Culture Change

Culture change is mainly about identifying behaviours that positively impact the business and getting more employees to demonstrate them. It can’t be mandated, so it has to be persuaded. Creating a popular movement that is pro-change. In most companies, employees are surprised to be given the chance to contribute in this way. This creates an opening in which the bravest can step forward to make change happen.

Poor customer service is a plague that afflicts many companies, frustrating customers and hurting the bottom line. While it's tempting to blame inadequate policies and procedures, the real culprit is usually a weak corporate culture. Policies and procedures are important guardrails, but they shouldn't handcuff employees. The best companies give frontline staff the autonomy to resolve issues creatively.

Organisations, like the societies that spawn them, are built on obligations that members owe to one another and the whole entity. In business, we consolidate these into rules, policies and procedures. At a higher level, we may link them to our company’s purpose and values. If we intentionally build a culture, then, over time, these obligations turn into behaviours that are universally understood and embraced by employees.

Looking at hierarchy from the top down, Leaders are there to set direction and inspire human effort by articulating the reason ‘why.’ Managers focus on determining ‘what’ their unit does and managing required performance norms. So, Supervisors work in day-to-day operations, influencing 'how' management decisions in their units are implemented through the work of subordinates.

Over time, many business areas have found Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs useful in understanding human motivation. Maslow’s framework is no less valuable when considering what kind of culture you’d like to create in your organisation. Physiological needs are at the foundation of Maslow's hierarchy. The next level focuses on security. But you really begin to define a positive culture when you address the need for belonging.

Business leaders are not politicians, chasing the popularity of the soundbite. They tend to be held to account by boards of directors. Increasingly, in the modern interconnected world, their actions are the subject of a more public debate fuelled by customers and even employees. Whether you like it or not, this is drawing the worlds of politics and business closer together in terms of what is expected of leaders.