An organization’s culture consists of the behaviors, actions, and values that guide the way the people in the company behave.

One of the major challenges many companies face when trying to maintain on the competitive cutting edge is knowing when and how to change their cultures.

Quite often the “when” part is determined by strategy. For example, when the Motorola company decided to increase its customer valued added by reducing cycle time, they began looking into ways of redesigning work processes so that people could get things done faster. Strategy serves as the initial driver in changing culture. However, if the culture is not ready for the needed change, the strategy will not be successful.

Through the change process, Motorola discovered that:

• When culture and strategy clash, invariably culture wins out.
• If the organizational culture does not embrace initiatives related to change, overall change efforts will fail.

In many cases, change is met by strong resistance, and companies had to develop strategies to overcome the pull of status quo:

• Get top down commitment and involvement so that senior-level management is as devoted to the new culture as the lower-level personnel.
• Set up a measurement system for tracking progress at both the macro and the micro levels in order to ensure that the culture change is taking place throughout the organization.
• Set difficult goals, and work toward them by benchmarking the best companies and then auditing the internal results on a continuous basis.
• Give employees the education and training they need to function properly in this new culture by helping them understanding why they are being asked to do things differently and how they can go about doing so.
• Spread success stories so that those who are doing well are given credit and those who have not yet bought into the new culture begin to realize that they have to shape up or ship out.
• Share financial improvement gains with those who have helped bring about these gains, thus rewarding people for successful performance and encouraging them to continue their efforts.

All in all, there are 3 basic lessons in setting your strategy for change:

1. Culture change has to begin with a careful formulation of strategic intent. The organization has to decide what its strategy is going to be and then determine how the culture will need to be changed in order to successfully implement this plan of action.
2. Cultural change will be sustained only if there are adequate support mechanisms. These mechanisms take wide variety of forms, including senior-management support, the effective communication of what is going on and why, well-designed training, and judicious use of recognition and rewards. If these mechanisms are not developed and in place, the changes will be short-lived.
3. Cultural changes have to be validated through measurement. If the organization cannot accurately measure the changes that have occurred, it cannot state with certainty that there has been a change in culture.