In organizational change, culture comes last
Written by Jesse Fewell Friday, 22 February 2013 12:00
courtesy @opensourceway
Here at LeadingAgile, we have a specific cycle for achieving organizational transformation. In short, to make real substantive change, you need to attack the following dimensions
- Organizational Structure:
- Processes, Practices, Policies
- Cultural Beliefs
…in exactly that order. That’s right, when you go to change an organization for the better, you need to do the culture part last.
“But wait, Jesse. Isn’t culture the most important ingredient of an organization? What about the phrase ‘Culture eats strategy for breafast’? Why not do the most important thing first?”
I’ve been coaching this to my clients for a while, but in the past few months it has become painfully evident to me that Rule Number Zero for “going agile” is to have stable team rosters. One of my clients has the habit of shuffling people from one project to another, with no notice. When I started talking to them about the mechanics of user stories or other such details, they simply couldn’t care less; they were overwhelmed and tired from getting yanked around. A different client actually KNEW they had to re-organize their teams to be more focused. But while senior management was busy socializing the new org chart for 4 months, the teams were thrashing, fully convinced that management didn’t have the fortitude to effect any kind of real change.
Some of my colleagues think that if you go straight to modifying the cultural mindset of the leadership team, you will get the momentum you need for lasting results. But the problem is you can’t get there from here. There is a known, methodlical process for changing people’s mental models. Specifically, consider that the same process applies for people struggling with personal dysfunction. Think about it. To achieve behavior modification,
- First, get out of the environment that enables the dysfunction, and get into a support structure
- Then, leverage that support structure to work through a 12-step program
- ONLY THEN, can you introspect and self-actualize yourself as the new person
Granted, it is an iterative cycle:
- Change one small environmental thing =>
- to create the space to change one small process =>
- which slightly shifts my confidence based on a known track record =>
- which motivates me to make another environmental tweak…
But the point here, is that the iterative cycle of behavior modification is that you can NOT change a belief system, until you first have some positive behavioral evidence, which only happens after you create a safe and stable operational environment.
What about you? Have you seen the latest mission statement, management fad, or feel good effort yield zero results in your day to day work?
Changing the organization structure does aid in helping change because it creates positional authority. People like to make their boss happy.
Updating processes helps as well because it creates a model of like work procedures. Most people don’t want to stick out as being different or bucking a current process.
Truer heartfelt change occurs when people see and understand the value the change will give them.
Nice way to articulate it, Bob. Your points are especially true in larger organizations where change happens more slowly. “Helping people where they are” often means operating with the a world where safety is driven by following the rules. Thanks for the comment.
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Nice post. I’ll share a similar take, but emphasis in slightly different areas. I believe most efforts to affect org change by tackling culture directly are sub-optimal because culture itself isn’t a root cause. It’s merely a manifestation of underlying causes. It can be extremely stubborn, which is why it gets so much attention.
The steps for me are:
Improve the Organizational Understanding of the system, which allows one to …
Incrementally alter practices, policies, and processes, which fosters a different …
Belief System, which in turn …
Improves Culture.
Bob made a great comment, that people need to observe and understand. IMHO, if organizations don’t improve their understanding first, their culture isn’t likely to change long term.
Great stuff, Troy. Thanks for the input.
Seems to be a nice post, but again, and again, the easy way. Management seems to be not competent enough to really attack and change the culture, so…..structure comes first they reason. Pitty
I am a big proponent of “Start with Why”. Having done a large organizational transition, we ended up following the model Jesse outlines, but in order to get it started, I had to paint the vision of future state at both the leadership and the grassroots level. Once the “Why” was clear, the momentum from both sides then cleared the way for the organizational and process changes.
I found a great book on changing a large, entrenched organization to a more lean one in the Book “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler. He spent years beating his head against the cultural wall and finally adopted a model for change very much like the one jesse has outlined – and it worked brilliantly.
Huet, thanks for the comment. I will totally check out that book!
Matt, good points. Even if you focus on changing structure and mechanics first, you have to make the case. This came up in a recent conversation, where an agile champion was saying “we have to change culture at the executive level before they will agree to changing the structure.” To which I had to reply, “Not really, all you have to do is make the case for an executive to create the mandate/support/space for the needed structure change, and then let the results speak for themselves”.
Thanks for the comment.
Pete, Thanks for joining the conversation. I completely sympathize with your frustration. I think agree that Management needs to attack the problems. The debate is whether your attack should be driven by mission statements or policy changes. For example, a great story about positive change is Vineet Nayar’s “Employees first; Customers second”. As CEO of outsourcing giant HCL, he wanted to change the culture. But he did so by making incremental changes to company policies, inspecting the results, and then allowing for adaptation of the details.