Every organization’s got one. It’s either the hero or the villain, but seldom an in-between.
Organizations that are confronted with increasingly competitive environments sooner or later find themselves facing a “culture change.” But before an organization’s culture can be changed, what exactly it is, and how it got to be must be understood.
An organization’s culture, simply put, is the norm of behavior that describes the organizational responses toward its stakeholders. The responses are bell shaped, normally distributed by nature. The sharper the curve the more pronounced the behavior and the result.
A simpler way to look at organizational culture is by observing its habits and its rituals. Moving from organization to organization you’ll find an inordinately rich palette of habits and rituals that give each organization its unique character and identity. For the most part every organization is after the same thing. But their cultures, their rituals and habits, are substantively different and ultimately define the results.
Habits are hard to break. Culture change, no matter how badly needed is no walk in the park. Habits are in one instance an organization’s strength. In others they are an organization’s nemesis. Breaking the habit of “. . . the way we’ve always done it” is as difficult as breaking the addictive habit of smoking.
Culture is a continual evolution and in turnarounds a revolution. Culture change can only be lead. The mediating skill of “leading” has become a prerequisite for business success and will be so for the foreseeable future. Finding and/or grooming it is the challenge that all corporate boards and business ownership face.
