PrimeFocus™ Mini-Assessment: Complete the Self-Assessment
Change-Readiness Indicator: Complete the Assessment
Author: Primeast
Date: 03/10/2018
Organizational culture is what sets you apart from your competitors. It can also be the element that allows your competitors to catch up with you, and eventually overtake you. In this article, you’ll learn about how culture impacts the change process. You’ll also discover the key steps to create a culture of change in your organization.
Culture is the foundation of everything your organization stands for. It includes the values and beliefs that dictate individual and group behaviors.
The culture of an organization tells us much about it, including the way in which your organizational hierarchy operates. Culture defines your organization in many ways, such as whether it is inward or outward focused, innovative, flexible, or rigid. It tells us how to expect leaders to act and employees to behave.
Culture is created over many years. Culture reinforces the behaviors that it has created, and many people confuse these behaviors as being the organization’s culture. This is misinterpreted as the reason for success. When this happens, failure often follows. Examples of this include:
As the pace of change in the business world and in society speeds up, it is imperative to have a culture that embraces change – so that your organization doesn’t become the next Kodak or Blockbuster.
I won’t pretend that changing culture is easy. After all, your organizational culture has been developed over years. Many of your employees have probably been with the organization for years. However, given the right motivations and with a structured approach, it is possible to establish a culture of change that will allow your leaders to guide change.
To change your organizational culture, take these steps:
With the definition of your culture of change established, it is now time to put it into practice.
You will need to break the old culture and replace it with the new. You will need to plan and execute a strategy that enables people to unlearn the old values and the behaviors it supported. Simultaneously, you will need to embed the new values and mission that will combine to guide the behaviors you intend: those behaviors that will encourage innovation, creativity, and a willingness to change.
How do you support this? There are several important elements, most notably:
If your organization’s culture doesn’t support innovative, creative, and change-orientated behaviors, then it should be addressed. Imperative to this is enabling your leaders to guide change.
To discover how a Change Agent Bootcamp and coaching in consulting and facilitating will help your organization and leaders produce lasting change, contact Primeast today.
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