Show Notes
Why Culture Change Efforts Fail
According to Philip Atkinson, in How to Become a Change Master, as many as 90% of major culture initiatives fail.
Without leadership, there is no change.
History of PROSAFE Culture Assessments
One of the first projects I ever worked on for PROSAFE was facilitating a culture assessment for the US Navy. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld had a mishap reduction policy for the military and we were able to participate in this effort through facilitation of our culture assessment process at various Navy bases across the country. For the past 20 years I have been heavily involved in culture assessments from the military, to chemical refineries, to various forms of construction companies from subcontractors to GCs.
It has been a highly enlightening experience. On one side of the fence, I was immersing myself in the laws and regulations, and equipment and technology related to the safety profession. On the other side of the fence I was learning so much about culture from the people who perform the work and those that manage the work.
It was amazing to me how the perceptions of the frontline were very different than the intentions of upper management. Where did middle management fall? Right in the middle. Most often, they shared some of the frustrations of the frontline combined with some of the great intentions of upper management.
So why do the majority of culture change efforts fail?
Many times, upper management doesn’t really understand what drives culture, how to change culture, or how hard and slow culture change actually is. This is not placing judgment on management. They simply don’t know what they don’t know.
One time I had a client call for some training services and after some conversation on the type of training needed the client made this statement, “I don’t want a safety program I want a safety culture”. Again, I am not placing judgment, just bringing to light the lack of awareness that may exist. The truth is, that client already had a safety culture. The words he used just didn’t match the thought he was having. The thought he was having was that he wanted a more improved safety culture than the one that currently existed in the organization.
I’m paraphrasing here but I’ve heard John Maxwell explain it like this: When companies say they want a culture, they already have one. What they really want is an intentional culture. What they currently have is an unintentional culture. An intentional culture is a constant uphill climb.
So let’s provide a little insight into what effective culture change efforts look like along with some struggles that companies may experience along the way.
Culture change is a Top-Down effort with a vision to become Bottom-Up.
Many organizations focus on the frontline employees when they want to change their culture. This is expected when the culture they want to change is the culture they see in their employees. Management is also looking at various departments in other ways on a frequent basis. How is this department performing financially, quality wise, safety performance, etc.? It’s only natural for management to look down the org chart when wanting to make a culture shift. But unfortunately that is the least effective effort to implement. Employees and middle managers are products of the management driven culture.
Consider this example; I have worked with several different subcontractors that work for most of the main large general contractors in our area. I always ask them, “Which general contractor has the strongest safety culture? Which has the weakest?” It’s interesting how the answers are almost always the same.
These projects consist of several hundred workers at any given time. The greatest percentage of warm bodies on the project are subcontractors. A very small percentage of human beings on these projects are general contractor management. Who drives the culture the most? The small group of managers at the top.
Changing culture starts at the very top; from there it flows into middle management and finally arrives at the front line. Many organizations want an employee driven culture, but it starts at the top.
Culture change is a wide arching overall approach vs. a targeted effort
Culture change is strategic, not tactical. You can’t fix a strategic problem with a tactical approach. Implementing tactical approaches, such as new programs, does not achieve the wide-ranging strategy of changing culture. How a program is implemented and its success is directly tied to the status of the current culture.
It’s easy to fall into the targeted approach trap. If management feels that the problem with the culture is select groups of employees, then it is only natural for them to try to change these small groups of employees. But again, these small groups of employees are products of the current culture, not drivers of the culture bus.
Culture Change Is Slow
This requires patience. In our “right now” world it is hard to develop the patience, celebrate the small wins and give the effort and time required to see the change. With our culture assessment clients we always recommend they wait at least 3-4 years before seeing any positive results in a future assessment.
Let’s say upper management decides to come up with a strong plan for changing culture. First they may come up with some required leadership, or coaching, or human error training for upper management and a separate version for middle managers. Developing the training plan, getting everyone through the training and then seeing the results of that training at the frontline level could take at least a year to even see a hint of it.
Training alone will not create a significant cultural shift. After the training, supervisors will most likely need coaching in the field to reinforce the concepts presented in the training. The time and resources for an effort such as this are great. For the frontline employee to actually witness these efforts in the field will take time.
Real, intentional culture change is slow……and requires a lot of patience.
Change Is Hard
It actually goes against the way our brains are wired. To make a change initiative a habit or normal behavior within the culture requires doing it 10,000 times, not 10, not 100. This actually requires creating a new neural pathway in the brain that becomes preferred over the old behavior.
If we send management to a class on effective coaching techniques it won’t result in effective coaches. A class is a great start but it is only one small effort made toward the change. It just generates awareness to coaching techniques.
The attendees of the class have to do the actual coaching in the field, get feedback from someone with expertise on the matter and continue to make it a normal behavior in their day to day activities. There must also be true accountability in some form for these new desired behaviors.
Great culture change efforts are never a one and done approach. They are focused so much more on the journey than on the destination.
Culture change is combining a technical approach with an emotional approach
There are technical things that need to be addressed within a culture change effort. Maybe how purchasing is handled, systems that don’t work that need to be revised or replaced. Maybe systems need to be created that don’t already exist. But all of these examples also require an emotional approach.
Questions that employees may be asking themselves:
1. Does this new procedure take away control from my position?
2. Will this new system implemented make my job harder, for the same pay?
3. Will this change effort cause my position in the company to lose value?
4. Should I be looking for a new job?
Even if management knows the answer is “No” to all of these questions, does the employee really know that? Is this emotional issue being addressed in the culture change effort? All these questions are related to fear. What are we doing to alleviate the fears of our employees as we initiate a culture change effort? If we are not doing anything about the emotional issue, we have a large portion of our organization that is already unexcited about putting any effort into the change.
Culture change requires whole brain thinking, combining practical steps with managing emotion. We need to apply rational-technical thinking, but equally balanced with political-behavioral thinking. Not only do we need intentional efforts for the technical side of the effort, we must be intentional with the emotional side as well.
The Need for Leadership Development
In all of our assessments over the past two decades, I can’t help but notice a commonality regardless of what type of industry we would assess. Whenever the results of an assessment were extremely positive, upper management was also extremely engaged in their own personal growth, learning effective leadership skills and constantly trying to better themselves.
Whenever the results of the assessments were very poor, there was no true, intentional effort to educate, observe and coach managers on effective leadership skills.
If you wanted to “target your efforts” for the purpose of culture change, the best target would be the personal growth of upper management, followed by a deep effort in developing middle management.
As said earlier, culture change requires rational-technical thinking combined with political-behavioral thinking. Leadership development is focused on the political-behavioral side. If this aspect of the effort is not given full attention, the rational-technical side can actually be hurt in the process. You can have the greatest new system in the world but if you don’t have the emotional buy-in of those driving the process it may just get pencil whipped and not even actually be used as intended…….even if it appears it is being implemented on paper.
Here’s an example of this: I have a client who has a system for assessing the work area before performing the task. In this example, a concrete truck driver is supposed to get out of their vehicle and assess the area before pouring concrete. They have a form that reminds them of issues to look for, overhead power lines, etc. Sounds good right? To rational-technical thinking it does. But what about the emotional side?
So here is what the concrete drive actually does. He pulls up to the job, pours the concrete and then pulls over out of the way before he leaves the project. He then fills out his assessment. Nuts right? Not really. There’s always more to the story.
When the concrete driver arrives to the job, the customer is screaming at him to get the concrete poured, rain is coming, or some other production pressure is behind the words of the customer. Management is checking on the driver, going through his assessments, making sure he has one for each pour. So to satisfy the customer and management, the driver pours the concrete first, and assesses the hazards of pouring it after it has already been poured. Why this craziness? Because the political-behavioral aspects of the system were not addressed. All we end up with is another useless piece of paper that makes management feel good that they are accomplishing change but the only true accomplishment is loading up the worker with more paperwork.
Now this assessment could be a great system, but only if the emotional side is also addressed. Hence the need for an intentional effort focused on leadership development, listening and communication skills, the power of influence, reading people, coaching, etc.
Underestimating the Power of Vision
Another issue that can greatly affect culture change efforts is underestimating the power of vision, or lack thereof. Does the vision paint a crystal clear picture of where the company wants to go? Is the vision broken down into little chunks where each participant can clearly see their part in the effort? What are the steps we will take along the way? What will the result actually look like? What are the challenges that we will face? Who are all the players that will lead this effort? How will they lead it?
When people want to give a great example of a vision that led to achieving the desired result, many point to President John F. Kennedy’s speech on taking America to the moon. In his speech he paints a crystal clear picture of the desired destination but with an excellent description of the challenges and each step along the way. When he talks about the rockets needed to accomplish the goal, he describes the details, how hard it will be, how it has never been done before. His vision speech inspired the nation and achieved the result desired.
Who’s driving the bus?
Since effective leadership and personal growth are requirements within a culture change effort it is imperative that the right people are leading the effort. In his book, Good to Great, James Collins says you need “The right people on the bus in the right seats….and the wrong ones off the bus.” This is more complex than just selecting the right people on day one. You may find that you have several differing personalities where some are the right fit today, some are in need of development and others are just not ready to lead the effort at this stage.
There are typically four emotional responses to any change efforts made by the organization:
· Enthusiasts
· Fence sitters
· Early adaptors
· Resistors
Enthusiasts typically have immediate buy in. They believe in the idea. They are jumping out of their seats to get to work and make the change.
Fence sitters are the ones who have seen efforts come and go in the past. This effort is perceived as the “new flavor of the month.” They view the effort as temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow, something different will show up in its place a few months down the road.
Early adapters will buy in after a little development. We need to pour in to this group as they can heavily influence the fence sitters.
Then there are resistors. There will be some who just do not want to change or adapt, at least not in this moment. Maybe they will eventually become late adaptors. Maybe they will not adapt. Regardless of their own life path, they cannot be allowed to drive the bus or they will constantly be pulling the effort off course.
Have you ever been driving your car and needed a wheel alignment? Remember how you were constantly pulling the steering wheel to drive straight down the road? That is the same effect of allowing resistors to lead a culture change effort. While some are working toward the goal, others may be working against it.
This one is hard. When you truly care about your employees it is hard to remove people from your organization that are hurting your culture. You can feel a responsibility for that employee’s wellbeing, a direct responsibility to how that individual feeds their family. But if you decide to keep them onboard, even if they refuse to grow, you can only go so far with your efforts. There is a ceiling to the growth you will achieve.
The #1 Focus is Leadership
So with all of these issues, the number one area of focus is a strong, consistent and intentional effort in the area of leadership development. It must include training for generating awareness, but it must also include observations in the field for continual development. And without accountability for the desired change, results will be minimal at best. What gets measured gets done.
20 years ago Behavior Based Safety was the popular buzz phrase at the time. It was a great idea to generate awareness and learn from the behaviors of employees. We would conduct culture assessments of companies that were trying to implement BBS systems and struggling. Most often the results would show that although BBS was a great system, it was dependent on leadership to support it.
Today we are consistently talking about the great science and understanding of human error. But I find myself saying a similar statement all the time: “Human error is a great science, but the science only works in your organization if you have the leadership to support it.”
If you want to change your culture, start at the top.