It's Not About Changing The Culture...

Over the last few weeks, I have had a number of conversations with senior executives - and also read a number of headlines, suggesting that the solution to their organisations' or teams' performance issues requires a "need to change the culture". Subsequently, in some instances, I have witnessed enormous amounts of effort and money spent on redefining organisations values with little  impact on cultural change.

My initial response to this? 

"Let's have the real conversation about what culture really is, and then apply that thinking to the challenges we currently have"

So - where do we start? My key assumption here is that culture is all about behaviour. And specifically - which behaviours get rewarded, recognised and tolerated in this organisation?

As an example, your team may be delivering some great outcomes, and as such, be suitably rewarded for it. However, if there is no accountability around how the team has behaved during that delivery then you are running the risk of developing a culture of "delivery is all that matters" - something that may not be sustainable.

It may also be worth keeping in mind that it is sometimes the informal rewards and recognition that have the biggest impact. For example, not challenging a particular behaviour is a reward. At a simple level, not challenging someone who is always late for meetings will be an endorsement of that behaviour, or a mediocre performer who keeps their role is being rewarded, or the sales person who gets particularly aggressive at end of month when commissions are due but still gets Sales Person of the month is having their behaviour rewarded.

So now let's think broadly.

The notion that "we need to change the culture" is really about identifying which behaviours are actually getting rewarded and recognised in this team or organisation and which ones should we start rewarding, recognising, and challenging?

What may be equally important to think about too during this process is how are our Leaders behaving?

 From my experience, organisations and teams look like their Leaders. Hence, if we are looking for shifts in behaviour our starting point will need to be with the designated Leaders. I have seen people in teams make decisions on what is acceptable or not based simply on what they have seen their Leaders do.

In summary - what we reward and recognise is our culture. Our Leaders will be the guide as to what is acceptable or not in this team or organisation. I would like to think that now our starting action is clearer. If we want to change the culture, let's have the real conversations about what we are tolerating, rewarding, recognising and walking past around here -and from who!