A matter of culture and circumstance

Successful culture change takes strong political determination, patience, and know-how, writes Constantin von Mengersen.

‘BUT OUR PEOPLE do not want to make decisions. Our people do not want to take responsibility'. Just yesterday I heard these statements from a CEO in a roundtable discussion. This is not the first time I've heard this sentiment, as a matter of fact, I've heard it so often that I thought it may be appropriate to talk about it in general.

The background is that these leaders responded to change proposals with that sentiment in order to reply, sure, what you propose is all fine and dandy, but we have the wrong people (to strive for real sustainable high performance.)

What is wrong with this picture? Do a large number of organisations really have the ‘ wrong people' to strive for high performance or is something else at play? Well, I know, it even sounds like a loaded question. Let's have a look at this.

Organisations are systems (old hat). But that means they behave like systems and succumb to laws of system dynamics. What determines behaviour in systems? Correct, structure. What is the outward representation of structure in social systems? Correct again, culture. And here we have it. The sentiments expressed above are no doubt genuine and without a doubt, will have been expressed by the people themselves upon being questioned by management. But the reasons behind this are not that the organisation has the ‘wrong' people but that the organisation has the ‘ wrong' culture: it has a culture that does not allow for, or at least discourages, decision making below senior management, and uses the guises of responsibility and accountability to distribute blame not learning.

In order to get everyone in an organisation to make decisions in areas they are competent to make them and take responsibility and accountability for their actions, the requisite culture must encourage this behaviour.

A brief side step re responsibility and accountability – in order to hold people accountable for their actions, they must have authority to take the course of action they find correct, and they must be responsible for these actions. Authority, responsibility, and accountability always go together – subtract one and you end up with nothing.

Now, back to culture. There is an old saying that if you do not manage your organisation's culture, you will end up with the one you deserve (which is not often the one you wish for, nor the one you believe you actually have).

So, what determines a culture? A culture is determined by the direction (purpose, vision) of the system and ring-fenced (held in check, bordered) by implicit, shared, values.

Explicit, declared, values have no impact on a culture unless they are identical with implicit and shared values.

And one area where so many culture change projects in organisations fail is ‘window-washing' – slogans, placards, little laminated cards will make values neither implicit nor shared. Successful culture change takes strong political determination, patience, and know-how.

In order to manage or change to the desired culture, top management will have to decide the hallmarks the culture of the organisation they run should possess. A vision will have to be found for the organisation. Management will then have to work on making sure this vision statement is shared by everyone in the organisation. Without it the system has no managed purpose or direction.

A body of requisite values has to be decided upon that supports the cultural hallmarks of this organisation. Management at all levels will have to develop approaches to make that body of explicit values shared and implicit.

In this step, the most common mistake is changing values into rules to be adhered to. Once that happens the whole change effort is lost.

Once the organisation has a culture that supports decision-making at competence levels and of taking responsibility and accountability without the fear of blame – sentiments, as expressed by the CEO at the start of this a article, become things of the past.

A caveat, to actually distribute competent decision making to requisite levels that rightfully lets people be held accountable requires further work at approach and process levels, but the supportive culture is a prerequisite. Without it, behaviour change will not happen. Constantin von Mengersen is the executive chairman (ANZ) and president (US) of TWC Consulting Group.