A GOOD WAY TO CHANGE A CORPORATE CULTURE

by Peter Bregman

“I’d like to talk to you about a big project,” the woman told me on the phone. “We need to change our culture.”

She was a senior leader in a professional services firm, where people really are their most important asset. Only it turns out the people weren’t so happy. Theirs was a very successful firm with high revenues, great clients, and hard working employees. But employee satisfaction was abysmally low and turnover rates were staggeringly high. Employees were performing, they just weren’t staying.

This firm had developed a reputation for being a terrible place to work. When I met with the head of the firm, he illustrated the problem with a personal example. Just recently, he told me, a client meeting had been scheduled on the day one of his employees was getting married. “I told her she needed to be there. That the meeting was early enough and she could still get to her wedding on time.”

He paused and then continued, “I’m not proud of that story, but it’s how we’ve always operated the firm.” Then he looked at me, “So, Peter, how do you change the culture of a company?”

Such a simple question. I wanted to give him a simple answer.

But a culture is a complex system with a multitude of interrelated processes and mechanisms that keep it humming along.

Performance reviews and training programs define the firm’s expectations. Financial reward systems reinforce them. Memos and communications highlight what’s important. And senior leadership actions — promotions for people who toe the line and a dead end career for those who don’t — emphasize the firm’s priorities.

In most organizations these elements develop unconsciously and organically to create a system that, while not always ideal, works. To change the culture is awkward, self-conscious, and complex. It’s better to avoid it if possible.

“Why do you want to change the culture?” I asked him. “The firm seems successful. Highly profitable. The culture seems to be working to support those goals. Why not keep it?”

He had to think for a few moments. “It’s not sustainable. Eventually we’ll lose our best people. No one will want to work here.” And then he paused. “I won’t want to work here.”

That was good enough for me. But maybe not for everyone else. They’d spent years playing the game by a certain set of rules and they were playing to win. Now the head of the firm wanted to change the rules mid-game. Not easy to do. And not particularly subtle. We’d have to consciously change all the elements that have developed over decades to make up the system.

Or would we? In the late 1970s, University of Illinois researcher Leann Lipps Birch conducted a series of experiments on children to see what would get them to eat vegetables they disliked. This is a high bar. We’re not talking about simply eating more vegetables. We’re talking about eating specific vegetables, the ones they didn’t like.

You could tell the children you expect them to eat their vegetables. And reward them with ice cream if they did. You could explain all the reasons why eating their vegetables is good for them. And you could eat your own vegetables as a good role model. Those things might help.

But Birch found one thing that worked predictably. She put a child who didn’t like peas at a table with several other children who did. Within a meal or two, the pea-hater was eating peas like the pea-lovers.

Peer pressure.

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us. Which is what makes culture change particularly challenging because everyone is conforming to the current culture. Sometimes though, the problem contains the solution.

“Stories.” I said to the head of the firm.

“Excuse me?” he responded.

“You change a culture with stories. Right now your stories are about how hard you work people. Like the woman you forced to work on her wedding day. You may not be proud of it, but it’s the story you tell. That story conveys your culture simply and reliably. And I’m certain you’re not the only one who tells it. You can be sure the bride tells it. And all her friends. If you want to change the culture, you have to change the stories.”

I told him not to change the performance review system, the rewards packages, the training programs. Don’t change anything. Not yet anyway. For now, just change the stories. For a while there will be a disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture. And that disconnect will create tension. Tension that can be harnessed to create mechanisms to support the new stories.

To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.
2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.

For example, if you want to create a faster moving, less perfectionist culture, instead of berating someone for sending an email without proper capitalization, send out a memo with typos in it.

Or if you want managers and employees to communicate more effectively, stop checking your computer in the middle of a conversation every time the new message sound beeps. Instead, put your computer to sleep when they walk in your office.

Or if you’re trying to create a more employee-focused culture, instead of making the bride work on her wedding day, give her the week off.

We live by stories. We tell them, repeat them, listen to them carefully, and act in accordance with them.

We can change our stories and be changed by them.

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

SECRET TO SUCCESS - SECRETO DEL ÉXITO

SECRET TO SUCCESS - SECRETO DEL ÉXITO

(by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

CULTURE TRUMPS STRATEGY, EVERY TIME

by Nilofer Merchant

Trust, fights, and child care. When I’m advising start-up teams nowadays, I ask a lot of questions around those three areas. Which makes it sounds more like a marriage counselor’s office, rather than a boardroom, right?

Quite often, the teams I’m talking with think culture is some woo-woo stuff that doesn’t make any difference in the end, or even if they think it does matter, they have an excruciatingly hard time describing what theirs is.

Which begs the question: does culture matter?

Culture’s all that invisible stuff that glues organizations together, as David Caldwell, my management professor at Santa Clara University, taught me many years ago. It includes things like norms of purpose, values, approach — the stuff that’s hard to codify, hard to evaluate, and certainly hard to measure and therefore manage. Many other experts, such as Senge and Kotter have certainly added to that understanding with complex and nuanced constructs, but Caldwell’s invisible glue comment holds a truth.

This “invisibility” causes many managers to treat culture as a soft topic, but it’s the stuff that determines how we get things done. For example:

Do We Trust Each Other? A team I was recently working with reminded me of 6-year-olds playing soccer, where every team member simply surrounds the issue much like a team of kids surrounds the ball. They then travel en masse, afraid to move away from the proverbial “ball.” In this culture, no one owns a position on the field. This “we’re all in it together” cultural norm is certainly egalitarian, but it doesn’t support specialization, scale, or accountability. I worry that as this team grows, and when they’re not all in the same room, they will fail. When they are huddling, what they are signaling is that they don’t know how to trust one another to do their unique part. They — like many teams — simply don’t know how to “let go” to and with others, thus risking their ability to scale results.

Disagreements Mean What? We all know that we want the best ideas to triumph for the best innovations to take place, but sometimes we act as if that only applies when the idea is our idea. Two members of a team were recently disagreeing vehemently on something. Both had facts that backed up their point of view. Both were fighting for the benefit of the company. Each believed they were “in the right” and wanted the CEO to simply pick the winner, making the losing party wrong and mostly likely, gone. How we handle disagreements and dissent are also part of culture. When teams don’t know how to handle disagreement, molehill issues can become do-or-die mountains, or, conversely, passive-aggressiveness insinuates itself as a mechanism to avoid overt disagreements at all costs.

Who Cares About the Baby? A team that is part of a 50,000+ organization recently described an issue where one team does their best right up to a handoff milestone, then relinquishes any part of the project’s ultimate success. They described their discomfort with this using a baby analogy. “Will you take care of my [baby] the same way I would, knowing our shared goal is to [get this kid to a good college]?” When the “baby” or in this case, business performance isn’t co-owned by everyone,things can easily fall through the cracks. And truth be told, that’s where most business problems happen in our high velocity world; between the cracks of divisions or silos or the “white space” no one owns.

How we get things done drives performance. These issues of trust, conflict resolution, and co-ownership are foundational for how a team gets work done. Culture is the set of habits that allows a group of people to cooperate by assumption rather than by negotiation. Based on that definition, culture is not what we say, but what we do without asking. A healthy culture allows us to produce something with each other, not in spite of each other. That is how a group of people generates something much bigger than the sum of the individuals involved. If we only get 2+5+10 = 17, we haven’t gotten any benefit of leverage. What we are looking for is 2*5*10 = 100, delivering an explosive return on effort. Culture is the domain that enables or obstructs a velocity of function. By addressing where an organization is limiting its velocity, you can accelerate the engine that fuels innovation and growth, and, ultimately, financial numbers.

Stephen Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks, agrees that culture drives numbers: “Culture drives innovation and whatever else you are trying to accomplish within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results,” he said in a New York Times interview. “When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results.”

Because we can see the outward manifestations of work performance like products shipped, revenues booked, and earnings-per-share, we can discuss them in analysts calls and at management meetings. We can barely see and surely can’t measure the cultural aspect of what makes great products, revenues or earnings per share. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be decoded.

After working on strategy for 20 years, I can say this: culture will trump strategy, every time. The best strategic idea means nothing in isolation. If the strategy conflicts with how a group of people already believe, behave or make decisions it will fail. Conversely, a culturally robust team can turn a so-so strategy into a winner. The “how” matters in how we get performance. Yes, it does.

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

START-UP - PUESTA EN MARCHA

START-UP - PUESTA EN MARCHA

(Part 3 out 3 - by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

HOW TO STAY CALM IN THE FACE OF CHANGE

by Malgosia Chabrowska

Are you changing your profession, job, or getting a promotion? Or have you decided to go on your own and despite the excitement of having an ocean of new possibilities ahead, you do not understand the fear you have that you might not handle it?

The most effective way to deal with this is to convince the mind that the change is not a revolution, but simply the transfer of skills. If you follow these small steps you will manage to do so:

Honestly assess the “now”.

What emotions arise when you think of the change? What doubts do you have about it? What gives you energy? What makes you happy and what worries you? The more honest you are, the better you can plan what you need for the change to happen and the ways of dealing with it. For example, when you leave your job to start a new business, you can think of how much money you need to feel safe and focus on saving it.

Adjust your mental image.

We usually picture the change in our minds. What image comes to you? Describe it. You have a chance to move it out of your subconscious state of mind and scan the change so it brings excitement instead of fear. If you get a promotion and the only thing you can think of is the new challenge with lots of pressure and you feel like a warrior on a battlefield, try to imagine yourself on the same field, but as an explorer discovering new exciting things.

Listen.

Listen to your internal voice of doubt, hopes, and plans. Answer these questions:

• How will I support myself during the time of the change?
• What can I do to be able to feel the joy of the change?

Give yourself time to hear your own answers as this technique takes the doubts out of your mind.

Review your resources.

Write down the resources (skills, attitude, energy, emotions)…

• …that you are using in your current job.
• …that you need in your new role.
• …that you need to increase your self-confidence in your new role.

This exercise is a remedy for the fear of defeat.

Give yourself the right to make mistakes.

You are usually your biggest critic and judge. When you do something for the first time you learn and grow and discover new ways of dealing with things. The sooner you accept the mistakes on the way, the sooner you will become more curious as to how to deal with them and you will find your own way.

Always notice your own successes, even the small ones.

Once you name what you do right, you get the energy, inspiration, and motivation to carry on. The more you focus on what you do right, the more your mind creates a picture of your competencies and skills, and your self confidence increases as well.

Find support that works best for you.

You might share your experiences with your loved ones and tell them about the challenges you face, or surround yourself with people who are already doing what you will do soon.

The time you take to prepare yourself for a change is a priceless investment towards your confidence and wellbeing. Good luck !!!

Fuente: InterNations

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

START-UP - PUESTA EN MARCHA

START-UP - PUESTA EN MARCHA

(Part 2 out 3 - by Dilbert)

Created by Scott Adams, Dilbert is about the world's most famous -- and funny -- dysfunctional office

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510

13 UNLUCKY MISTAKES IN MANAGING TRAUMATIC CHANGE - AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Turbulent times put leaders to the test. How people handle unwelcome surprises and unexpected blows to the best-laid plans can exacerbate a run of bad luck — or turn things in their favor. Traumatic change is hard enough without adding insult to injury. When crises occur, leaders need to know how to avoid the traps that make it harder to recover. Here are 13 common mistakes and some guidelines for avoiding them.

1. Pressure to act quickly undermines values and culture. Leaders take drastic steps quickly with no time to explore alternatives. Values about participation, involvement, or concern for people disappear. Cynicism grows. Solution: Avoid the temptation to announce instant decisions. Find issues that can benefit from employee input and assign teams to tackle them.
2. Management exercises too much control. In crises, decisions get pushed to the top. Because top managers are rethinking everything, people below go passive and wait to be told what to do. Initiative declines; innovation goes on hold. Solution: Establish short-term tasks that empower employees to seek quick wins, giving them a feeling of control over results.
3. Urgent tasks divert leaders’ attention from the mood of the organization. Managers are swamped with meetings and decisions. No one takes responsibility for assessing the impact on employees’ motivation and performance. Solution: Appoint a team of natural leaders to monitor the culture, take the pulse of employees, and coach managers on an effective process.
4. Communication is haphazard, erratic and uneven. Things change quickly, leaders are distracted, and it’s not clear who has accurate information. Potentially destructive rumors take on a life of their own. Time is wasted. Solution: Develop an interactive communications site to reach everyone with the same information in a timely fashion. Keep it going after the worst of the crisis is over.
5. Uncertainty creates anxiety. Executives don’t like to say “I don’t know,” so they wait until they have definitive answers before they talk to their people. But people can’t commit to positive actions while mired in anxiety. Solution: Establish certainty of process when there can’t be certainty about decisions. Create a calendar of briefings so that people know when they’ll know. If there are no answers yet, say so.
6. Employees hear it from the media first. Aggressive journalists dig for information, and items can run in the media before employees hear about them — e.g., workers who heard that their plant was closing on the radio while driving to work. Middle managers look dumb and uninformed. Employees feel insulted and left out. Solution: Keep the press out. Develop networks of employee-leaders to connect an information chain.
7. There is no outlet for emotions. Anger and grief mount with no way to express or deal with these emotions. People might start acting in strange ways, undermining teamwork. Solution: Create facilitated sessions for venting. Teach managers about dealing with trauma and ensure that they acknowledge grief and anxiety.
8. Key stakeholders are neglected. Busy internally, leaders fail to engage other key constituencies. Customers, dealers, suppliers, government officials hear only the media’s and competitors’ slants. They get nervous and withhold support. Solution: Manage relationships. Identify all groups that need to be communicated with regularly and devise a plan for reaching each.
9. It seems easier to cut than redeploy. Reducing budgets or people in equal proportion everywhere seems easier than taking time to reassign people or reallocate resources. Inevitably, strong performers are lost when they could have served elsewhere — including in sales roles. Solution: Establish a pool of strong performers from areas with cutbacks. They might be able to help the business in another way — or be called back for special assignments such as supporting the transition.
10. Casualties dominate attention. Sometimes leaders want to do the humane thing by offering help to people who are cut, while neglecting the “keepers” on whom the future depends. Some of the keepers don’t know that they are valued and decide to leave. Solution: Meet individually with leaders of the future and show appreciation. Offer recognition for extra problem-solving efforts during the crisis period.
11. Changes are expedient, not strategic. Managers often restructure by removing the weakest or newest people, without regard to business needs. The unit does what it has always done but with fewer people. The opportunity for change is lost. Solution: Identify a team and process to reexamine mission and priorities, to redirect activities toward more productive future uses.
12. Leaders lose credibility. The shock of crisis, lurches in business strategy, and performance shortfalls make top leaders’ words less credible. Why believe any new strategy now? Motivation drops. Solution: Make short-term, tangible, doable promises, and keep them.
13. Gloom and doom fill the air. Everyone is preoccupied with the negative current situation. They feel guilt about the people who are being let go. Morale sinks, and it is hard to find the energy to be creative or productive. Solution: Show that there is a future beyond the crisis. Repeat a credible positive vision. Emphasize the steps being taken to avoid reoccurrence of the present crisis — how we’re going to change so that this won’t happen again.

Leaders make their own luck. In the face of traumatic change, it is important to take the time to anticipate and avoid the 13 unlucky mistakes. Learning better acts of leadership when change is difficult will help everyone get through the crisis to find better fortunes ahead.

Fuente: Harvard Business Review

Haciendo click en cada uno de los links siguientes, 

accederán a los Contenidos de nuestros 

TALLERES DE CAPACITACIÓN IN COMPANY A MEDIDA:

(translator on page)

Cómo INCORPORAR y APLICAR Modelos de
PENSAMIENTO ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_6246.html

Cómo GERENCIAR EFICAZMENTE a partir del

MANAGEMENT ESTRATÉGICO

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa_3.html

Cómo GERENCIAR PROCESOS DE CAMBIO
y no sufrir en el intento

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-programa.html

¿Cómo IMPLEMENTAR ESTRATEGIAS EFECTIVAS?

Recetas para Escenarios Turbulentos

http://msg-latam-meic.blogspot.com.ar/2014/06/capacitacion-in-company-taller-de.html

Consultas al mail: msg.latam@gmail.com

ó al TE: +5411-3532-0510