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1-Page Summary of Change the Culture, Change the Game
Introduction
Culture is crucial to a company. It’s the way people think and act in an organization, which leads to certain results. Unfortunately, too many companies don’t manage their cultures well enough and end up with confusion, disengagement, and poor results from employees. Instead of letting culture just happen on its own without leadership guidance or intentionality, leaders should actively manage it so they can get better results.
Alaris Systems was not doing well when its CEO joined the company. It had good ideas and people, but it could not capitalize on them. Employees were afraid of taking risks because they did not want to lose their jobs if those risks didn’t pan out. The CEO realized that the problem with employee performance was a lack of confidence in employees’ ability to take risks, so he decided to change the culture by encouraging more risk-taking behavior among all employees.
Culture can be thought of as a pyramid, with experiences at the bottom and actions on top. Culture flows from experience to action, which is why leadership is so important in creating company culture.
Leadership is accountable for culture. A leader must first see what’s wrong with the current culture. He or she should then own that problem and try to fix it. Next, he or she needs to find a solution for the problem and execute it by getting his/her hands dirty, without blaming others when things go wrong. Lastly, he or she needs to model the desired results so others can follow him/her as well.
Defining the Results That Guide the Change
When you want to change or improve a culture, it’s essential that you first make sure everyone is on board with the changes. Therefore, before any changes are made, there must be agreement among all parties about what those changes will look like and how they’ll benefit everyone. To do this successfully, it’s crucial that the people involved know exactly what results are expected from them in the future so they can align themselves with those expectations.
For example, one fast food chain Fast Grill thought they had alignment around the results they wanted: Everyone on the executive team knew their goal was to increase profits by a certain percentage. However, when asked about how much of an increase in profit margin each person thought would be best, different people cited numbers ranging from 3.5% to 7.5%. They were then asked to clarify what number they actually believed would be most realistic and attainable for them to achieve; however, this only led them back into a discussion of which figure was most important for their parent company (which owned Fast Grill). In reality, the parent company demanded an increase in profit margin of 5.5%, but the executives at Fast Grill did not agree on whether that figure represented their own personal goals or if it should reflect what they could realistically accomplish given resources available and time constraints involved with attaining that goal. Once it became clear that everyone agreed on trying to reach a 5.5% increase in profitability over last year’s figures (and once it was made clear who set this target), every employee from top management down to busboys understood exactly what he/she needed to do for reaching those goals.
To change the culture of an organization, you need to focus on results. There are three steps in this process: First, define the desired results and make sure everyone understands them. Second, introduce these new goals throughout your entire company and remind people about them constantly. Third, monitor performance and hold people accountable for achieving those goals. This will help employees understand what they’re supposed to do when faced with a problem or situation that needs solving.
