Author: Tim Kuppler

It’s time to turn the culture world upside down and explode many incorrect notions that are preventing meaningful culture change for organizations and society. We’ve reached a critical point where most leaders are aware culture is important, but they range from being confused to intentionally uninformed about what culture change is all about. This culture awareness-education gap appears to be growing, with a proliferation of over-simplified or incorrect education, unreliable surveys and analytics, so-called experts at every turn, and leaders seduced by the latest trend or silver bullet.

The culture education-to-action gap is also vast because culture can seem to be endlessly complicated. This is unfortunate, because leaders often feel compelled to take action to accelerate results through culturally intelligent means when they receive accurate guidance about how to make their invisible organization visible and to evolve it with intent. Culture is the fuel to maximize performance, but it’s been hijacked to mean everything from being a “fun” or “happy” workplace to a great place to work. It’s time to rebrand culture to be the sustainable performance driver it is.

Defining the culture awareness-education gap

It’s no surprise leaders struggle with translating this tidal wave of culture awareness to meaningful action when so many critical gaps in understanding exist:

1. Most organizations lack a language for culture. We each deal with a cultural battlefield in our mind, and it’s even more complicated when we are in groups. We may struggle with whether we should raise an idea, disagree with a coworker, check with our boss before proceeding, and far more as we interact with others. We also deal with deeply ingrained beliefs and assumptions because we’re so used to trying to fit in and be accepted. The language of the current culture in organizations is more likely to be present around the water cooler than in strategy meetings or boardrooms where leaders are making critical decisions that will depend on meaningful change.
2. Most organizations lack a measurement for culture. Culture is viewed by many as ambiguous and difficult to grasp, let alone measure. Others think they measure attributes of the culture with their engagement, great place to work, or so-called “culture” surveys that only measure the work climate (engagement, involvement, teamwork, satisfaction, etc.). Measuring the entire culture is impossible, but it is possible to measure basic norms, expectations, or “unwritten rules” that drive behavior. It’s also important to integrate qualitative (interviews, focus groups, etc.) and quantitative methods to provide meaningful understanding (stories, examples, etc.). Unfortunately, most organizations aren’t used to integrating these two areas with clarity.
3. Most leaders lack an understanding of culture change. The lack of a language and valid measurement system handicaps leaders before they even have a chance to learn about culture change— but that might actually be an advantage for most leaders when it comes to culture change. Just check out the Ted Talk from Isaac Lidski if you disagree, where Issac “challenges us to let go of excuses, assumptions, and fears, and accept the awesome responsibility of being creators of our own.” Culture pioneer Edgar Schein believes cultural rules drive 90% of our behavior in organizations. Leaders still chase culture fantasy and want to grasp it without investing the time to truly learn basic but powerful fundamentals about connecting culture change and performance improvement. Culture and performance improvement efforts are hard and messy. There is no easy way out. There are no quick fixes. Leaders must turn away from the more superficial solutions and invest the time to understand their culture, the impact their leadership is having on it, and what they can do to improve performance through culturally intelligent approaches.
4. Most organizations are missing a clear connection between culture, team building, and leadership development. Well-intended change efforts will bog down unless teams, leaders, and other individuals are developed in clearly connected ways. A myriad of talent models exist that lack any clear and defined connection to culture. Organizations waste billions of dollars training people to go back in the workplace and be crushed by the current culture, as they feel compelled to fall in line with existing norms despite what they may have learned. Team members fall in line due to social norms, fear, personal struggles, peer pressure, and a lack of knowledge or framework to deal with the cultural headwinds. What’s crazy is that most organizations are not on a common journey to define those cultural headwinds and arm team members with the knowledge to deal with them effectively. Many think more layers of systems, training, or a different kind of leadership will be enough to overcome them.
5. Most organizations fail to connect culture and strategy. Most strategies are pre-determined by culture in ways leaders don’t even realize. When leaders do connect the two subjects—culture and strategy—the four reasons referenced above make it nearly impossible to truly shift the culture in ways that accelerate the strategy and related results. How can you develop an effective strategy if you don’t fully understand the cards you have been dealt? Brilliant strategies are submarined by culture issues every day, and the sad part is leaders typically don’t even realize it’s culture, so they may doubt themselves or, worse, blame others.

Present Culture Understanding in Most Organizations:

Let’s review. The visual below is a quick summary of just a few critical elements of the culture-education gap we see presently in organizations.

Is it any surprise that most organizations need a culture reboot?

Edgar Schein also said you don’t really begin to understand your culture until you try to change it. The gaps above can start to close in very meaningful ways in less than six months. The good news is that initial results or positive outcomes for the organization, teams, and individuals must also be visible in some form in about the same time. This is not to say that culture change must happen in six months, but there must be some meaningful and, ideally, measurable results in key indicators during a “short” time. Why would leaders and team members stick with a change effort if they don’t begin to see results with some leading indicators in around six to nine months? I have asked numerous culture experts and leaders for their feedback on this specific timeframe, and most responses are around six to nine months (and some are even shorter).

Driving change and closing the awareness-education gaps

The issue with culture these days is not surfacing new insights or knowledge; it’s accessing knowledge that already exists and applying it correctly. It’s like the medical field as described in the book The Checklist Manifesto. The medical field is extremely complex, like culture, and “we have accumulated stupendous knowledge…nonetheless, avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating.” A failure in the organizational culture field can have disastrous results for the organization and team members burdened by confusion, hesitation, stress, and even fear.

But what if we started to think about culture differently? What if the insights from the pioneers of the culture field were widely known instead of the latest “blah blah” culture blog post or New York Times article about another culture crisis? Let’s flip the table and change our perspective. You may already know some of the key points, but maybe, just maybe, there’s an “aha” regarding something you didn’t realize or haven’t thought about when it comes to supporting the purpose and performance of your organization.

Let’s tackle these five common culture gaps and start, or continue, your journey to master the big picture of culture change and performance improvement.

Closing Gap #1: Most organizations lack a language for culture

We all talk about culture differently. Unfortunately, everything has become “culture” these days and nearly all assessments and surveys for engagement, culture, and satisfaction measure the surface of culture at best. These popular assessments focus on aspects ranging from understanding the mission or purpose to perceptions and attitudes about teamwork, change, innovation, strategy, involvement, empowerment, and countless other areas. Many tout research that identifies when employees provide positive feedback about these and other areas, those organizations have higher profitability, employee satisfaction, retention, and many other outcomes (not exactly a shocking conclusion). Experts and assessment firms share best practices and insights from other great places to work and encourage you to apply them in your organization. As tantalizing as these solutions are, they are only part of the framework to begin to understand culture, because most of this information is about the work climate.

An issue with the work climate (engagement, involvement, teamwork, motivation, etc.) can be due to countless underlying reasons from a culture perspective. Think about it. Is that teamwork issue due to power-oriented, command-and-control issues, internal competition, fears about making a mistake, issues with avoidance where team members never want to be blamed for problems, or something else? Yes, feedback about the work climate can help, but it does not give you the language to talk about behavior, what team members believe to be true and, most importantly, why. The answers to these questions and at least part of the language of culture can come through a well-organized assessment that helps clarify the elusive concepts of culture and climate.

Closing Gap #2: Most organizations lack a measurement for culture

Is it possible to measure culture? If so, how? Edgar Schein shared some related insights: “Culture analysis and change are very much ‘in’ these days. It is vital that organizations understand deeply what culture is, what it does, and how to analyze it as part of a change program. To do this effectively requires both a qualitative and a quantitative approach to managing the culture change process.” Many aspects of a common language, measurement, and deeper understanding of culture can come through a combination of qualitative (focus groups, interviews, etc.) and quantitative (survey, etc.) methods. It’s incredibly rare for organizations to invest the time in a thorough qualitative and quantitative assessment. Why? Some want quick answers; others think they have the answers already; and still others think they are actually measuring culture when they are actually measuring engagement and or other aspects of the work climate (involvement, teamwork, satisfaction, mission clarity, etc.). This situation will undoubtedly change as leaders begin to understand the subject of culture.

It’s extremely important to start with the qualitative and to obtain some guidance as part of the process if you are new to the work. There are countless approaches, but I am a big fan of managing this work within the context of a problem. I like it when it’s not just any problem, but one of the most critical problems the organization is facing (customer experience, growth, innovation, etc.). It’s amazing how quickly basic gaps between “what we say” is important and “what we do” can be identified, but the key is to understand why.

This dialogue can be taken to an entirely new level when insights about values and behavioral norms are introduced from a valid and reliable culture assessment. There are many blind spots that can exist in qualitative work with groups and it’s difficult to scale qualitative work across large teams. Remember, culture is like the air we breathe or water we swim in, so we often overlook critical aspects of our own culture. The sequence of qualitative, quantitative, and then qualitative again can bring a great deal of clarity, and measurement of some critical cultural norms is a key part of the process. This unified approach can transform the abstract into something leaders can understand through data, stories, and specific behavioral examples of how culture is impacting results and why.

Closing Gap #3: Most leaders lack an understanding of culture change

Leaders and change agents hear so many contradictory things about culture change that they are confused and may not know where to find the truth. I have interacted with hundreds of culture-related experts and consultants. While I won’t cover the specific “how to” content in this post, I will group the solutions in three major categories so it’s easier to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

1. Culture alignment solutions: I believe this is the most prevalent category of solutions by a wide margin. It’s the one running rampant with survey vendors and many consultants. Some use surveys to supposedly define your culture and focus on clarity, values alignment, engagement activities, and other approaches.

Success often depends on clear definition of the problem or outcomes targeted, engagement of the leadership and the broader organization in the process, and managing the work with a clear understanding of the underlying culture (the “real” culture in terms of norms, values, beliefs, assumptions, etc.). The key advantage is that engaging the workforce in helping to identify and change basic systems, structures, and leadership approaches can resolve countless issues (many of which are not culture problems but basic leadership problems). Clarity and alignment are desperately needed in most organizations, but they are a vastly oversimplified solution to deal with deeply entrenched cultural attributes. Couple this work with qualitative and quantitative culture assessment to understand the underlying assumptions driving the known issues and learn if they shift or evolve as groups use new approaches to solve meaningful problems.

2. Mindset shifting and leadership development solutions: These solutions typically focus on understanding aspects of the “real” culture I referenced before (norms, values, beliefs, assumptions, etc.). This understanding may come from qualitative methods, quantitative methods, or both. Workshops, coaching, and other approaches are used to understand how basic beliefs are holding the organization back in some form and must evolve.

The approach may be consistent with a general change process from Kurt Lewin: “The first stage he called ‘unfreezing’. It involved overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing ‘mind set’. It must be part of surviving. Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed. In the second stage the change occurs. This is typically a period of confusion and transition. We are aware that the old ways are being challenged but we do not have a clear picture as to what we are replacing them with yet. The third and final stage he called ‘freezing’. The new mindset is crystallizing and one’s comfort level is returning to previous levels.”

Mindset shifting and leadership development solutions can be very effective and should clearly incorporate aspects of the other two solution groups categories to solve problems and drive learning. The current culture is reinforced in many ways leadership may not realize, so the connection to solving real business/organizational problems is key. I have interacted with numerous organizations that have used these solutions and sustainability seems to depend on the ability to connect the work to using new approaches to solve some of the most significant business/organizational problems. Some organizations are able to make that connection while others continue to struggle.

3. Problem solving focus: This category of solutions includes an emphasis on understanding an organizational problem or challenge and how culture is positively and negatively impacting the current situation (it’s always both). It may involve focus on an outcome for the organization (customer experience, growth, etc.), teams/groups (collaboration, etc.), and/or individuals (satisfaction, motivation, etc.) so change efforts are clearly understood (in business or organization terms/language). We’ve emphasized this approach in many Culture University posts:

• 8 Culture Change Secrets Most Leaders Don’t Understand
• 20 Organizational Culture Change Insights from Edgar Schein
• Changing the Culture of Government and Beyond (these concepts and general framework apply in all industries/sectors)

The focus on solving problems or improving outcomes naturally involves aspects of the other two solution categories. I believe all three categories are essential in some form with sustainable culture change efforts. I prefer starting with the focus on a problem or outcome to drive short-term learning and results which encourage continued or expanded work. The qualitative and quantitative methods help with gaining a much deeper understanding of how BOTH culture and climate are impacting work related to the specific problem or outcome. Solutions typically involve “alignment” of some basic systems, but they are prioritized based on engaging team members in solving the problem. Quantitative survey data is evaluated as part of that process to help provide a language and expose blindspots.

There are many other types of solutions linked to culture these days, but most have roots in one or all of these three categories. The depth ranges from the incredibly superficial to unique approaches rooted in neuroscience and neuro-organizational culture. It’s important to learn from a wide range of experts. My favorite culture book is the new edition of Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership. I am a bit biased regarding my favorite culture conference.

Closing Gap #4: Most organizations are missing a clear connection between culture, team building, and leadership development

I am a firm believer that intentional culture and performance improvement efforts should involve alignment of efforts across organization, team, and individual development. I am shocked by how often talent management plans are not integrated with culture and performance improvement efforts. The absolute best form of employee development comes from engaging groups in some of the culture development solutions referenced above because they are designed to support shared learning and results. These efforts can completely bog down if there is no intentional development of employees, starting with top leaders. Just one top leader can be a complete wrench in the team dynamic and undermine critically important change efforts.

Employee development may be needed at many levels because you can’t focus on behavior change without understanding capabilities. I often see top leaders that honestly don’t know effective approaches to involving groups in decision making even though a culture without involvement is running on empty. The flip side of this issue is often team leaders and other key individuals who can’t seem to make the most of genuine efforts to involve or empower them in new ways.

Closing Gap #5: No clear connection of the strategic plan to culture change

What culture shift is needed to support your strategic plan, and why? Before this clear decision and plan, you will drift, and you’re potentially ignoring the most powerful barrier to strategic change. It’s like Mike Tyson said: “Everyone has a strategy until they get punched in the face.” Leadership teams spend incredible effort defining perfect strategic plans only to have them undermined by predictable culture issues. The first step is not to suddenly change your strategy based on perceptions about culture.

A practical first step is to engage in a culture and performance improvement effort that’s focused on one of your organization’s most critical strategic priorities or problems. Leadership and the broader organization learns from this initial work and applies what works to other key strategies or problems. I’ve seen this strategic approach successfully applied to build momentum and deliver initial results for 20 years across many different organizations. In each case, leadership was equipped to adjust their strategy to have a much better impact based on what they learned about their culture and managing effective change as a team.

The Future of Culture Understanding and Impact

The culture chasm between our PRESENT situation of broad awareness to what’s necessary in the FUTURE to clearly connect culture change and performance improvement is vast. It’s no surprise that closing these gaps can be extremely powerful.

One top leader told me that work related to closing these gaps within the context of his #1 performance priority helped provide “surgical clarity about our problems and how to approach improvement.” He also said it would “turbocharge their performance improvement plans.” This feedback is very common as teams become more comfortable discussing the undiscussable and overcoming related obstacles as a team to improve performance.

An Open Door

The image I want to leave you with is an open door. There’s an open door to move out of the present situation in most organizations and to understand culture as a foundation for accelerating performance. If you are a leader or change agent, it’s imperative to continue your culture learning journey and translate the knowledge to action. Culture change happens at the intersection of curiosity and courage.

It can help tremendously to obtain some coaching from an expert. If you have a heart problem, you go to a heart doctor. If you have a culture problem, go to a culture expert and understand their background and approach to help you close the present-future gaps above. It’s possible to make substantial progress in only six months. Unfortunately, many go to engagement experts, lawyers (in a crisis), communications experts, or others and never truly understand the underlying culture and the impact on performance. They think they tried the culture thing and it didn’t work, but they lacked the know how to manage this extraordinary journey with a reasonable amount of clarity and confidence.

The Bigger Picture

After over 150 weekly posts on CultureUniversity.com, this awareness-education gap only appears to be widening. I believe it will take experts and industry organizations (associations, foundations, etc.) working together to close this gap in meaningful ways that impact large numbers of organizations. We can’t afford to wait for each individual organization to have their cultural enlightening completely on their own. It will take forever, and the unacceptable negative impact on individuals, organizations, and society will continue.

The present-future areas in the image above also apply to industry organizations that need to understand how culture is impacting the most critical priorities of their members or other organizations they support. Hopefully, we’ll see more industry organizations doing the right thing and helping to shape the future of their industry through culturally intelligent means (culture research, education, sustainable best practice sharing, etc.). It may be the only way we’ll reach the critical mass necessary to close the culture awareness-education gap and rebrand culture as the sustainable performance driver it is.

Notes:

It is not necessary to request approval to share this article for an educational purpose as long it is shared in its entirety with proper attribution.

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Passion and excitement, as well as judgment and fear, characterize the current political environment in the United States. The recent election was the most surprising call for change in government in my lifetime, and it was also a call for meaningful culture change. Government agencies must prepare to accelerate improvements, but the current culture and leadership of these agencies will likely be the greatest barriers to success.

It is not a time to boast, complain, or allow the latest headline to divide us; it is a time to do something serious, diligent and impactful. Unfortunately, survival has become the primary motivation as many government employees struggle with the current uncertain environment and prospect of major budget cuts. Many don’t realize culture and leadership are the keys to optimizing effectiveness in any agency, especially if resources are tight! Agency leaders must become educated about meaningful change and take action in collaboration with others to deliver results while constructively changing the culture of government.

The Current State

A recent poll by the America Psychological Association highlighted that 66 percent of Americans reported stress about the future of the country, 57 percent about the current political climate, and 49 percent about the election outcome.

Trust in government is near an all-time low. Politicians or the press scream “culture crises” each year as some agencies have inexplicable problems we just don’t understand. 67% of Americans view big Government as a major threat and 2.75 million federal government employees are caught in the whirlwind of deeply ingrained cultural norms.

Culture often rears its ugly head when organizations try to adapt to something new. Indeed, culture change is clearly needed to tackle present and future threats to national security like cyber-attacks and other forms of terrorism. And, it’s also needed to evolve essential government services that are clearly outdated but require substantial collaboration to change. Most importantly, culture change is needed to unleash the collective potential of our large government workforce and overcome insane behavior as we saw with the recent TSA whistleblower controversy. Congress may be outraged with every culture crises, but meaningful government culture change will likely need to start with agency leaders.

Bright people doing stupid things falls in a bucket we call culture.
-Edgar Schein

Most agency leaders know their organization’s culture must change or evolve, but few understand how their own behavior is reinforcing the current culture. Some leaders actually want to learn how to engage their team in new ways to drive effectiveness. Unfortunately, most either don’t have the knowledge necessary to overcome the deeply entrenched culture or they remaining unwilling to take the first transparent and inclusive step.

I spoke at a National Academy of Public Administration event in Washington DC on Changing the Culture of Government before the election last year. One attendee raised a question about the upcoming leadership transition. She wondered if it would be better to just wait until after a transition to begin any culture-related transformation efforts. I vehemently said “no” and recommended she start by understanding the current culture of her agency and the impact it was having, both positively and negatively, on their top mission priorities. We can always find reasons to delay or avoid transformation, especially if the infamous and often meaningless “culture” word enters the discussion.

Why the culture of government is not evolving at a faster rate

There are many reasons why the culture of government is not changing at a faster rate. It’s too easy to blame the President or Congress, but many reasons apply to agency leaders. The average federal executive maintains their position only two years and they often must deal with unique funding challenges. Agency leaders must have a sense of urgency and incredible tenacity to overcome common government challenges. They must also overcome the headwinds of a deeply entrenched culture that is evolving at a slow rate due to many reasons that apply to nearly all agencies.

1. Lack of connecting culture change to mission priorities. So how do new cultural attributes form? They may eventually emerge from mandates and top-down jolts to the entire organization. Some fear this with the new administration and think the worst about how a Trump “Culture of Fear” might impact them. The goal needs to be change that is collective and constructive, and focused on the mission priorities of the agency. Enormous energy is consumed debating major policy changes instead of finding common ground and improving results with agency priority goals (think improving VA service, reforming the DoD acquisition process and eliminating waste, combating cyber threats, or enhancing public safety through police reforms).

Initial results will precede the culture change. This valuable insight runs counter to arguments from some leaders that think they don’t have time for culture change. They claim they need immediate improvement and culture change takes a long time. Focusing the work on a top mission or performance priority with a targeted culture shift in mind will increase the likelihood of delivering meaningful results.

Behaviors that lead to positive results will spread. Edgar Schein, arguably the top culture expert in history, said these desirable behaviors would not spread because employees are “told to” be that way but because “they work.”

I heard a great example from the new Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin. An interviewer confronted him with the fact that the high-profile measure of wait times at VA hospitals had not improved over the past couple of years. He shared the important point that the initial focus was on improving wait times for urgent care and they have improved dramatically. Unfortunately, he went on to talk about what he needed from Congress for continuous improvement without sharing more about what his organization learned from that improvement journey. There must be a strong learning focus on collectively evaluating the urgent care improvements. They should clearly identify what worked and what didn’t with engaging team members in this critical priority and intentionally apply these learnings to other major problems or goals. This type of intentional, agency-wide, learning focus is absent in most parts of government.

2. Top leaders don’t understand the subject of culture or have a common language or measurement to deal with it effectively. Leaders may launch change efforts proactively with great intent, but they are chewed up by the current culture.

The word “culture” has nearly lost its meaning. It’s important to be clear and specific about which norms and behaviors must change. Defining a common language is critical. It’s possible to measure some aspects of the underlying culture, but very few agencies have taken the step to measure specific cultural norms. These deeply entrenched expectations or “unwritten rules” drive the vast majority of behavior in organizations.

A Cross-Agency Goal for People and Culture exists, and the supporting work is, unfortunately, focused on engagement, leadership, and hiring. While these are important areas to examine, the core of meaningful culture work includes involving groups in tackling significant agency priorities in culturally intelligent ways necessary to overcome major challenges. Individuals are engaged in the journey, learn together what works, and naturally apply it to other priorities and plans.

3. Change efforts are focused on the work climate without understanding the underlying cultural drivers. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) has shown little change in the overall state of government employee engagement. The response rate in 2016 was a dismal 45%. There was a 1% engagement improvement over 2015, but the poor response rate speaks volumes about the real state of engagement.

FEVS is a climate survey, and some agencies take other so-called “culture” surveys that are only assessing aspects of the work climate. These surveys of surface level drivers and outcomes of engagement can do more damage than good if they are not coupled with an effective improvement approach. An “action planning” approach is advocated in the FEVS final report that entirely overlooks understanding the underlying culture and managing sustainable change. Agencies are encouraged to analyze the data and implement improvement plans but there is no emphasis on systemic change and connecting change efforts to top mission priorities (remember that VA urgent care wait time example again). It appears that government employees have lost faith in FEVS being a key factor in change efforts. One of the “bottom 10” questions with the poorest results in the report this year is: “I believe the results of this survey will be used to make my agency a better place to work.”

Government employees bombarded by existing cultural norms will not change their behavior with typical “action planning” efforts focused on individual engagement elements. Edgar Schein once said that cultural rules drive 90% of our behavior in organizations. The basic language of Constructive, Aggressive-Defensive, and Passive-Defensive expectations or norms from Human Synergistics helps me deal with client challenges every day.

• Passive/Defensive expectations exist in organizations, and these expectations such as not “rocking the boat,” making a good impression, asking everybody what they think before acting, and doing things for the approval of others often undermine effectiveness.
• Aggressive/Defensive expectations also exist in organizations and these expectations, such as maintaining unquestioned authority, outperforming peers, never making a mistake, opposing things indirectly, and many others don’t lead to sustainable effectiveness.
• Constructive expectations such as taking on challenging tasks, treating people as more important than things, and resolving conflicts constructively lead to sustainable effectiveness for individuals, teams, and the overall organization.

It’s critical to move beyond the behavior we see in the climate and understand the underlying culture. Leaders need to precisely understand how both the climate and culture are impacting their work on top mission or performance priorities. The “key learnings” that leaders gain from this understanding are invaluable.

4. “Alignment” efforts abound but have limited impact on the underlying culture. You’ve heard it. Define your values and align everything around them. Alignment work is typically involved in some form with culture transformation, but the focus should be on engaging groups in meaningful improvements that directly support the mission and performance priorities of the organization. Alignment efforts can easily be used to scale command and control efforts instead of building a more inclusive and collective approach to change.

Uber is a recent, sad example with reports of sexism and other totally unacceptable behavior from this “high-performing” company. Team members may be highly engaged and committed to the purpose of Uber, but aspects of the underlying culture are toxic.

5. Change efforts are disconnected within agencies and across agencies. Silo behavior abounds, and it’s encouraged by our structure of government. Outside of government, organizations are replacing traditional department structures with cross-functional structures or at least matrix structures that support collaboration. The cultural headwinds are enormous so it’s easier to focus on changes a department or team can control than to raise the bar and go after major cross-agency change efforts. Some government leaders focus on protecting resources and priorities managed within their work team instead of collaborating with others on important cross-functional improvements.

The Government Accountability Office defined Best Practices and Leading Practices in Collaboration. Culture is referenced in the content, but the “best practices” only apply to the work climate. Some initial momentum may be gained through these improvements, but many change efforts will bog down as the current government culture frustrates change agents.

6. And…most of all: Top leaders are not courageous enough to ignore current government leader norms and tenaciously, vulnerably, and collectively orchestrate sustainable change. Government leaders are “expected” to have the answers, play political games, and mandate change. It’s time to give those expectations the boot. It’s time to be curious, listen, learn, and courageously translate new knowledge to collective action. The “shadow of a leader” is powerful. Leaders must go first by exhibiting targeted behaviors and modeling the way with new approaches to manage meaningful mission-focused improvements.

Four Phases of effective culture change and performance improvement

Critical insights from the top culture experts in history are, unfortunately, “secrets” to the vast majority of agency leaders. At the same time, other agency leaders turn away from the fundamentals of culture toward superficial solutions. It is possible to transform change efforts as leaders begin to understand the subject of culture. So how do you manage this challenging journey? There are four phases of improvement that will help agency leaders (and other leaders) with this journey.

Phase 1: Define the purpose of your improvement effort and assess how culture is positively and negatively impacting results

• Focus on a top mission priority instead of trying to change culture directly: Zeroing in on a mission or performance priority and engaging the broader organization more extensively in this one critical area is key to delivering results. Renowned culture expert, Edgar Schein, says: “culture is built through shared learning and mutual experience.” Engage your organization or team to a much greater degree on a top mission priority to drive the shared learning, mutual experience, and results faster than general culture work. Priorities related to customer satisfaction, primary system or technology changes, quality, safety, or other measures of effectiveness work well.

• Go beyond engagement and understand the broader work climate and underlying culture: Define a language and measurement for the culture. A recent study by Deloitte highlighted that only 12% of leaders truly understand their culture. Many leaders think they are getting at culture through engagement efforts or other “culture” surveys when they are merely gaining an understanding of the work climate. They capture attitudes and perceptions about the work climate and completely miss powerful underlying norms or expectations.

• Integrate qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the culture and climate: It’s imperative to utilize qualitative approaches like interviews, focus groups, or other methods to understand how the culture and climate are specifically impacting results. The stories, examples, and related culture challenges are not hard to find. Edgar Schein also identified that effective culture change analysis requires “both a qualitative and quantitative approach.” The quantitative side helps with engaging large groups and bringing both a common language and research-based measurement of some cultural attributes to change efforts.

• Capture “key learnings” about the culture and climate: True cultural analysis that surfaces the data, stories, and examples of why cultural norms exist and how they are impacting results is a very enlightening experience. It will lead to far greater clarity about cultural strengths and weaknesses as team members acknowledge, “that’s us.” It should also lead to some significant “aha’s” about sub-culture differences, the power of norms, and underlying shared beliefs and assumptions that cause those norms to be deeply entrenched.

One recent agency we worked with was struggling with collaboration and meeting new demands with current resources. Most team members were not involved in defining key strategies or supporting plans; they didn’t even know how those priorities and plans were established. They were “happy” with work in their small group or area and genuinely feared and believed sharing problems or improvement ideas would open their job up to analysis from others that might make things worse. Leadership must actively improve involvement and reduce fear through positive action based on team input. They need to show that sharing problems and improvement ideas will lead to results that support the mission of the agency to overcome the deeply entrenched fear, uncertainty, and hesitation.

Phase 2: Complete Leadership Team planning focused on engaging the organization in new ways to improve results with the top mission priority selected in Phase 1

• Clarify the improvement vision for the mission priority you select: This is not a vision statement. It is a clear explanation about why the agency mission or purpose will be supported through improvement in the strategic priority or objective selected. It should also highlight why culture is currently a challenge and an opportunity to shift or evolve as the organization learns new ways to support the mission priority. The commitment of the leader and leadership team needs to be clear along with their promise to role model behaviors that support the culture shift.

• Define a draft “FROM-TO shift” from defensive to constructive expectations: Most agencies have defined values and expected behaviors (the “TO”) but many have no language for the “FROM” side of their desperately needed culture shift. The defensive expectations I previously mentioned, both passive and aggressive, are the most critical part of understanding the “FROM” side of this concept. We need to understand these norms as a foundation for understanding beliefs, assumptions, mindsets, and other factors that help to explain why they exist.

Some leaders consistently misdiagnose their culture problems and jump to conclusions without gaining any deeper cultural insight. Take the example of a government top leader that thinks there is a significant accountability or ownership problem in their agency. The actual cultural issue could be driven by perfectionistic, approval, avoidant, oppositional, or other norms in the current culture that current leadership, including the top leader, is perpetuating in many ways. Focusing on the “TO” behaviors we want does not address the root cause of the problems with the behavior we see on the surface.

• Identify the underlying beliefs or assumptions reinforcing the “FROM” norms or expectations: Culture analysis for some common government norms might involve understanding why new ideas aren’t being surfaced that challenge the status quo or why team members don’t feel they can translate any idea to action without approval. General feedback may be useful, but targeted feedback in connection to work on a particular mission priority is what’s needed to overcome generalizations and identify specific opportunities for change. Culture is a deep and complex topic, but feedback can be targeted and precise if it’s focused on a mission priority that provides a common cultural context.

• Define an approach to repeatedly engage agency team members in improving results with the mission priority and supporting the FROM-TO cultural shift. One-time engagement efforts are of little use for meaningful culture change. It may start with group engagement efforts to share the results of a cultural analysis and to prioritize improvements for a particular mission priority but this is just a start. The key is measuring progress and re-engaging groups at defined periods to drive shared learning, mutual experience, and results (see phase 3 below). Plans must not be finalized at the top and “rolled out” across the agency. The focus at the top is on confirming the mission priority, completing the culture analysis, and defining the approach for engaging the agency in new ways to collectively develop improvement plans. It’s difficult to manage this work in a comprehensive and inclusive way for every mission priority, so that’s why selecting a primary mission priority or goal is critical to building positive momentum and delivering meaningful results.

Phase 3: Engage all team members in finalizing improvement plans for the mission priority.

• Plan the engagement session and manage initial communication: The engagement approach will depend on the size and scope of the overall agency or sub-group targeted for improvement. It’s useful to engage most or all of the leaders that directly report to the top leadership team at a minimum. Begin to socialize the importance of this engagement approach through many channels and communicate that all team members will eventually be engaged in understanding the outcomes of this initial engagement effort. Plan a focused agenda that includes obtaining prioritized feedback in multiple areas. My favorite three areas of focus are:
  1. Refining the improvement vision for the mission priority: review the draft vision and obtain prioritized feedback, through voting or debate, about how to improve the vision before agency-wide communication.
  2. Refining the FROM-TO shift: review the culture analysis and draft FROM-TO shift defined by leadership. Obtain prioritized feedback for improvement about how to specifically refine the language of the FROM-TO shift.
  3. Identifying changes to mission priority goals/plans: obtain prioritized feedback about how to improve goals or plans for the mission priority while facilitating the FROM-TO shift.

• Hold the initial engagement session(s) and capture prioritized feedback: Facilitate the engagement session(s) with a high level of transparency and encourage open feedback. It’s useful to obtain prioritized feedback in breakout groups. Share the top 1-2 ideas from each group as an input to an overall vote or discussion on the top ideas for improvement. It may be useful to utilize an outside resource to support the design and facilitation of the engagement session. There may be some hesitation during initial engagement efforts, but trust will grow if initial employee involvement and feedback leads to positive change. I have witnessed the positive impact of the “Building Culture Muscle” cycle below in numerous organizations as leaders intentionally and repeatedly connect team members to improvement priorities and plans.

Building Culture Muscle

• Identify how the broader agency population will be engaged in the improvement process: The outcomes of the culture analysis and initial engagement session should be shared with all agency members. Additional engagement sessions will likely be needed to obtain prioritized feedback in supporting areas of the mission priority that apply to various sub-groups or teams. Many organizations start by engaging 1-2 levels below the leadership team managing the improvement approach. Others target engagement of all team members in some form from the very start.
• Commit to change in the areas prioritized by the group and re-engagement of the group to review progress: I facilitated well over 150+ of these group engagement sessions as a senior leader and consultant. My top learnings came when I was in a leadership role. I always entered these meetings with my impression about expected outcomes. To my surprise, the prioritized feedback from every group led to substantial new or refined improvements far beyond what I expected. Each one of these 150+ meetings ended with a commitment to implement significant improvements identified by the group and to re-engage them in 3-9 months to provide prioritized feedback on what was working and what didn’t live up to their expectations. This framework guaranteed a basic level of shared learning and mutual experience that united the team in support of a top mission priority.

Phase 4: Manage the change with a sense of urgency and connect the agency changes to individual development plans

• It’s critical to adjust management, communication, and motivation systems/habits to translate plans into effective action and shift the agency operating model.

The problem in most agencies is not identifying improvements that will have a positive impact on culture but implementing them with sufficient energy, momentum, and results. I am sure we all can relate to Edgar Schein’s point that you only begin to truly understand a culture when you try to change it. It’s far easier to engage leadership and the broader organization in defining improvement plans than implementing them.

Jim Collins said “a culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.” There are three areas of discipline nearly all agencies involved in culture-related change efforts must refine and connect:

• Management systems – especially the basic habits for senior leadership to define, monitor, and manage mission priorities, measures, and improvement plans. Use standard agendas, check-in on FROM-TO feedback, monitor status of top objectives, and plan consistent communication activities.
• Communication systems – especially implementing or improving the formal and informal habits for communicating the status of priorities and plans along with obtaining regular, bottom-up feedback for improvement.
• Motivation systems – especially deliberate efforts to dramatically increase the recognition of team members that display the targeted constructive “TO” behavior in the FROM-TO shift and achieve results. Share stories about positive results enabled by the “TO” behaviors so others learn from the examples. One of the bottom 10 item scores from FEVS was: “creativity and innovation are rewarded.” Culture change doesn’t happen at the same pace across all teams. Openly recognize behavior and results with the courageous change agents or the constructive behavior will not spread.

The lack of rigor in these three areas dramatically amplifies culture-related problems, and substantial adjustments are nearly always a part of significant transformation efforts.

• Obtain feedback about how leaders and managers are reinforcing the current culture, starting with top leadership

Top leaders must gain an understanding of how their behavior is impacting the behavior of others. Is that “impact” constructive, passive or aggressive? How are they reinforcing the current culture?

My favorite questions in initial leadership interviews are: 1) Why is this change effort important to you personally? 2) How are you reinforcing the current culture and contributing to the culture frustrations that persist? The answers to these questions may lead to important leadership “ahas,” as culture expert Larry Senn calls them, or reveal how difficult the journey will be to uncover those ahas.

If agency leaders believe the most significant change must start deep in their organization, they are sorely mistaken. Agency leaders waste tremendous energy on change efforts deep in their organization that don’t deliver expected results due to the same bureaucratic top leadership approach. The shadow of a leader is very powerful. Larry Senn also said, “culture transformation starts with personal transformation.” If there’s no ahas with senior leadership that lead to a more inclusive improvement approach, then there will be no culture change.

• Consistently re-engage groups to provide feedback on mission priority improvements at defined intervals

Culture change is a long-term journey comprised of a series of sprints. Manage these four phases of improvement, learn from what works and, especially, what doesn’t; apply this knowledge to the next stage of improvement. I found the easy part is the first significant series of engagement or feedback sessions. The hard part is managing enough change so there is absolutely no doubt there will be substantial positive feedback in the second series of engagement sessions (typically six to nine months after the first). I would facilitate change efforts like my life depended on them. I knew momentum with the broader team would never take hold if they didn’t acknowledge significant initial progress within a maximum of six to nine months. The culture does not change during this period, but behavior must undoubtedly evolve and lead to results.

Culture change is not about making everyone happy; it’s about results and shared learning. There must be some results with leading indicators for the mission priority, or the change journey could be over. Team members will believe this “new” approach is just another pointless agency change effort if they don’t see substantial progress.

The basic four-phase framework in this post is loaded with common sense but rarely managed with intention.

• Commit to the long-term culture journey and consistent work across the organization, team, and individual levels or don’t start at all.

I have witnessed a major shift in organizations that are truly committing to meaningful culture change. They may be in the minority, especially in government, but some are getting far more strategic about their approach. They are clearly defining an initial phase of improvement, and they are looking ahead as they determine the next logical phase of change to support their strategy. Some explicitly budget for expanding their approach because they know shared learning and connecting the work across individuals, teams, and the organization must be led with consistency. Results are clearly achieved with each phase of improvement in their long-term journey.

The majority of agencies start their culture journey with skepticism and a lack of leadership from the top. This too must change because it’s not worth starting the journey if there isn’t a strong commitment from leadership.

The Culture Journey

These insights are only a small part of what’s necessary for meaningful culture change and sustainable results. They help to build initial momentum and results required for any new cultural attribute to emerge.

We need a step-change in the level of culturally intelligent approaches to overcome deeply entrenched cultural norms. Jeffrey David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said, “Federal employees get up and go to work and they do what they are told to do.” This outdated expectation and others must shift to unleash the knowledge and skill necessary to change the culture of government.

What about the President (top leader)?

Some of you might be thinking this post is about sub-culture change and not changing the entire culture of government. You are correct. There is no “one culture” in an organization; sub-culture differences exist, and work should be customized to fit with priorities and plans for individual teams. The top leader always has tremendous influence with culture change and must eventually be engaged in the process. I believe we need far more examples of constructive culture change across many different agencies for a visionary President to bring it all together.

The President is a product of the current culture of government. An “outsider” like President Trump is still a product of the larger management culture in the United States. Culturally intelligent approaches like those advocated in this post are not the norm in either macroculture.

We need far more examples of inclusive and collaborative approaches to solve some of our most difficult challenges. We have a history of collectively overcoming major problems, but we have strayed from the bedrock values and principles that make America great.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
-Abraham Lincoln

We need more culturally intelligent leaders in government. What culture insights can you add to help agency leaders make a meaningful difference?

Need some help getting started with culture and performance improvement? Learn about the 90-Day Culture and Performance Quick-Start Program.

The descriptions of the cultural styles and norms are from the Organizational Culture Inventory^® by R. A. Cooke and J. C. Lafferty.

The interest in culture continues to grow but this growth comes with a proliferation in over-simplified and incorrect information about culture and culture change. CultureUniversity.com launched in 2014 to cut through this misinformation and it has grown to be a great resource for leaders and change agents to learn about organizational culture. Over 30 organizational culture enthusiasts and experts shared their insights in 2016.

10 posts garnered the highest traffic and my personal top insight from each post is captured in the list below.

#10 – How Leaders Shape Culture – By Marlene Chism

Marlene focused this post on the world of front-line managers and supervisors. It’s easy for these leaders to get frustrated by a lack of power or influence to impact the entire culture.  Fortunately, these leaders do have a very clear impact on shaping the sub-culture of their department, location, or team. Her post zeroes in on trust, character, engagement, and accountability with specific examples.

#9 – Want Great Cultures? First, Build Great Teams – By Jon Katzenbach

Jon, acclaimed author of The Wisdom of Teams and culture expert, shared some important team effectiveness insights.  He shared the power of team norms or unwritten rules to guide the behavior of team members. I found it interesting that the “specific norms” don’t matter.  What’s important is to have some ground rules that allow a team to operate in a “safe place” where team members feel confident with each other. Do your teams have standard ground rules?

Organizational culture is a bottomless pit of questions and problems.  
-Edgar Schein

#8 – Zen and the Art of Culture Change – By Dennis Adsit

Dennis focused this post on Edgar Schein insights shared at the second annual Ultimate Culture Conference. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ed for the fourth time at this conference and he never disappoints. A point Dennis emphasized that might shock some is Ed’s statement that “Change agents who think corporate culture change is hard might be doing it wrong.” While this statement might be a surprise on the surface it likely isn’t as you think about how many organizations are not: (1) clear about the purpose of their change effort; (2) clear about the specific behaviors that must change; and (3) have a CEO willing to lead the change effort and connect it to top strategies and mission priorities.

#7 – 10 Organizational Behaviors Stuck in the Industrial Era – By Jonathan Gifford and Mark Powell

This post includes an interesting summary of 10 paradoxes of organizational behavior. It’s clear these paradoxes are at the surface of much deeper cultural issues in most organizations. One example that stood out to me was diversity of opinion where “organizations tend to become homogeneous environments where contrarians are unwelcome.” It’s so true that oppositional, perfectionistic, or other behavior and norms often inhibit most new ideas from ever seeing the light of day.

#6 – How to Shape a High-Performing Culture with Coaching – By Susan Camberis and Kathy Green

This post covers the “often-overlooked” role of coaching in effectively shifting or evolving culture. It includes numerous questions coaches can use to initiate dialogue in support of constructive or effective norms and behaviors. They matched up coaching questions to targeted organization norms or expectations in an interesting way.

#5 – 100 Culture Change Insights from 100 Culture Expert Posts – By Tim Kuppler

This was a milestone post. I had the crazy idea of looking back through the first 100 posts on CultureU to pick out 100 culture change insights that stood out to me. It wasn’t easy picking out my top 15 but they are the insights I consistently reference. My #1 was the insight from Edgar Schein about culture being built through shared learning and mutual experience. Ed shared it in a CultureU interview. It definitely fit with my experience as a leader and consultant taking organizations on a learning journey that’s directly focused on their purpose and mission priorities. Download the complete list of 100 insights and additional bonus content by signing up for our posts on CultureU.

#4 – 10 Guiding Principles of Organizational Culture – By Jon Katzenbach

The image that accompanied this post was shared extensively across social media. My favorite is ”don’t let your formal leaders off the hook.” Many top leaders delegate culture-related initiatives and disconnects persist across their own senior leadership team. Jon explained what happens if staff members see a disconnect in the behavior of senior leaders: “they’ll disengage quickly from the advertised culture and simply mimic their seniors’ behavior.”

#3 – Leadership Behavior: The Power to Shape Culture – By Marlene Chism

This excellent post probed the Karpman Drama Triangle orientations of victim, persecutor and rescuer. I loved her quick snapshot: “The Victim feels helpless, the Rescuer has the answer and the Persecutor tells you whose fault it is.”

#2 – 8 Culture Change Secrets Most Leaders Don’t Understand – By Tim Kuppler

This post was nearly 20 years in the makings. I was clueless about these “secrets” when I first held a top leadership role. I don’t think much has changed over the last 20 years as superficial and incorrect information about culture continues to be proliferated. These secrets are common sense but very rarely addressed as part of culture-related improvements.

The purpose of a company is not to create a nice workplace culture but to function in the economy, to provide goods and services
-Edgar Schein

#1 – 20 Organizational Culture Insights from a Edgar Schein – By Tim Kuppler

I was happy to see this specific post with the highest CultureU traffic in 2016. My first interview of Ed launched CultureU and was the most popular CultureU post in 2014. This interview was specifically designed to briefly capture some of Ed’s top culture insights at the beginning. He then connected these insights to popular topics like strategy, engagement and hiring for cultural fit. Ed also previewed insights that were later released in Humble Consulting and his most recent update to Organizational Culture and Leadership.

Thank You and the future

Thank you to all the contributors. CultureU wouldn’t exist without your interest in sharing what you have learned. Thank you to Kalani Iwi’ula for his excellent blog oversight and Jason Bowes for creating the weekly quote images.

CultureU continues to be part of a movement to change the way the world thinks about culture and culture change. Be a part of the culture learning journey on CultureU and contribute a your insights (see our guest post guideline). One final thank you goes to all of our readers. Your feedback, questions, ideas, and sharing of content on social media are a major part of the journey.

Editor’s Note: read Tim’s most popular CultureU post: 8 Culture Change Secrets Most Leaders Don’t Understand

And don’t miss the Culture Quick Start Program if you’re looking to jumpstart your culture change learning and initiatives.

I spent 15 years learning and applying culture insights as a senior executive and consultant across multiple organizations before I started to proactively reach out to top culture pioneers and experts to learn about their culture facts and fundamentals. We can’t learn much about culture from the popular press and most social media is dominated by over-simplified or incorrect culture content. Critical culture change insights from the top culture experts in history are unfortunately “secrets” to the vast majority of leaders. Other leaders turn away from the fundamentals of culture to more exotic and superficial solutions.

Edgar Schein, arguably the top culture pioneer, said in his closing comments at the Ultimate Culture Conference last year that we need to put the culture principles next to a good theory of change.  So what are some of the most important culture and change principles?

Below are 8 critical culture change secrets I have learned that most leaders and self-anointed culture experts typically don’t understand and leverage to improve results. Individual tips and keys have little use with a subject like culture so I’ll connect the explanation of these insights.

1. Culture is built through shared learning and mutual experience.

Edgar Schein mentioned this in an interview last year and I immediately connected it with habits that worked for me to consistently engage my leadership team and the broader organization when I was an industry executive. The foundation of effectively shifting or evolving culture does not come from popular approaches like:

• Defining values and “aligning” everything in the organization to them (even thought this approach is widely advocated)
• Training masses of people on values and expected behaviors
• Focusing on clarity and alignment, engagement, or other areas of the work climate
• Focusing on improving a few systems like hiring, performance management or reward and recognition

Change efforts will likely include work in some or all of these areas but engaging leadership and the broader organization in a journey of shared learning and mutual experience is at the core of effective culture change or shaping efforts. Leaders can intentionally facilitate shared learning and mutual experience so improvements are clearly identified, captured, and spread to deliver results across their team in a phased improvement approach.

2. Don’t focus on trying to change culture. Focus on a problem, challenge or goal and how culture is impacting the related work positively and negatively.

This fundamental is consistent with insights from Edgar Schein and I, fortunately, stumbled on it early in my career. I was a top leader and on the hook for growth, profit, customer experience, quality, safety and other critical performance priorities. I also cared tremendously about culture and felt it would be a key to our success. Zeroing in on a top mission or performance priority and engaging the broader organization more extensively in this one critical area delivered results. It also accelerated the shared learning and mutual experience since it was also focused on a meaningful priority for our entire team.

Don’t create a general “culture plan” where the connection to the results of the organization is unclear or debatable. Engage the organization to a much greater degree on one of your top priorities so you drive the shared learning, mutual experience and results faster than general culture work.

3. Results or consequences are necessary for any new cultural attribute to form.

Results will actually precede the cultural change. This important insight runs counter to arguments from some leaders that think they don’t have time for culture since they need results now and culture change takes a long time. Focusing the work on a top mission or performance priority will actually increase the likelihood of seeing results in a meaningful area AND supporting the targeted cultural shift.

Behaviors that lead to positive results will spread. Schein said these behaviors will not be spreading because employees were “told to” but because “they work”. I love his explanation: “if it’s successful, and people like it, and it becomes a norm then you can say it’s become a culture change.”  So, what’s a norm? That question brings us to our next secret.

If it is successful, and people like it, and it becomes a norm, then you can say it has become a culture change.
-Edgar Schein

4. The vast majority of what you hear about culture is actually focused on climate. It’s critical to understand the underlying cultural norms or expectations that are actually driving the majority of behavior we see.

I like calling these expectations the “unwritten rules” that drive our behavior. For many years, I thought I was effectively dealing with the subject of culture when we worked on improvements related to our values, involvement activities, management systems, communication habits, recognition, and many other areas. Some of these changes had an impact on culture but I struggled to gain a clear language around the behavioral problems we encountered and our “culture” survey results had already improved dramatically. I later found that engagement and nearly all “culture” surveys actually only measure aspects of the organizational climate. The climate is incredibly important but gaining an understanding of the underlying culture is critical for accelerating change efforts and delivering sustainable results.

My world changed when I met Rob Cooke and learned about the language, measurement, and power of behavioral norms. People are bombarded by cultural norms at work. Edgar Schein once said that 90% of our behavior in organizations is driven by cultural rules. The basic language of Constructive, Aggressive-Defensive, and Passive-Defensive expectations or norms from Human Synergistics helps me deal with client challenges every day.

• Aggressive-Defensive expectations such as maintaining unquestioned authority, outperforming peers, never making a mistake, opposing things indirectly, and many others don’t lead to sustainable effectiveness.
• Passive-Defensive expectations also exist in organizations and these expectations such as not rocking the boat,” making a good impression, asking everybody what they think before acting, and doing things for the approval of others may also undermine effectiveness.
• Constructive expectations such as taking on challenging tasks, treating people as more important than things, and resolving conflicts constructively do lead to sustainable effectiveness for individuals, teams and the overall organization.

90% of our behavior in organizations is driven by cultural rules.
-Edgar Schein

It’s critical to move beyond the behavior we see in the organizational climate and understand the underlying culture. Leaders need to specifically understand how the climate and culture are impacting their work on top mission or performance priorities. The key learnings” leaders gain from this understanding are invaluable.

5. Define a “FROM-TO shift” from defensive to constructive expectations.

I first learned about the FROM-TO shift language from Larry Senn. The “TO” side of this concept is advocated all over the place. Organizations are defining values and expected behaviors but most have no language for the “FROM” side. I believe the defensive expectations I previously mentioned, both passive and aggressive, are the most critical part of understanding the “FROM” side of this concept. We need to understand these norms as a foundation for understanding beliefs, assumptions, mind-sets, and other factors that help to explain why they exist.

Some leaders consistently misdiagnose their culture problems and jump to conclusions without gaining any deeper cultural insight. My favorite example is a top leader that thinks there is a major accountability or ownership problem in their organization. The actual cultural issue could be driven by perfectionistic, approval, avoidant, oppositional, or other norms in the current culture that current leadership, including the top leader, is perpetuating in many ways. Focusing on the “TO” behaviors we want does not address the root cause of the problems we see on the surface.

Very General FROM-TO Example

6. Repeatedly engage groups to define and continuously refine plans to improve results with a meaningful mission priority AND support the targeted FROM-TO shift.

Leaders that engage their organization in defining focused improvement plans for a top mission priority and supporting the associated FROM-TO shift will dramatically increase the likelihood of success. The key is to move beyond general feedback approaches on mission priorities OR culture-related areas (behaviors, values, etc.).

Instead, engage groups in prioritized improvement feedback for a key mission or performance priority (growth, customer experience, etc.) that will also support the targeted FROM-TO shift. For example: How should we improve our new customer growth plans AND shift FROM perfectionistic aspects of our culture TO an achievement-oriented focus as a team? Far more explanation and sharing of specific stories, behaviors, and examples are obviously needed but you get the idea. Focus improvements on a mission priority (what) AND the targeted cultural shift (how). It’s also important to identify any positive aspects of the culture that may be further leveraged as part of improvement efforts.

Plan ahead to re-engage groups periodically to provide prioritized feedback on what’s working and what’s not after you make progress on implementation (typically every 3-6 months). Identify the top improvements to leverage what’s working and to address what’s not.

7. It’s critical to adjust management, communication and motivation systems/habits to translate plans to effective action and shift the operating model.

The problem in most organizations is not identifying improvements that will have a positive impact on culture but implementing them. I am sure we all can relate to Edgar Schein’s point that you only begin to fully understand a culture when you try to change it. It’s far easier to engage leadership and the broader organization in defining improvement plans than implementing them.

Jim Collins said “a culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.” There are three areas of discipline nearly all organizations involved in culture-related change efforts must refine and connect:

• Management systems – especially the basic habits for senior leadership to define, monitor and manage strategic priorities, measures, and improvement plans.
• Communication systems – especially implementing or improving the formal and informal habits for communicating the status of priorities and plans along with regularly obtaining feedback for improvement.
• Motivation systems – especially intentional efforts to dramatically increase the recognition of team members that display the targeted constructive “TO” behavior in the FROM-TO shift and achieve results.

The lack of rigor in these three areas dramatically amplifies culture-related problems and substantial adjustments are nearly always a part of major transformation efforts. The culture roadmap below is a useful tool to understand and communicate the importance of connecting improvements to a top mission priority with clarity.

A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
-Jim Collins

The Culture Roadmap – Systemically connecting improvements to a top mission or performance priority

8. Culture transformation starts with personal transformation.

I love this point from Larry Senn. You can effectively cover the first seven “secrets” but your change efforts will bog down as individual behavior and mind-set issues continue to persist, especially with top leaders. Top leaders must gain an understanding of how their behavior is impacting the behavior of others. Is that “impact” constructive, passive, or aggressive? How are they reinforcing the current culture? What individual and team development efforts need managed in parallel with the overall organization transformation?

My favorite questions in initial executive interviews are: 1) Why is this change effort important to you personally?  2) How are you reinforcing the current culture and contributing to the culture frustrations that persist?

The answers to these questions may lead to important leadership “ahas”, as Larry Senn calls them, or reveal how difficult the journey will be to uncover those ahas.

It’s incredibly rare for change efforts to effectively leverage these basics. I interact with consultants and leaders across hundreds of culture-related transformations and literally 1 in 100 directly address these areas. I am currently in the middle of six complex projects where these areas are being proactively addressed and it’s exciting to see the results. Each organization is from a different industry and their initial work is focused on a different mission priority but many similar challenges are being encountered and resolved. These “secrets” seem common sense but they are not commonly advocated.

If you’re ready to apply these insights as part of your improvement plans and unlock the power of culture to support your purpose/mission:

1. Define the purpose of your improvement effort and complete qualitative (focus groups, interviews, etc.), and likely, quantitative culture analysis (survey). Obtain external support if you are not experienced with this work or want to increase the likelihood of success.
2. Engage top leadership to review the results of the culture analysis and capture key learnings. Define a top mission or performance priority (growth, customer experience, etc.). Develop initial plans to engage the organization in new ways to improve related strategies/plans and support a FROM-TO shift in the culture.
3. Engage the broader organization and obtain prioritized feedback as part of the effort to finalize improvement plans. Define when these groups will be re-engaged to provide prioritized feedback on what’s working and what’s not.
4. Manage the change as part of refined management, communication, and motivation systems. Connect any organization development plans to individual development efforts, starting with top leaders.

These insights are only a small part of what’s necessary for meaningful culture change and sustainable results. They help to build initial momentum and results necessary for any new cultural attribute to emerge.

I couldn’t be happier that most culture pioneers and experts are open to the idea of sharing their insights and collaborating to make a meaningful difference. It will take time but these and other “secrets” will eventually be discovered by the average leader. It will be exciting when far more leaders gain the confidence to proactively deal with this topic in a serious, diligent, energizing, and impactful way.

We need more culturally intelligent leaders. What culture insights or “secrets” can you add to help leaders make a meaningful difference?

The descriptions of the cultural styles and norms are from the Organizational Culture Inventory^® by R. A. Cooke and J. C. Lafferty.

Need some help getting started with culture and performance improvement? Learn about the 90-Day Culture and Performance Quick-Start Program.

NOTE: Download this article for sharing along with a special Corporate Culture Summary from Edgar Schein. Sign up at this link!

This is the 100^th post on Culture University and it’s only fitting I summarize 100 of the top culture insights shared by the outstanding line-up of culture expert and guest authors over the last two years.  The purpose of CultureU is to positively impact society on a global scale through culture awareness, education and action.

We’re making progress bringing visibility to culture facts and fundamentals that go beyond all the superficial and over-simplified culture content. These insights barely touch the surface of the important subject of culture but hopefully it will spark your interest to learn more.

I continue to learn at a fast rate from the CultureU faculty and guests. You may download the complete list of Top 100 Culture Insights at this link.

Here are 15 that stood out to me personally:

1. Culture is built through shared learning and mutual experience – Edgar Schein
• Ed explained this in one of our CultureU interviews. I immediately thought it made complete sense and wished I had used that language over the last 20 years!
• This insight fit perfectly with my experience clearly phasing improvement efforts and focusing engagement efforts in each phase around a top problem, challenge or goal. Groups are engaged through discussion, feedback and prioritization to capture what worked and didn’t work with each phase. These group insights are then applied to improvement efforts for new problems, challenges and goals that emerge.  This intentionally drives shared learning and mutual experience.

2. Engineer ”aha moments” to shift underlying thinking and behavior. Change comes from an experience that gets people’s attention and causes them to stop and reflect and shift their mindset – Larry Senn
• Wow…engineering aha moments. I love it! Do you need a CEO involved in understanding and evolving their culture? You need a “CEO aha”. Need a boss to get a clue about the impact of a specific behavior? You need to creatively engineer a “boss aha”.  I now talk about the show Undercover Boss and all the “ahas” these executives gain by being curious, showing a little humility, going to the front lines, and just listening.

3. There needs to be results in some form for a new cultural attribute to emerge. Edgar Schein
• A painfully simple point but critical for culture change. I learned through trial and error the power of focusing behavior change, engagement, communication, rewards and, most importantly, time on 1-2 critical business measures. We would focus tremendous energy on a “unifying metric” because I knew that positive feedback on change efforts was not nearly enough if business measures weren’t improving. Results in some form must precede the culture change and it complements the next Schein insight.

Don’t be fooled by the illusion of behavior change & think you are changing the culture.
-Ed Schein

4. If it is successful, and people like it, and it becomes a norm, then you can say it has become a culture change. Edgar Schein on behavior change
   • Ed covered this insight in a CultureU interview and added an extremely important point: “Don’t be fooled by the illusion of behavior change and think you are changing the culture.” How do you understand the underlying norms he referenced? It’s not from a climate survey (engagement, great workplace, many “culture” surveys”). They only take you so far if you have no clear understanding of the underlying behavioral norms and the supporting shared beliefs and assumptions. It’s critical to learn the difference between culture and climate if you are interested in sustainable change.

5. Values must be translated to expected behaviors since we all interpret values from our own perspective. Richard Barrett
• I learned about this insight long before CultureU was formed and I asked Richard to share it in a post. I have used the language literally hundreds of times since I first heard it from him.

6. Diagnose the organization. Define the behaviors you have and the behaviors you need in a From-To model (from hierarchical to empowering, from siloed to collaborative, etc.). Larry Senn
• I previously learned about the importance of focusing on a few specific behaviors. I was used to identifying clear cultural strengths and weaknesses but, once again, I was missing this basic FROM-TO language. Both parts are important. Ed advocates “stating outcomes in behavioral terms” and it can be just as important to gain agreement on the specific behaviors undermining effectiveness.

7. Until employees see something more for themselves and have the desire to reach for something higher, they do not know how to articulate their desires or how to take the first step to achieve more. The greatest gift a leader can offer an employee is to see more for that person than he sees for himself.  I call this trait focusing on Super Vision rather than supervision. Marlene Chism
• The part that made an impact on me was: “They do not know how to articulate their desires or how to take the first step to achieve more.” There are many ways a leader can truly help – listening, coaching, training, and, my favorite approach, intentionally driving shared learning and mutual experience. Many individuals will begin to copy successful approaches they are part of or hear about from broader improvement efforts as they learn the “first steps” to achieve more.

8. Terrific, talented people reach their capacity to absorb change and they check out. Every person has their own “change sponge” that has a maximum amount of absorption. Both personal and professional changes decrease the change capacity. Employees become disengaged when they run out of capacity. All the leadership commitment, compelling cases for change and brilliant change strategies in the world are irrelevant if you do not assess and manage change capacity. Donna Brighton
• Donna talked about this subject at our Ultimate Culture Conference last year. She used a glass and just kept adding water until it spilled on the stage as she talked about leaders overwhelming the capacity of others. I always knew about the importance of focus but I would tend to drive a tremendous amount of change that supported an initial improvement phase. Now I think more about improvements steps within an overall improvement phase so there’s greater focus on making sure team members can “absorb” all the major changes that depend on them. Water will still hit the floor from time to time but it’s due to me, the leader, and not because change capacity glass or sponge of others isn’t big enough.

9. It’s critical to have sufficient energy, momentum and mass for culture change. Larry Senn
• This language is so powerful for culture change. It’s one of the reasons I like connecting culture-related diagnosis to improvement efforts with the #1 performance priority, problem, challenge or goal of an organization. There’s already tremendous mass connected to a #1 priority in an organization. It’s possible to build greater energy and momentum as the organization makes progress on overcoming cultural challenges that have been undermining results or keeping the organization back from living up to its full potential. It’s great to hear employees talk about “finally” addressing a problem that’s been a struggle for a long time.

“It’s critical to have sufficient energy, momentum and mass for #culture change.
-Larry Senn on Twitter

10. Drive a culture of engagement in your organization by following four steps I call the Four Roots of Engagement:
• People Want to Be a Part of Something Bigger Than Themselves
• People Want to Feel a Sense of Belonging
• People Want to Go on a Meaningful Journey
• People want to Know Their Contributions Make an Impact

Jim Haudan

• I really enjoyed this post from Jim. They are basic but extremely important concepts. “Being part of something bigger than themselves” was the part I wasn’t previously using.

11. An organization’s strategy is determined by culture. “What’s there in the present strategy is culturally determined historically. That’s why a consultant coming in and saying you ought to do this and this and this often is met with blank stares because the culture that’s there strategically is only going to hear certain possibilities.” Edgar Schein
• This is an important point for all top leaders and change agents. I didn’t think about this enough until I heard a number of stories about it from Ed. There will be alternatives and potential solutions that make complete sense to an outsider but they will be completely rejected by members of the organization. It further supports the need to focus on creatively engineering the “aha moments” that Larry Senn referenced (point #2) and to bring in diverse information and experiences to the strategy discussion. I experienced this countless times as a leader. Drama and uncertainty can slow improvement efforts to a crawl.

12. Leaders must be curious. It supports a growth mindset which creates more innovation and agility. Larry Senn
• I had the good fortune of completing some thorough interviews of both Edgar Schein and Larry Senn last year. It was extremely interesting to me that the one quality of leadership both talked extensively about was the importance of curiosity. Yes, there was discussion about what culture is, how it evolves, and many other insights I expected to hear. The importance of curiosity stood out from my personal experience as a leader but it was lost in the middle of all the other qualities I also knew were important. It now has a special place in my mind as I try to understand if a leader or consultant I am trying to help is showing any signs of being curious.

13. Be Here Now. Be present. Stay in the moment. Focus. Pay attention! Stop multitasking. Stop what you are doing and listen. Quiet your busy mind. Yes, Be Here Now is all of these things on the surface. But it’s much more than a catch phrase and is really the tip of the emotional intelligence iceberg. What lies beneath is a bigger concept that, when well understood and put into use in daily thought habits, can create a positive ripple effect from home life to work life. Larry Senn
• Three simple but powerful words. It goes beyond just listening and team members clearly know when their leader is not being here now. It requires awareness, practice, feedback and maybe even the implementation of habits or triggers for a leader to shift to Be Here Now mode. It complements Larry’s other insights about being curious and the need for “aha moments.” I asked Larry for one of their Be Here Now signs and I now have them prominently displayed at work and home.  I still struggle with this but it’s getting better.

Watch Larry Senn explain more about Be Here Now in the following clip.

14. Culture matters to the extent an organization is adaptive – “If culture is like personality or character, then it matters in the sense to what extent is the culture adaptive to both the external and internal realities. If it’s not adaptive, it matters a lot. If it’s adaptive, it doesn’t matter much, people don’t notice it, they just go along their merry way. So culture really only matters when there is a problem. In the same sense that personality only matters when things aren’t working right for you. Otherwise it’s just there. It’s part of you.”  Edgar Schein
• How adaptive is your organization? Innovation, agile, and other approaches to drive rapid change are all the rage. Unfortunately, many attempting to leverage these approaches don’t take into consideration culture fundamentals. There may be some limited success but it often falls short of true culture change.

15. We have not learned enough about occupational cultures. Tough future problems will involve building teams across occupational and national cultures. Edgar Schein
• The example Ed shared was a hospital operating room with all the different occupational and national cultures represented. I also think about all the industries and the prevalence of industry problems that will only be solved if many organizations understand and shift the underlying cultural problems through collective effort. Problems related to hiring, diversity and inclusion, engagement, innovation, growth, the brand or image of an industry, and many others will be solved with greater speed and effectiveness if the underlying cultural drivers of the occupation and/or industry are understood. Associations and other industry groups need to understand the cultural drivers for their top industry problems and facilitate collective problem solving efforts.

CultureUniversity.com is an important part of the internet.  
-Ed Schein

I felt guilty that 11 of my personal top 15 insights were from Edgar Schein and Larry Senn. You’ll see important insights from over 25 CultureU authors in the summary of Top 100 Insights. In the end it made complete sense that two culture pioneers accelerated my culture learning curve more than others. CultureU was founded in part because the insights from the top culture experts in history weren’t clearly visible with all the superficial culture information found in social media and the popular press. All those simple tips, keys, and levers make little impact if they are not clearly connected as part of meaningful change efforts.

I am looking forward to the next 100 posts on CultureU and a more intentional effort to have our authors focus on solutions to specific culture and leadership problems that impact many organizations.

I encourage you to share this post with colleagues and on social media as we continue improve the visibility of meaningful culture facts and fundamentals.

Download the complete Top 100 Culture Insight List and share it with others. Thank You to all the CultureU authors!

Download our guest post guideline if you have important insights to share.

A thorough interview with an organizational culture pioneer

We’re going to accelerate your organizational culture change education with this post. Every leader will benefit from understanding the following critical insights about culture and problem solving, change, engagement, strategy, hiring, and consulting shared by Edgar Schein, Professor Emeritus with MIT Sloan School of Management and the most influential authority in the culture field.

I first interviewed Ed when this site was launched in 2014 and we held a very thorough follow-up interview last year. Ed is continuing to make an impact in the culture field and beyond. He recently formed the Schein Organizational Culture and Leadership Institute. The Institute is dedicated to advancing organizational development through a deeper understanding of organizational and occupational cultures—how they arise, develop, and evolve.

We started this interview with a brief review of culture fundamentals and then probed the connection of culture and important culture-related workplace topics like engagement, hiring for cultural fit and strategy. Culture clearly impacts these areas but the connection is not widely understood and it’s often oversimplified.

Culture Fundamentals

The interview video excerpt above covers Ed’s concise explanation of the following culture fundamentals:

1. Don’t over-simplify culture. It’s far more than “how we do things around here.”
2. Focus on a problem and how culture is influencing it instead of trying to change culture directly.
3. Culture is always helping and hindering problem solving. It’s important to understand both.
4. Be very specific about behavior, how it’s impacting your problem and the future state of the behavior you want to see.

Additional Culture Change Insights

5. Organizational Culture change may evolve from a small but effective change in behavior. Think about culture systematically.

Ed told a story about a conversation with a Scottish head of a hospital where he made a tactical error and apologized to him afterwards, admitting his mistake. “One of the things they were thinking of doing in their hospital was to train the receptionists to start being nicer to patients when they first came in… I scoffed at this and said that doesn’t even begin to get at the depths of culture.  I thought about it systemically and realized what a terrible mistake I was making. In fact, if he retrained those receptionists and the patients started to feel better about it, the better patient mood would influence others in the hospital and it might be exactly the right way to speed up the culture change process. Start with something simple that’s not that hard to do.

6. Culture change may need to start with large changes to account for deeply entrenched cultural attributes

Ed explained a story about Digital Equipment Corporation and how their culture was all about innovation. They enjoyed making things more fun and complex. Ed continued: “Everyone said that’s unsustainable, the world now wants simpler, easier devices.  You have to make a huge change and Digital looked squarely at them and said: we don’t want to do that.  We like the culture we’ve got, the culture of innovation, and if that doesn’t work anymore..so be it..but we’re not going to change. In that instance suggesting all kinds of small changes wouldn’t have made any difference.

7. There needs to be some form of results for a new cultural attribute to emerge

“People are working with the illusion that if they change behavior that they have changed the culture when all they have really done is change the behavior. If that behavior is in fact liked better by people and producing better results, then in the people’s heads it migrates into ‘Oh, that is really is a really a better way of doing it’; and if a lot of people now are having that feeling ‘Yes, it’s fun to be nicer to patients’ and that continues to work, then someone walking into that hospital [workplace] will experience it as the culture because it’s there, everyone is doing it, and it has stability. That stability comes from the feedback from the environment, not from the boss saying you are doing it right now.”

If it is successful, and people like it, and it becomes a norm, then you can say it has become a culture change
-Edgar Schein on behavior change

8. Bosses must pay attention to subordinates and treat them as human beings to better encourage engagement

We discussed the state of employee engagement and how overall results haven’t changed much during the last 15 years. Ed had an interesting response: “I see a bigger cultural inhibitor which goes into the US management culture that once you are the boss you don’t really have to pay much human attention to your subordinates. You’ve given them the job description, you’ve got the reward system – ‘go do your work, don’t bother me.’ That is a cultural trait – this “don’t bother me” by the boss. That’s an enormous inhibitor that probably kills 90% of the engagement programs. The cultural solution would be bosses that pay attention to their subordinates and treat them as human beings.  If you could make that one big change in how supervisors look at their job, the engagement problem would probably go away.”

9. Perks and privileges don’t lead to engagement

Ed continued the discussion on engagement, “On the other hand if you go through a big torturous process of giving them more recreation, nicer place, more privileges, all sorts of stuff and the boss still treats them as a non-entity, then you are not going to get anywhere. The employees will use the facilities and take all the freebies but they still won’t feel engaged. The engagement is by definition a human problem and the reason it is not happening is because bosses are not treating their subordinates in a human way.

10. When hiring for cultural fit, look for “a little bit of overlap” that covers important areas for the individual and the organization

“What I like is the notion of finding a little bit of overlap rather than [asking] ‘Do I, the totality of me, fit in to this huge culture I am about to enter?’ It’s not going to happen; it’s too big of a question. ‘Is what I really care about going to be met by the minimum of the job?’ Fit at that level makes sense.” Ed likes the idea of using his career anchors as a way to look at this overlap. “Is the culture an autonomy oriented culture or a security oriented culture when those happen to be the things I care about is an interesting way of analyzing whether I fit or not.”

11. Hire managers not just for managerial skills, but also human skills 

“Hiring implies that it’s a trait that is measurable and you can say: I’ll hire this one because he’s got good human skills and I’ll ignore that one – but that’s putting the cart before the horse. The most important thing would be the managerial skills and that would include human skills but you wouldn’t just put nice guys in management jobs because they would be nice to their subordinates. That won’t solve the problem either. The organization is there to do work and I have watched organizations, this happened in Digital a lot, where the bosses were mean sons of bitches but they loved their people and they took them seriously. I don’t think formulas for ‘OK let’s all be nice and hire people to be nice’ is the answer.”

12. Develop the human skills of your managers, starting with serious consciousness raising

Ed believes in starting with the development of existing managers before trying to improve engagement through hiring managers with human skills. “I’d rather go with whatever existing management you’ve got and do some serious consciousness raising with your current managers and say ‘Is it possible that you just don’t understand that part of your job is your connection with your people that make you succeed and if they fail, you fail?’ I think we ought to try that first before we change the hiring policies.”

The purpose of a company is not to create a nice workplace culture but to function in the economy, to provide goods and services.
-Edgar Schein

13. Defining your values and aligning everything to them should not be a primary focus for organizational culture change

“The purpose of a company is not to create a nice workplace culture but to function in the economy, to provide goods and services. Once you’ve got that concept that we’re in this-and-this business, then you want to design a workplace culture that optimizes fitting that business.” Ed explained a problem he sees often, “We look for a solution instead of learning diagnostic skills and being very creative. The way you run a nuclear plant and the way you run a fishing boat – they both have safety problems but you wouldn’t want the same technology of safety culture applied to the fishing boat and the nuclear plant.”

14. An organization’s strategy is determined by culture.

“You have to think of organizations in a historical context. They don’t spring out of nowhere; they spring out of founders and leaders who have a set of values and a way of doing things. Whether we like it or not, IBM became a sales marketing organization because that’s what Tom Watson Sr. was and, by god, that’s what his organization was going to be – a marketing sales organization. Now 100 years later you’ve got to admit that it still drives the IBM strategy and therefore culture is determining strategy. Similarly, you can take any organization and look historically at where did the current set of values come from? They came out of the biases and the theories of the founders and leaders. So by definition, what’s there in the present, strategy, is culturally determined historically. That’s why a consultant coming in and saying you ought to do this and this and this often is met with blank stares because the culture that’s there strategically is only going to hear certain possibilities.”

15. The key to strategy and strategic change is linking the possibility with who we really are culturally.

“I think some of the creative culture stuff has really migrated into a company identity. Identity may in some ways be a better way to capture this central strategic cultural element than to call it culture. Companies do develop identities, which I think is culture, but maybe the word identity fits better for this particular phenomenon…The only changes that will work at that level are changes that both have a market potential where you have investigated that there is a possibility and fit what we are able to do – our identity. If you just go for the market, you’re not going to be able to do it. If you just go for the identity, there may not be a market out there. So the linking of the possibility with who we really are culturally is the key to strategic change.”

16. Culture is critical with societal trends for speed and efficiency because complexity is growing

We talked about whether it’s getting more difficult to engage groups in problem solving due to trends in society where many want answers and solutions quickly.  Ed had an interesting response. “Yes, I think that is happening, but what is the counter trend?  I think the counter trend is systemic complexity…let’s take healthcare. The surgeon who has that same American attitude of faster, better, quicker, is now doing more complex operations, which requires collaboration of the nurse and the tech and the anesthesiologist and is discovering that quickness doesn’t solve the problem. It takes time to build relationships with those other people; and the operation itself may take longer and have to be done more carefully.  I think in general tasks are becoming more complex and that will teach managers and employees that speed and efficiency has to be calibrated against doing it right and working collaboratively with others.  How soon this will happen? I don’t know but that’s the counter-trend I see.”

17. The good employee of the future is somebody who loves to learn

“If the world is becoming more systemically complex and cross-cultural, then that means there will have to be more and more re-training as jobs change. Maybe the good employee of the future is a learning person who’s constantly able to overcome his or her own obsolescence because things will change more rapidly. Rather than firing people and getting a new crew in, we may have to figure out how to make do with the talent we’ve got and make a fetish out of retraining rather than an occasional tragedy.”

18. Training programs should be consistent with the current culture or it will be necessary to change the culture

“If the workplace culture is there, how can you have a training program that is inconsistent with it? That would be a priori, shooting yourself in the foot. So if you know what the workplace culture is, the training either has to fit into it or the technology, the work you’re doing, might require a change in the workplace culture. That’s another way to think about it. You take the existing talent and build out from it and, if necessary, change the culture to fit the talent – which would be done in behavioral steps not in this instant culture change.”

Our pragmatic culture that’s all about – get the work done, don’t bother me with feelings and relationships – is working less and less well.
-Edgar Schein

Humble Inquiry & Humble Consulting

We closed the interview with a discussion about some of Ed’s new work.

19. If you are a consultant who wants to help, it’s important to build a relationship with the client

“There is beginning to be recognition that relationships matter. Our pragmatic culture that’s all about get the work done, don’t bother me with feelings and relationships, is working less and less well…The next iteration of the Humble Inquiry book, will be something called either Humble Consulting or Humble Helping or something like that where the primary argument is if you are a consultant and you want to be helpful, not just make bucks but want to be helpful, then you must build a relationship with the client… We have to acknowledge each other as real people and develop enough trust and openness so that when we communicate we will really be telling each other the truth…I think the important point is that words like relationship, trust, and openness are as vague as the word culture and if this book makes a difference, it will be in specifying what we mean by a consultant and client should have a relationship.”

[Update – Ed’s new book Humble Consulting: How to Provide Real Help Faster is available for purchase now]

One Final Culture Insight

I asked Ed what I missed in the interview and what he thought readers at Human Synergistics also need to understand about culture.

20. We have not learned enough about occupational cultures. Tough future problems will involve building teams across occupational and national cultures.

“Well I think that what we can miss easily is what aspects of culture really drive things and I think we have not learned enough about occupations. I think about the hospital. The doctor culture and the nurse culture are powerful forces, more powerful than the hospital culture…The notion of building a team across occupational and national cultures is a completely different task from what we think of today as collaboration or team building. That’s where I think the tough future problems will be. We’re seeing it now in the hospital. These surgical teams often are very much multi-cultural teams and they do come from different occupations.”

What do you think of these insights?  Share your reaction and comments below? Share your reaction and comments with others by using our links below to post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

References and information

See the full video of this thorough interview on YouTube (52 minutes). 

Announcement about a new partnership between the Schein Organizational Culture and Leadership Institute and Human Synergistics

Need some help getting started with culture and performance improvement? Learn about the 90-Day Culture and Performance Quick-Start Program

Editor’s Note: read Tim’s most popular CultureU post: 8 Culture Change Secrets Most Leaders Don’t Understand

CultureUniversity.com is the premier workplace culture educational blog with a mission of positively impacting society on a global scale through workplace culture awareness, education, and action.

The following posts had the highest traffic on CultureU in 2015:

#10 – Can We Reverse the Decline in Trust?

By Edward Marshall

Say it ain’t so! This post starts with an interesting but sad point that “distrust is the new normal”.  Fear is unfortunately a greater driver of behavior than trust in many organizations. Leaders need to emphasize collaborative leadership and learn five key elements of trust to transform their cultures to trust-based, collaborative enterprises.

#9 – Goodbye Mission Statement. Hello Manifesto.

By John Bell

“The outcomes of mission statements and manifestos are miles apart.”  A purpose or mission statement might be a good start but learn the six critical components of a potent manifesto.

#8 – 8 Ways to Effectively Communicate Your Culture to Your People

By Laura Hamill

How do you manage and communicate your culture? Laura shares ways to intentionally shape your norms, values, and beliefs in order to positively impact the workplace culture.

#7 – What Employees Really Want (and How To Give It To Them)

By Jacob Shriar

Jacob takes an interesting angle in this post to define what employees “really” want and then shares how to give it to them.  Engagement can’t be an afterthought anymore.

#6 – The quickest way to find out what’s really valued (and how to change it)

By Carolyn Taylor

Where can we make the most visible day-to-day decisions to reflect our values?  This post takes things a step further with additional insights about taking action as an individual and as a team.

#5 – Stop Trying to Motivate Your Employees – and What To Try Instead

By Jon Robinson

A thriving workplace culture is at the foundation of motivation and success in organizations. Learn 14 characteristics to determine if your workplace is thriving.

#4 – The Art of Leadership and Riding a Bicycle

By Tom Crane

The bicycle image in this post was shared like crazy on social media! Tom breaks down this bicycle metaphor into critical components for leadership and explains why “you need it all!”

#3 – Five ways to embed a culture of happiness

By Nic Marks

Happiness is a subject that’s just as misunderstood as culture. Nic is surprised by how watered down and insincere happiness can be when applied in the workplace. Learn more about the focus points needed to embed a culture of happiness.

#2 – 12 culture change insights from a workplace culture consulting legend – Larry Senn

By Tim Kuppler

Larry Senn has arguably been a part of more large-scale culture transformations than any other individual in the world.  He’s the founder and chairman of the culture-shaping firm Senn Delaney, a Heidrick & Struggles company. He’s the most inspiring and passionate culture expert I have met. I strongly encourage you to review the 12 insights and the complete video interview.

#1 – Workplace Culture vs. Climate – why most focus on climate and may suffer for it

By Tim Kuppler

Interest in the subject of culture is growing but there’s tremendous misinformation about what culture is and how to nurture and/or evolve it effectively. Learn how to tell the difference between culture and climate, and use both to increase effectiveness.

I’ll be honest with you. I am happy to see this specific post with the highest CultureU traffic in 2015 and it isn’t because I wrote it. It’s because it goes to the heart of why CultureUniversity.com exists. I spent 15 years as a top leader thinking I was dealing with true culture transformation and later realized most of it was dealing with climate. I am not alone so let’s accelerate your culture learning curve with this post and the content on CultureUniversity.com. The vast majority of “culture” research, assessments, books, blog posts, and other advice are actually focused on climate. Climate is VERY important but it’s critical to understand the underlying culture and fundamentals about culture change if you are interested in sustainable change.

Next year on CultureUniversity.com

2015 was a year of transition for CultureU.  We launched the site in 2014 with support from Edgar Schein, Larry Senn, Richard Barrett, Alan Williams, Scott Beilke, Edward Marshall and others. We now have 38 culture experts and enthusiasts from across the world contributing their insights. Thank you to all the contributors, CultureU wouldn’t exist without your interest in sharing what you have learned. Thank you to Rob Cooke for supporting CultureU even though I transitioned to a role at Human Synergistics. Thank you to Kalani Iwi’ula for his excellent blog coordination and Jason Bowes for creating the weekly quote images. What will you see next year:

1. Greater collaboration across authors and experts to bring clarity to the subject of culture: We can’t expect culture clarity to emerge organically in society if experts can get on the same page about culture and culture change fundamentals.
2. Posts on solutions for common culture problems impacting many organizations: What’s the role of boards, CEO’s, leadership teams, front line supervisors and others in change efforts? How do you gain the involvement of key stakeholders and what do change efforts look like? What are common obstacles that emerge and how do you overcome them?
3. Stories and examples of making an impact in society: Culture is critical in all types of organizations. How are organizations making an impact in their local communities and with problems in society related to education, government, healthcare and other areas?
4. Announcements regarding partnerships and other collaborative efforts in the culture space: We need to accelerate our efforts to make a meaningful impact related to culture awareness, education, and action.

In short, we will be part of a movement to change the way the world thinks about culture and culture change. If you are interested in being part of this journey and contributing a post to CultureU, see our guest post guideline. One final “thank you” goes to all of our readers. Your feedback, questions, ideas, and sharing of content on social media are a major part of the journey.

Culture University Video Interview

One of the greatest business challenges is effectively changing a workplace culture.  What if it’s an extremely large, global corporation? Some might view it as an unsurmountable challenge.  Not Larry Senn. He has arguably been a part of more large-scale culture transformations than any other individual in the world.  He’s the founder and chairman of the culture-shaping firm Senn Delaney, a Heidrick & Struggles company.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him as part of his gracious support of CultureUniversity.com, where he provides regular insights on best practices in culture change as one of our esteemed faculty members (see the full video interview – link).  The insights he shared, and his regular columns, should help us all more effectively manage culture change.

Insight #1: Culture is the key to success and, for some, it’s the key to survive

I went out to do traditional consulting work…What I quickly found was it was easier to decide on change than to get people to change. The more companies I looked at, it seemed they were all a bit like dysfunctional families. They had turf issues and trust issues, resistance to change, and it was very easy to do things in some companies but it was almost impossible in others. I think my epiphany came when I went to work with Sam at Walmart in the early days, helping him design the original supply chain when he had his vision of taking low cost goods to rural America. It was so easy to work there. At the same time, I was trying to work on change at Woolworth. I remember flying from Bentonville to New York, and going into their meeting. Their only purpose seemed to be to maintain the status quo. I said to myself, ‘You know, this little company is going to take over the world; this one’s going to die’. That insight led to my doctoral dissertation – the first field research on corporate culture in 1970 and to founding Senn Delaney as the first culture shaping firm in 1978.”

“I’m convinced that the greatest predictor of a company’s future is its culture.”

{Hear Larry Senn talk about the business connection for culture in the following clip.}

Insight #2: The “Jaws of Culture” chew up most initiatives

“Most companies invest in their strategy, initiatives, processes and structure. All that stuff has to go through what we call the Jaws of Culture. The jaws are the dysfunctions of an organization.  Are there turf issues or is it one company? Do people blame one another when things don’t work or are they accountable? Is there a positive spirit or not in the organization? Do people feel appreciated or not? The primary Jaws of Culture in most organizations today are lack of collaboration and agility, and not much of a learning mindset for the kind of world we’re in. No matter what the initiative is, those things are going to chew it up, and those are the Jaws of Culture.”

Insight #3: Leaders must commit to shaping workplace culture to become ‘one company’

Culture has really hit the tipping point because, in addition to the need for agility, most companies are very fragmented. Most big corporations out there today are a collection of acquisitions or geographies or business units or product lines; they aren’t one company. They really can’t afford to be fragmented today…for the customer, for costs, for anything else. So, one of the big cries out there is this ‘one company’ theme…but they’re too inefficient [and] there are very few fully integrated companies. The answer is creating an allied or shared business model, and that only works with the right culture. It means creating a culture where decisions are made for the greater good with everybody having some common higher cause. Creating one company is critical today for big corporations to succeed.”

Insight #4: Diagnose the organization. Define the behaviors you have and the behaviors you need in a From-To model.

“Every organization has a culture. The only question is: Does it shape you or do you shape it? In most organizations, people just step in and pick up behaviors of people who are there. That’s what culture is about, and yet you can systematically and intentionally shape a culture…It’s a pretty rational model we use. Step 1 is to diagnose the organization. Given what you’re facing, what are the behaviors you need and what are the behaviors you have? At this moment in time, in order to execute your strategies, what are those shifts you need to make happen? That’s the diagnostic. We then create a From-To model: Shift from being hierarchical to being more empowering. Shift from being siloed to being more collaborative. Shift from being resistant to change to being very agile.

Insight #5: Culture shaping needs to start with behavior change at the top because organizations are ‘Shadows of Their Leaders’.

“Culture shaping does need to start at the top of the organization. In fact, the principal finding of my dissertation was that organizations become ‘Shadows of Their Leaders’. It happens in life; it happens in families…It’s my parents who have affected me. I affect my company; so that’s how it works. You do need to start at the top but those habits are pretty deeply entrenched.”

Insight #6: Engineer ‘aha moments’ to shift underlying thinking and shift behavior

The challenge I faced after doing research on culture was “how do you change habits of adults?” I took my cue from a Social scientist Kurt Lewin who said, “When we’re young, we’re like a flowing river, and then we freeze.” We get stuck in our habits. How do you get unstuck? Most models of change today are what we call behavioral models. People define a set of values and then they communicate them. They talk to people about them. That doesn’t tend to change people. We all know we should do things we don’t do.

What does change people? Well, let’s take someone who had a poor diet and didn’t exercise, and then he or she has a heart attack. All of a sudden you see that person walking around the block and eating greens. What happened?  He or she had a wake-up call. As an engineer by training, I thought, why don’t I engineer epiphanies? Engineer ‘ahas’ so you can shift that underlying thinking that shifts behaviors.

Let me give you an example. In the Midwest, there’s this phenomenon called Midwest polite. In fact, there’s an extreme version of it in Minnesota called Minnesota nice…What that comes from is all of those people like me — I’m from Wisconsin; our moms told us if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.  So, that’s an underlying belief I have. Well, I can have an insight that says, ‘Gee, as a leader, if you work for me, my job is to help develop you. In fact, if I don’t give you appreciative and constructive feedback, you won’t grow. I’ll let you down. I’ll let the organization down. I won’t be a good leader.’ So, if I can have that shift in mind-set through an epiphany, and change that behavior, then I’m going to really execute differently going forward. So, the second step in the process is what we call  ‘unfreeze’.

Insight #7: Reinforce the targeted behaviors in many ways

“Culture is kind of the water we swim in…We typically form a culture leadership team in an organization. Once companies are really clear on the ideal culture they want, then they need to adjust their hiring selection process, new employee orientation, performance management programs, succession planning, communications, etc. to align with it.

{Hear Larry Senn talk about culture being at a tipping point and the power of purpose in the following clip.}

Insight #8: The noble cause or purpose of an organization can serve as a North Star and bring out the best in people.

I think purpose is where culture was at about 10 years ago. We want to get people to really sign up for different behaviors because they have a higher purpose. The idea of an organization discovering what its noble cause or higher purpose is brings out the best in people. We tend to be at our best when we are connected to a purpose that is not about us, but about something bigger than us.  We work with all of our clients in helping them be clearer on what their purpose is. Why do they exist? What do they contribute to society? If they can have a North Star as a purpose, and then the right kind of behaviors, [since] culture is to fulfill that purpose, they tend to get the highest results.

{The Senn Delaney purpose on the wall of their Huntington Beach, CA office}

Insight #9: Mood is critical for exhibiting the best behaviors and building healthy cultures.

“Every moment of every day in our lives, we ride this thing I call the ‘Mood Elevator’. It is what our feelings are at any moment in time. At the higher levels, we’re creative, resourceful, grateful, and innovative. At the lower levels we’re insecure, worried, bothered, self-righteous. Think about it in terms of fulfilling purpose. When we’re about purpose, we tend to be at our best and operating at the higher states of the Mood Elevator. Those are the times that we are at the top or our game, where we feel we can handle whatever is coming at us. It’s those times where you are in the flow and you’ll have an insight or idea, and you don’t know where it came from.

Learning to ride the Mood Elevator is important because we all won’t always be up. In fact, have you ever said something to a loved one you wish you could take back? Have you ever written an email that you shouldn’t have written? Where were you on the Mood Elevator? You were likely at the lower floors, where your thinking is unreliable. The role it plays is this: Healthy cultures are cultures in which more people are operating at their best more of the time, in the higher states of the Mood Elevator. That’s when they have the best behaviors to create a culture.”

Insight #10: The single biggest factor in successful culture change is the CEO

“The biggest single factor is the CEO.  If they have the passion, if they stay the course, culture change will work. Typically, if there are problems, it may have [been] the result of a change in a CEO mid-stream or a CEO with not enough commitment for the longer term to make culture change happen. That’s rare because what’s interesting about this system is that it’s a pull system versus a push system. Most people would rather live up the Mood Elevator.”

Insight #11: It’s critical to have sufficient energy, momentum and mass

“The first misconception is that it takes a lot of time to change a culture. What’s interesting is that the biggest criticism I get from CEOs is, ‘Why didn’t you talk me into doing this sooner?’ I was talking to one the other day who said, ‘Gosh, it just seems like too big an undertaking.’ I explained that culture is not another initiative. Culture is the enabler of all initiatives. Once you begin to get it right, then decisions flow faster, and ideas flow better to make it happen. So, it does need to start with a serious commitment with the senior team in the organization, and those leaders need to show up differently. People need to say, ‘What’s going on up there; why are they talking to me differently? Why are they coaching me now when they didn’t used to do that?’ ’’

Insights #12: Leaders must be curious. It supports a growth mindset which creates more innovation and agility.

“At no time in our history has there been [a greater] need to be able to be agile because we don’t know exactly what’s coming at us. We don’t know where the next Uber is. We don’t know. Unless  your organization can read the signs, and adjust quickly, it may not survive. One of the biggest things our clients are asking us for is to help us be more agile and innovative.

There’s a state at the middle level on the Mood Elevator… curious. Curious is a very powerful level because if someone does something you don’t understand, you either go to judgment or curiosity.  If you live at curiosity, then that creates a growth mind-set, which creates more innovation and agility.”

What troubles Larry Senn most about the state of culture in organizations?

“What troubles me most is that people aren’t going about it comprehensively enough. It’s like everybody says they’re in the culture business no matter what they do.  And everybody has a little piece of culture, but it’s the kind of thing where you have to really hit the culture with critical mass; you can’t just go around the edges. I think people are not taking on culture holistically enough, and they’re also trying to do it intellectually. People can define culture, and they can measure culture, but the biggest reason cultures can’t change is that they can’t change the behaviors of people.  Unless you really have some kind of process that creates these deeper-level commitments to life change in people, you’re not going to get the best culture.”

Culture is a hot topic. It was the Merriam-Webster “Word of the Year” for 2014. Leaders and experts across the world are talking about how to develop an agile culture, implement a lean culture, overcome the culture clash in acquisitions, and many other areas of culture change. Unfortunately, the reality is that most of these leaders and experts are actually focusing their efforts on climate and not dealing with the deeper, more powerful subject of culture. I didn’t understand the difference until the past few years.

What is Organizational Climate?

Organizational climate is the shared perceptions and attitudes about the organization. The most visible area of a focus on culture that is actually climate is all the effort to measure and improve employee engagement. This focus on engagement did yield results for some organizations. Unfortunately, according to Gallup’s Employee Engagement Study, the number of employees engaged at work has barely moved over the course of the last 15 years.

You know the drill. Employees are asked, for example, whether they know what’s expected of them, whether their opinions seem to count, and if their manager is paying attention to them. Organizations compile the results and “action plans” are developed. It’s not just engagement surveys where people think they are getting to culture. The vast majority of so-called “culture” surveys and “great workplace” surveys primarily measure climate. Employees might be asked if the mission is clear, benefits are good, management shows appreciation, teamwork is encouraged, or whether the organization is effective at managing change. Climate, climate, climate.

The Deeper Side of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture is the shared beliefs and assumptions about the organization’s expectations and values. These “unwritten rules” and perceived expectations drive our behavior in organizations. Edgar Schein, arguably the #1 culture expert in the world,  once said “90% of our behavior in organizations is driven by cultural rules.” When faced with problems, challenges, or goals it often helps to understand the aspects of culture that either inhibit or support effectiveness. To surface these aspects of culture, employees should be asked, for example, if they are expected or implicitly required to:

• check decisions with superiors
• work to achieve self-set goals
• point out flaws
• take on challenging tasks
• never make a mistake
• not “rock the boat”
• make a “good impression”
• know the business

These examples are from the Human Synergistics Organizational Culture Inventory, the most widely used and heavily researched culture assessment in the world.  We all have experienced the positive and negative impact of these perceived expectations. In some cases they help to propel our thinking forward to “act on what we know” and accomplish great things with constructive behavior. In other cases, they lead to passive or aggressive behavior that undermines our effectiveness. Some organizations may actually be paralyzed by fear and plagued with inaction when they need the exact opposite.

Why focusing on climate can be a problem

Schein wrote in the The Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate: “A climate can be locally created by what leaders do, what circumstances apply, and what environments afford. A culture can evolve only out of mutual experience and shared learning.”

There is value in understanding how both climate and culture are influencing our work to effectively manage problems, challenges, or goals. The results of a focus on changing organizational climate may lead to some quick wins, like managers temporarily engaging employees more effectively, but the improvements may be short-lived unless a culture shift occurs. I’ll share a clear example.

A culture change cut short after climate success

I was appointed president of a manufacturing organization. It was clearly a command and control culture. I vividly recall a top leader yelling at me: “You are from the new school that’s all about hugs and kisses, I am from the old school that’s about performance and giving people a swift kick in the ass when they need it.” You can imagine what the culture was like as this aggressive behavior at the top led to extremely passive and conventional behavior on the front lines since most employees only did what they were told.

We embarked on a journey to quickly transform the organization. We managed three phases of improvement over a two year period to support shared-learning and results:

Stabilize: We had a massive company-wide focus on improving quality as we managed a roadmap of improvements related to clarifying the vision, team behaviors we should expect from each other, strategies, goals, measures, management systems, communication systems and motivation (reward & recognition). We focused on roadmap of organization-level improvements (website no longer available) to create a “common core” in this phase while reinforcing new expectations to plan ahead, make and meet commitments, and cooperate with others.

Grow: We learned from the first phase of improvement together as a team and applied those insights to a company-wide focus on sales growth. We continued all the habits we started in the first phase and refined the approach as we included new strategies, goals, and measures targeted at growth. We implemented regional cross-functional teams so we could learn from our organization-level focus in the stabilize phase and apply it to a sub-team approach in this phase. The expected behaviors defined in the first phase were now applied in this new team structure.

Innovate: We launched a cross-functional innovation team that met weekly and launched industry-leading innovations in a short period of time. We were ready for an innovation focus after building the “common core” and improving collaboration across sub-groups / teams. We also implemented a dramatically improved individual employee development system.

Our business results improved substantially over the two years in nearly every area. The board member I reported to said “I can’t believe the change.” We conducted a “culture” survey at the beginning of this journey but it was one that primarily measured areas of climate. We moved from the lowest possible score in eight of twelve categories to the top 20^th percentile in most areas as the climate was transformed.

I was happy about the improved results, but was the culture completely transformed in two years as the survey results would have led many to believe? No way. I knew that while these climate results had clearly skyrocketed the culture journey was just underway.

I ended up leaving the organization to accept a role in a part of the country that was a better fit for my family. An acquisition was finalized soon after I left and I was replaced by someone with a dramatically different leadership style. The operating model we built began to fall apart and results deteriorated very fast. The Board decided to sell the assets to its largest competitor and the story was over. Climate success was short-lived and overshadowed by the fragile state of our developing organizational culture.

The bottom line

It’s critical to understand both climate and culture, and the differences between the two.

• Understand what you are measuring. Don’t be fooled by engagement or other climate measures and think you are measuring the behavioral norms and underlying assumptions (we have all experienced the power of these “unwritten rules”).
• Don’t get stuck on the climate treadmill since your results will change as leaders, workload, policies, and other areas change. Climate is extremely important but don’t lose sight of culture. Schein gives us great advice about not being fooled by the illusion that when you change behavior you are changing the underlying culture.
• If you are interested in sustainability, it’s critical to understand how culture is both helping and holding back your progress as you deal with problems, challenges, and goals.
• Use a phased approach to constructive culture change so you build on shared learning and experience as you manage work on top performance priorities. This basic culture roadmap and free webinar may help  (website no longer available).
• It’s your culture that endures as people come and go from your organization and, ideally, allows you to effectively deal with new problems, challenges, and goals.

Still having difficulties understanding the difference between culture and climate? Watch this video from CEO Robert Cooke from our 2nd Annual Ultimate Culture Conference.

Need some help getting started with culture and performance improvement? Learn about the 90-Day Culture and Performance Quick-Start Program

It’s been an exciting first year for CultureUniversity.com.  We launched in March, 2014 with the purpose to positively impact society on a global scale through culture awareness, education, and action. I was frustrated with all the superficial and incorrect information about the subject of workplace culture and wanted to bring visibility to what some of the top experts in the world have to say about the subject.

Culture is a powerful force but we’re buried in tips, keys, and levers that barely touch the surface of what it takes to effectively shape or change an organization’s culture with a direct and sustainable impact on performance.

We built a solid base of content in 2014 and all but one article also ran on TLNT.com, one of the largest and fastest growing HR blogs. Our top 10 posts in 2014 were:

#10 – The future of customer experience improvement is all about culture – by Tim Kuppler

I researched numerous approaches to customer experience improvement and found many “expert” consulting firms in this field barely touch the subject of culture.  It’s not good enough to have a great product or service these days; you need an exceptional customer experience and culture is a key to success.

#9 – There’s no ‘butts’ about it, purpose driven companies have much to teach the world – by Larry Senn

CVS Health made big news in 2014 with their purpose-driven decision to stop selling tobacco and to forego a source of over $2 billion in revenue.  Learn about purpose-driven companies from the founder of the workplace culture company that originally worked with CVS when they defined their purpose: Helping people on their path to better health.

#8 – Using the trust matrix to build the seven levels of trust – by Richard Barrett

The insightful and clear trust matrix diagram had tremendous sharing across Twitter.  The article also includes an explanation of culture entropy, definitions of the components of trust, and an exercise for building trust.

#7 – Cultural transformation only comes with personal transformation – by Larry Senn

The title is so true and barely touches the surface of the great content in this article.  Learn what it takes for personal and organizational transformation including unfreezing our underlying thought system, using an inside-out approach with teams, helping people make a personal connection to the change and much more.

#6 – Leadership, humble inquiry & the state of culture work – Tim Kuppler interview of Edgar Schein (Part 2)

What an honor for a culture enthusiast like me to personally meet Edgar Schein and for him to graciously share his insights as CultureUniversity.com was launched. He has such a clear and consistent approach to culture and leadership.  It was interesting to hear that what troubles him is the “misuse of the word culture.”  An interesting point in a year when culture was identified as the “word of the year” by the Meriam-Webster dictionary.  Learn more about how culture is catching on (the good news and bad news),leadership, humble inquiry, and Edgar Schein’s future work in this post.

#5 – Organizational culture has reached its tipping point, yet many culture change initiatives fail for four key reasons – by Larry Senn

Yes, organizational culture has reached a tipping point and most CEO’s know culture can have a strong impact on business results.  Unfortunately, most culture change efforts fall short of their potential for four reasons.

#4 – The first principle of successful culture shaping – the shadow of the leader – by Larry Senn

Larry Senn is on the countdown once again with the important concept of the shadow of the leader. Most of us have experienced this shadow but many CEO’s aren’t personally engaged in leading culture change.  This insightful article includes videos with Yum! Brands Chairman and CEO, David Novak, and USAA CEO, Joe Robles.

 #3 – The four roots of engagement – by Jim Haudan

This article was extremely popular on social media and TLNT.com.  Engagement “naturally occurs” when a company culture incorporates these four roots. Learn more about the four roots of engagement in this article which also includes an associated video.

#2 – 10 clear principles for the 96% that need culture change – by Tim Kuppler

I wrote a popular TLNT.com article about a survey from Strategy& where 96% of respondents said culture change was needed in their organization in some form.  I was somewhat critical of the recommendations that accompanied the results.  Someone at Strategy& sent me a follow-up article a few months later that was titled 10 Principles for Leading Change Management.  These recommendations were dramatically better and I covered them, along with some personal commentary, in this article.

#1 – Culture fundamentals – 9 important insights from Edgar Schein – Tim Kuppler interview of Edgar Schein (part 1)

This article was the most popular by a wide margin.  It’s likely a result of the timeless and clear fundamentals shared by Edgar Schein.  I love his point about how “culture can be a bottomless pit” and the importance of focusing on a business problem, challenge, or goal.  Learn about this and the other important insights in this article.

What about 2015 at CultureUniversity.com?

We’ll build on this outstanding foundation of content with additional insights from our current faculty and guests along with new faculty and guests.  We’ll hopefully increase our post frequency if we find a major sponsor to off-set the costs and we’ll be adding a clear subject directory so CultureU becomes a well-organized repository of outstanding workplace culture insights on most related topics.

Thank you for all of your comments, sharing, and support!  I also want to thank all of our faculty and guests for sharing their content to improve workplace culture awareness, education, and action.

When you think about companies that provide an incredible customer experience, it’s no coincidence they are the exact same companies that have amazing cultures. Think Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Zappos, Nordstroms…great customer service and great workplace cultures since culture is the ultimate driver of a sustainably exceptional customer experience.

“Customer experience” is a hot subject these days but many organizations continue to put their front line employees in the middle of a horrible customer experience and their employees are sick of being in that position.

It’s not good enough to have a great product or service; you need an exceptional customer experience.

One example of a terrible customer experience

We all have experienced our customer service nightmares…at a restaurant or hotel, filing a warranty claim, or, my favorite, dealing with phone customer service systems.  I may be overly sensitive to this insanity but here’s a recent example:

• I joined a great new company and traveled to their headquarters in Chicago. I stopped for gas during the drive back to Michigan and my credit card was declined.
• I called my bank, PNC, and went through the countless phone options to talk to a representative. She said a security hold had been placed on my account and I would need to talk to their loss prevention group. “They don’t start until 8 AM so you will need to call back.” I asked to talk to a supervisor and she said that was not possible. I asked if a message could be left for their loss prevention group to call me and she said that’s not possible. She recorded a complaint on my behalf and seemed just as frustrated as me.
• I called back and finally connected with loss prevention to find out my account was part of a huge data breach at Home Depot that impacted as many as 56 million cards and it was placed hold due to a charge out of state. I verified the charge was not fraud but she said my card could only be used as a debit card and I would not be able to use it for credit card transactions. They would send me a new card.
• I received the new card, activated it, and tried to use it for gas again…declined. You know the routine…call customer service. Oh no – it’s before 8 AM again and I’ll need to call back to talk to loss prevention. I told the representative it wasn’t his fault but they have horrible customer service. He was nice and told me he heard the same thing from others that same morning.
• I finally reached loss prevention, they apologized, and they re-set my card to resolve the situation. I still don’t understand why a multi-billion dollar bank that places loss prevention holds on cards 24 hours a day wouldn’t have representatives available to deal with those holds at all times.

Sure, I was frustrated. The employees caught in the middle of this terrible customer experience were just as frustrated. They were unfortunately handicapped by policies, processes, and technology that speak volumes about the broader culture at PNC. I am not ready to nominate them for the Customer Service Hall of Shame due to the consistently positive experience I had in visits across many branches. This one experience does highlight problems and opportunities I am sure many customers and employees have previously identified.

Customer experience must be a top priority

A great product or service is just table stakes these days. The complete customer experience is the ultimate driver of customer loyalty and growth. 93% of senior executives say customer experience is one of their top three priorities and 70% of organizations are currently managing initiatives to provide a more consistent customer experience.

The answer is not jumping to customer feedback, process mapping, and training.

Forrester research released a report titled: Market Overview – Where to get Help with Culture Transformation. As the co-founder of CultureUniversity.com, I read the report with great anticipation. I expected to see some of the pioneers in the culture transformation space like Human Synergistics, Senn Delaney, Denison, the Barrett Values Centre and others. I was very surprised to see only one contributor to CultureU covered (Root Inc.). I reviewed all 14 companies featured to see if I had been living under a rock the last 20 years and missed their leadership in the culture transformation space.

Forrester concluded these companies fell in two groups. Culture transformation specialists that “transform their clients’ cultures into ones that are customer-obsessed by shifting specific employee behaviors through training and coaching.”  Interesting, do you think training and coaching would have helped to change anything with my PNC example? The second group included customer experience specialists that “offer a broader suite of customer experience consulting services.” The services provided by these experts were all over the map. Some appeared to grasp key culture fundamentals while others oversimplified the challenge by focusing on their process to close the gap between a current customer experience and a target customer experience.

Taking action to improve customer experience

Simon Sinek said “customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.” Your complete customer experience is a direct reflection of your culture. If you are truly serious about improving customer experience, your improvement approach should include the following basics as part of a broader strategy:

1. Start with purpose and/or mission: your customer experience commitment must be clearly connected to your purpose or mission. The Southwest Airlines purpose is a great example: To connect people to what’s important in their lives though friendly, reliable, and low-cost air travel. Have you clarified your purpose or mission and clearly defined the unique customer experience you promise to deliver?
2. Clarify a focused vision: Some organizations are ready for a full customer experience mapping effort but most are not. Results are required in some form for any new cultural attribute to form. Select an area or scope where substantial progress can be made, ideally in less than six months. Initial efforts to focus on new clients, converting new clients to repeat clients, and reducing customer complaints are good examples. Define the focus and 1-3 specific behaviors (often related to collaboration, communication, attention to detail, etc.) that will be reinforced as part of the improvement focus.
3. Engage your team in clarifying strategies, goals, measures, and actions: Improvement ideas are lurking everywhere. Utilize basic feedback and prioritization efforts to foster ownership as you engage your organization in the process. These initial priorities should be integrated in broader strategies and plans to support your vision in a high quality and, in some cases, unique and memorable way. The key is to not only focus on the tactics of improvement actions but in a way that continuously reinforces the very specific behaviors you identified in your focused vision.
4. Manage the implementation and communicate: Regular habits to review progress, refine action plans, and communicate status across the organization must be in place. It’s a learning process to improve customer experience and a workplace culture. Utilize feedback from employees and customers to continuously refine and expand on your improvement approach as you remain focused on the measures.
5. Visibly track progress, recognize, and reward: Track your key measure or measures in a visible way so status is clear. I worked with an award-winning health spa that was a great example. They initially focused improvement on converting new clients to a second visit. They tracked a simple counter for the number of clients that returned for a second visit each month. A board was posted that included the counter as well as a star for each individual returning visit for each technician (since most returning visits were to the same technician and not to a new technician each time). They recognized individuals as well as celebrating overall progress on this metric that more than doubled in one year.

The employees in this last spa example were proud of their individual and collective progress as opposed to the frustration experienced by the PNC employees that were stuck on the front lines of a bad customer experience. Your customer experience improvement approach might include deeper process mapping, training, or other improvements but don’t overlook these critical fundamentals.

Do you agree that sustainable customer experience improvement is all about culture change? What approaches have you used? Please comment on social media and I’ll respond to every point of view.

Editor’s Note: read Tim’s most popular CultureU post: 8 Culture Change Secrets Most Leaders Don’t Understand