3. The Key to Rapid Cultural Change

Culture touches every aspect of everyone's work, with significant impacts on an organization's effectiveness.

While most executives recognize the power of culture, common wisdom says it takes many years to change it. In fact, this is not true. Dramatic cultural change can be accomplished in months, not years.

Two Sides of Culture

Culture comprises many things: shared feelings, values, beliefs, rituals, habits, and codes of conduct. All these aspects of culture can be sorted into two broad categories: feelings and behaviors.

One component of an organization's culture is feelings, which includes values, attitudes, and beliefs.

An example of how feelings can facilitate work is found in the natural cooperation and sharing of ideas that occur between friends. Friends interact with each other on equal terms, and value the interaction for its own sake. They laugh, cry, joke, and talk together with no strings attached. Working together feels good.

Values are the qualities that are considered worthwhile in the organization. Values drive performance because people, who want to be accepted and get ahead, naturally attempt to create those qualities; that is, they do what is considered "right" in the organization.

The other component of culture is behaviors -- the habits, rituals, and practices that are followed by people throughout the organization.

The behavioral side of culture guides people to work well together whether or not they get along socially. Note that, in the economy as a whole, customers and suppliers routinely work together (whether or not they are friends) based on the common practices of subcontracting. Similarly, organizationwide practices enable people to work effectively together for their common good without depending on friendships.

Inevitable Congruence

Although these two categories of culture have separate and distinguishable characteristics, they are also interdependent. The relationship between feelings and behaviors is circular: our feelings and values affect the way that we behave, and our behaviors influence how we feel. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: The Culture Cycle

Values/Attitudes/Beliefs   <==>   Behaviors

The impact of values on behaviors is easily understood. For example, people who value teamwork naturally solicit others' ideas and assistance.

The other side of the circle is more subtle. Once behaviors change, values and feelings will follow.

For example, if a supervisor actively solicits ideas from team members (a behavior), staff will respond with good ideas. The more the supervisor gets good input, the more she'll value input and feel good about having asked for it. In other words, her feelings and values will be influenced by the success of the behavior.

Similarly, the behavior, "We make no commitments that we cannot keep," ensures that people act in a trustworthy manner. As people keep their commitments to each other, the feeling of trust will naturally grow.

Whichever side of the circle one starts with, congruence between feelings and behaviors is eventually achieved.

Changing Feelings and Values

This presents leaders with a choice: To change a culture, leaders can either preach new feelings and values, or they can teach new behaviors.

To introduce change through the feelings side of the culture, an executive might, for example, encourage more social interaction among employees by arranging activities outside the office environment, like softball games or parties. One might also set an example of friendliness and cordiality that others can follow. Popular teambuilding activities such as trust exercises or survival experiences fit within this approach.

Positive feelings pay off in high morale, information sharing, a spirit of cooperation and teamwork, and openness to creative ideas. People often feel that an organization with a high level of social interaction is a good place to work, and they work hard to help each other succeed.

Consider, though, a typical engineer, programmer, or actuary -- an analytical thinker who takes a coldly logical approach to making decisions and who is uncomfortable with social interactions. This type of person is unlikely to respond to social invitations. Attempting to transform a culture by changing people's feelings may not work for everyone.

"Don't try to tell me what to think. I'll take your orders about work, but not what to think!"

Montgomery Clift to John Wayne in Red River, 1948

Trying to change the feelings side of culture is generally frustrating, and may not be well received. People may not appreciate leaders trying to manipulate them at such a personal level. In fact, it is extremely difficult, and even of questionable ethics, for leaders to dictate how employees should feel or what they should value.

Even if all the people in the organization are extroverts, encouraging people to feel good about each other is a fragile approach to cultural change. As new employees enter the organization without established personal relationships, they are outside the culture and the performance of the organization may suffer.

Finally, in practical terms, feelings and values are difficult to observe, making it difficult to model the right feelings and values, to teach, and to track improvements and reward progress.

Changing Behaviors

In contrast, leaders can intervene successfully at the behavior point of the circle.

People object far less to clear rules of conduct. In fact, they expect their leaders to guide them on how to succeed in the organization.

Furthermore, the behavioral approach is practical and highly effective. Specific behaviors can be described, modeled, taught, and measured. This tangible nature of the behavioral approach leads to rapid adoption.

Note that the behavioral approach is consistent with learning theory. Parents are taught to criticize the behavior, not the child. Teachers are taught to focus on behaviors. From Pavlov and Skinner to modern adult learning research, theory and evidence show that change is best introduced by teaching new behaviors.

Thus, the quickest, most direct, and most effective way to change culture is to describe the specific behaviors (cultural principles) that are expected of everyone in the organization.

The only disadvantage to the behavior-first approach is the number of cultural principles generated. A handful of value statements -- if truly adopted -- can drive the right behaviors in many different situations. On the other hand, to adequately cover the breadth of activity in a typical organization requires a large number of very specific behavioral principles.

Nonetheless, it's worth the effort. Clearly documenting a new culture in actionable terms leads to lasting change. As people succeed by acting according to their new cultural principles, they are encouraged to repeat the behaviors. In this way, a healthy culture is self-reinforcing and robust.