuring values such as integrity and respect. Employees watch what organizations focus on, what is measured, what has resources deployed to it and who gets promoted. What they see is what they will emulate if they want to get ahead. To be successful in implementing organizational change some fundamental factors need to be in place. An organization needs leaders able to communicate what has to be changed and why. That leadership needs to be in place for the long haul and must be able to inspire the troops and answer “what’s in it for me” at all levels of the organization. Good management is also required to determine how change is going to be implemented. Communication of change needs to be regular and two-way with employees and all levels of management. Corporations need to view change resistors, not as a roadblock, but as a guide. Listen to their concerns and let them poke all the holes in your plan as they can. They’ll have many ideas or issues you may not have thought of. You should always appreciate the naysayers telling you what’s wrong with the idea. At least you have a chance to address it change with these people, unlike the silent, passive-aggressive worker who keeps quiet but wants nothing to do with adopting the change. The stages of resistance to change actually follow the same pattern of emotion brought on by the death of a loved one: denial, anger, employees may try to bargain a way out. But with time and care to communicate clearly, they will eventually come to accept change and make it part of the norm. It’ll take some doing, particularly in an enterprise with a deeply ingrained ‘personality’, but where there is a sense of urgency, with a compelling mission, a clear vision and guiding values, change can happen. Nancy Clark, president and CEO of Enavance Consulting Inc., is an HR development professional who has been through every mill from the explosive growth of JDS Uniphase in the late '90s to a government agency in reorg mode, with stops at Marconi, Iogen and other hot spots in between. She can be reached at nancy_clark@primus.ca
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Contributor's Note
Copyright National Capital SCAN. This material may be freely reproduced as long as it is without addition or alteration and with credit to the author and copyright holder.
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Nancy Clark
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