Culture is...so much more than 'the way we do things around

Culture is often simply defined as the 'way we do things around here', yet in reality it is much deeper and more powerful than this. Organisational cultural research has its roots in anthropology, the research into understanding societal cultures through a social sciences approach - exploring the 'why'.

It is based on what people believe is true about the organisation. These beliefs drive the behaviours, decisions and choices about where people place effort, what to pay attention to (& ignore) in incredibly powerful ways that affect qualitative and quantitative performance.

There are strong correlations between organisations that sustainably perform, achieve and can adapt and cultures that are confident, focus on being excellent, hold a coaching/ developmental and achievement orientation.

Research has shown, if there is no other difference between two organisations (context, sector, purpose, resources, and employing ‘normal’ people), a more constructive culture can equate to a 27% increase in tangible bottom line results.

Over the years examples of dysfunctional cultures driving sub-optimal performance with sometimes catastrophic outcomes continue to feature in the news. Some notable examples include:

the banking sector in 2008, the focus on particular targets and aggressive defensive approach to driving performance then impacted strategic and operational decisions around lending
to Mid Staffs in the NHS, with a emphasis on performance statistics and the finances meant that activities that could have prevented deaths were missed
to Rotherham a strong drive to follow processes, coupled with a low collective belief that agencies could change what was happening leading to significant child sexual exploitation not being stopped or prevented
to the Post Office holding a strong belief that the technology couldn't be wrong, leading to over 700 life changing convictions of sub-postmasters, estimated £177m legal fees and a potential £1bn in compensation

The majority of organisational cultures do not lead to these extremes. Our work with clients working on shifting their culture leads to eliminating waste, better decision making, improved performance, adaptability, being a more satisfying place to work and more.

Ingredients for cultural change

Culture can be changed, though not 'managed' in a traditional project management way.

Our approach is based on robust research and practice and utilises a combination of planned and iterative interventions around 4 ingredients. How these are executed is different for each organisation, and comes from working with you specifically for your organisation to create cultural shift. These are not 'steps' or 'phases' and typically happen concurrently.

Leadership

Of all the climate factors - leadership has the biggest impact on culture. This ingredient involves:

answering the 'why' - why change the culture, why now and what's our ambition
senior leaders being believed that we are serious and they are in the heart of it

Involving

Developing advanced skills to engage in creating constructive and rich dialogue to increase each individual's involvement. Creating shared stories, a new language and a strong picture of the future.

Re-designing

This ingredient involves identifying the factors which are having the greatest impact in driving the current culture, re-designing these factors aligned to the desired culture and being highly attuned to how the current culture may try to sneak in!

This is where our extensive organisational design and development experience can enable the desired impact.

Building accurate self and organisational awareness

This is a critical and often most neglected ingredient. It involves growing reflexivity - grounded in social theory - it's the capability to become aware of the circular relationships between cause and effect.

In practice this involves knowing where the culture is and is moving, building high levels of self-awareness in leaders, and creating a reality check from the view of others.

For accurate and robust diagnostic insights we use Human Synergistics integrated diagnostic tools.