Culture eats change for breakfast, but should it?

The following thought provoking article written by, Isolde Kanikani, the X4MIS Change Management and Team Development Consultant, 31 Aug 2021. Follow Isolde at Future:CM on LinkedIn.

The word “culture” derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin “colere,” which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture. “It shares its etymology with a number of other words related to actively fostering growth,” (Zimmermann). If this were to be believed, why is it then that a company’s culture is so often named as one of the big reasons why change projects are less successful? What then is the understanding of culture we all use when telling stories about companies whose culture stopped real intrinsic adoption and ate change for breakfast?

For me culture has been an elusive beast, and why I am now engaging in an active search for some kind of understanding about it’s true nature. I am on a search to find out what serves both culture and change synonymously, letting us people side of change explorers delve a little deeper into this phenomenon we often underestimate. My first step is to question if there is such a thing as healthy culture and properly managed change?

Company culture and the nature of the changes that we are often implementing could have a part to play in this. If we used the premise that healthy culture is one of growth and prosperity through development, specifically involving employees in the organisation’s own defining values and behaviours (Hampden-Turner). Companies want to be healthy to keep on existing and make a tidy profit if they can at all help it. In this VUCA world we now live in, not adapting fast enough is a company’s greatest risk (Kotter et al.). A healthy organisation is one that encourages, supports and even nurtures a culture of continuous change in order to survive these quite extreme times. This would logically mean that a culture that doesn’t allow growth is maybe unhealthy or another animal all together. If we are sick, do we call ourselves a bit less than top of our health, or name it as we perceive it, being ill. Further exploration is needed here to determine what a less than healthy culture might otherwise be called. If we call all states of culture culture, then the beast certainly has a huge impact on change projects. But if you name it unhealthy ‘…?’, then it becomes something change can begin to manage.

The same goes for change, in terms of changing a status quo we can do this well or not at all. Well managed change can bring some surprisingly positive transformations and return on investment. But if a change is left unmanaged or worse neglected, it would make sense that it fails. The maturity of the Change profession also has an impact here. Some people call themselves some form of change manager or consultant with experience going back more than 30 years. I do not doubt their experience and knowledge, but alongside this, I would like to suggest that the change management we saw 30 years ago is different to the form we know today. Then in some kind of infancy. Now we are in our adolescent years, where we are forming and getting ever more informed about methods, theories and practice that can really drive change in organisations. 

There is a 70% fail rate statistic that follows change around, this has been traced back to a simple (and profound) opinion piece written approximately 20 years ago, and it still appears in many articles today (Wilkinson). So the influence of yesterday and indeed maybe the culture of change holds change back. Even if 70% were a real statistic based on 30 years of change management, there are some questions. Would you ask a baby to do the same as an adolescent, expecting the same results? A large percentage of this 70%, if taken to be true, is based on years where change management is growing up. Of course the failure rate is higher in the beginning, and with further evolution we become better at change. Last point to add here is that the parameters of what makes a change project are pretty loose, and the ones used to define this 70% are not clear or talked about. This would make this an extremely unreliable statistic. I can imagine there are new reports coming up which might present some new light on this figure.

Somehow company roles, abbreviated terminology, sometimes bureaucracy, sometimes not enough structure or processes (the list goes on) get in the way of sitting at a table and seeing each person as an individual who is driven by many different motivations and responsibilities. When we look at each other, acknowledging these differences, we can also start to get in touch with the individual journeys people will have to go through in order to make the desired change.   



Practicing what we preach by engaging in a different mindset than the corporate colloquial language can often allow. This touches on concepts from Neuroscience, Neuro Linguistic programming (Anderson), design thinking principles, and AI otherwise known as appreciative inquiry. Some very interesting methods for engaging outside of right or wrong, good or bad. Stepping into acknowledgement of what is and how we can work with it, allows for learning and innovation.

Want to try it for yourself? A change often comes as a surprise for people, felt differently by each individual. If you think back to a time when you were asked to do something that was completely not in your comprehension, i.e. you never thought of it before. Added to this there was surprise, probably a good dose of obscurity about what this actually entailed and come to think of it, WHY? Probably you had some kind of choice in the matter, but if you didn’t (often the case in organisational change), it becomes worse. SO like culture having a healthy state and another ‘ill’ state, change can be realised in a way that makes people feel what you just felt (maybe), looking back at some memory that stays with you. Or it can be started on time, people can be involved in the planning rather than surprised by its sudden implementation. Put succinctly, properly managed change means taking the people with you and nurturing their personal journeys through the what, the why, the decision to be part of it, the learning, the believing you can and last but not least creating new healthy patterns by reinforcing and embracing change (Prosci) (Rogers ).

By taking a deeper look at the intrinsic make-up of a particular culture, we can start to see that what was once an invincible beast now has many more facets to be explored. Think on behaviour, values, norms, goals and shared vision or lack thereof (Barsoux). Accepted and respected forms of leadership and management influence a company’s culture and change projects alike. Even the way teams, departments and overall structure of an organisation influence how individuals interact with each other and the tasks they need to do. 

Chosen governance and project frameworks influence both practical in terms of deliverables and how people go about creating these. We aim to give attention to all these things as managers of change, and as the need arises. One size doesn’t fit all which pinpoints the need to check our own biases in order to bring the best combination of change practice to our clients (DiLeonardo et al.). 

Getting rid of the automatic 70% failure rate could help the culture of change get well again. If culture is broken down into manageable parts, and change becomes managed and maybe even lead, we have a chance to allow culture and change to work together. With the takeaway being getting out of the right and wrong or fear of mistakes way of thinking into a mindset of ‘Stepping into acknowledgement of what is and how we can work with it.’

Bibliography

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DiLeonardo, Alexander, et al. “When one size doesn’t fit all: How to make change personal.” McKinsey, McKinsey, 26 October 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organization-blog/when-one-size-doesnt-fit-all-how-to-make-change-personal.

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Kotter, John, et al. Change. Wiley, 2021.

Prosci. “The Prosci ADKAR model.” Prosci, https://www.prosci.com/methodology/adkar.

Rogers, Everett. Diffusion of Innovations. Free Press, 2003.

Wilkinson, David. Common Myths of organisatonal change. 15 APril 2016. Youtube, https://youtu.be/_xle0yoKYKM.

Zimmermann, Kim. “What is culture.” Live science, 13 July 2017, https://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html.