There are an awful lot of statistics out there on the significant failure rate of organizational change and how much it costs organizations each and every year. Do you ever wonder why change is so complex or why it seems as though it's never easy to manage?

Carter McNamara asserts on Managementhelp.org that the single most common failure is credited to simply not understanding the enormous role that company culture itself plays in successfully implementing large-scale organizational change. Organizational culture can generally be defined as the shared assumptions, beliefs, and normal acceptable behaviors of a group, as well as those individuals in that group. Culture actually drives the way people act, and it defines the appropriateness or inappropriateness of behavior in a given context. To a large degree, what we do is determined by our culture (Zatz, 1994).

Although it can be tricky, creating organizational culture change can bring significant business benefits.

Corporate Culture Management continued here:

More than anything else, what it takes to do so properly though is an ample amount of time and commitment.

Corporate culture is rooted in the collective history of an organization. Because so much of this culture doesn't evolve consciously, it's impossible to simply change it based on desire alone. Change isn't merely about a single event or a prescribed "new way" of doing things. Change requires employees and managers to alter their behaviors in order to adjust to a new manner of working. An individual trying to learn a new process or particular skill has to do so within the context of the culture around him or her. This assumes, of course, that the culture is one that supports the change.

Consequently, understanding the current culture - in order to define the strategic direction for the new one - is a process of discovery, followed by the building of a foundation to support the new behavior (culture). The following core principles can assist in the discovery process and therefore help establish a more sustainable culture for the future:

		Uncover core values and beliefs - This goes beyond the basic vision and mission statements of the organization. It's imprinted into the actual behaviors of individual employees and managers. For this reason, it is essential to uncover the values and beliefs that are regularly reinforced within the organization.
		Identify sub-cultures within the organization - Whether it's understood by management or not, each sub-group in an organization has its own value system, unofficial rules and norms. There may, in practice, be several of these sub-cultures present within your organization - within different departments, across different geographies or business locations, etc.
		Discuss values openly - There may be a huge difference between spoken values and those that are acted out and reinforced more implicitly. Part of the discovery process requires you to understand which values and beliefs are being reinforced implicitly. Then you need to determine whether or not they are ones you want to continue supporting. This offers you a great opportunity for clarifying your organization's true values, establishing new ones as needed and further reinforcing more desirable individual traits.
		Revisit corporate culture issues over and over - Culture change requires constant - and conscious - attention. You want to ensure that a clear message about the desired corporate culture is being delivered throughout the organization, and that new employees are quickly made aware of what is acceptable - and expected - behavior.

Once the culture and sub-cultures within an organization are better understood, it is easier to work through the changes that need to be made. For both individuals and groups, changes are experienced as transitions. It is the combination of the change (the "thing" that is "changing") and the way it is experienced that makes it a transition. So what is it exactly that makes transitions so difficult? Why is there frequently so much resistance to change? It's because changes require letting go of the way things are. According to William Bridges (2003), it's not the changes themselves that people resist. Instead, it's the sense of loss, the experience of endings, which they resist. The truth is, particularly in an organization, rarely do change efforts allow for individuals to recognize and honor what is being left behind. By allowing impacted individuals a chance to celebrate their foundations, even when they have to leave their old ways behind, they are better able to work together in creating a new culture in support of change.

When the collective knows what they are leaving behind, and it's clear to individuals exactly how that impacts them, they are better able to concentrate on "how" to behave in the context of the new culture and even to look for innovative ways to redesign work processes accordingly. They tend to work together to develop new identities, discover a new sense of purpose and reinforce new business processes to ensure long-lasting, sustainable change.

Even when you follow a systematic process of discovery as outlined above, and then integrate and reinforce new behaviors, this does not mean you won't encounter some resistance. You should always expect some level of opposition because people deal with change and transitions differently, under different timetables, and for different reasons. But, you can use this resistance to your advantage by recognizing it for what it is. Resistance isn't necessarily a bad thing. Instead, you can view resistance as an indication of something you haven't taken into account in designing the upcoming changes - or simply a sign that someone (or maybe an entire group of key stakeholders) is not fully aware of what is at stake in this process. If you share more information about the benefits of the upcoming changes and explain why these changes are important for the ongoing success of the organization, you may be able to gain the buy-in and commitment from your most vocal dissenters! If you include affected employee groups in both the design and implementation phases of the change effort, you'll likely mitigate much of the potential resistance. You may even find unexpected support from these individuals in a more proactive way than you had imagined.

The power that culture change can have on an organization is strong. It can prove to have a long-lasting impact on improving performance in any organization. Can Plus Delta help you achieve true culture change with your organizational change efforts? To learn how to create smoother and more successful organizational transitions, please call Dr. Jeremy Lurey directly at (866) PLS-DLTA or send him an email at jslurey@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Change Management page for more information.

Note: This feature was originally published and distributed in Plus Delta Consulting’s e-newsletter in August 2006.