“Its The Culture Stupid”

Bob Barbour, Director  Stagira Consulting Pty Ltd

Well, the famous quote from Bill Clinton was actually “it’s the economy, stupid”, in reference to  President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 presidential campaign.  Clinton successfully used this line to create a focus on a key underlying problem and the need for change. 

But right now the most significant underlying problem for many organisations including companies, institutions and governments is culture and the need to change behaviours.

In my experience of leading cultural change over the last 20 years culture is one of the defining characteristics in the success and/or failure of any organisation or team.  

Let’s start with a couple of questions. 

Can you think of a time when the trust deficit in organisations has been so large?

And do we understand the role that culture has played in creating this massive problem?

It is absolutely clear today that many organisations across the world, including Australia, have a dire need to improve their culture. Everyday we hear and read about the fact that the culture of organisations needs to improve to ensure there is a greater focus on communities, people and customers above executive bonuses and corporate greed.

So whilst there is a heightened awareness about the importance of culture, most organisations have little idea about  what culture actually is, how to measure it [not via engagement surveys which are designed to measure engagement and not culture] and/or how to improve it.  

Indeed many organisations seem to be in denial about the need to understand and manage their culture, including senior leadership  and company directors. Some even appear to think that you can’t manage culture!

How do we know there is a widespread culture problem? 

Well, as the recent article by @Tim Kuppler (click here) articulates so well, “extremely serious culture crises” seem to be breaking out all over the world. Due to the power of social media, massive publicity about significant organisational malfeasance spreads quickly and severely damages the trust that is essential  between these organisations and their key stakeholders.

How can any organisation flourish in the long term when there is a breakdown in trust with their customers, shareholders and the people who work for them?

These cultural crises are generated through poor leadership – through  sub-optimal behaviours, which result in decisions that often generate short term gain at the expense of longer term trust with key stakeholders and the community at large. 

So it follows that an important role of leadership is to shape constructive behaviours in an organisation. This starts with their immediate team. 

Unfortunately, as Kuppler argues in his paper, there is a lot of evidence that few organisations proactively seek to understand and manage their culture. 

Proactively managing organisational culture involves:

· understanding what culture is 

· why it is important

· articulating the desired culture 

· measuring the current culture in your organization 

· developing a plan to improve it

· tracking progress against the plan and taking appropriate corrective action

To assume that your culture is ok, and will improve or look after itself without taking all of these steps indicates a strong belief in luck, chance and magic! Not generally regarded as a sound approach to good corporate governance, but in the case of cultural management it appears to be the most popular approach!

Or to put it another way, a useful analogy for corporate culture,  is our personal health. 

Imagine having limited or no knowledge of the key metrics for personal health. Imagine never measuring these. Imagine never having a medical checkup – a blood test, checking your blood pressure or your BMI. Imagine not having any targets for any of these important measures. 

You might get lucky and go through life without any health problems but I wouldn’t recommend this approach!  Individuals that understand these important measures, and who set health targets and actively manage their behaviour accordingly are generally healthier. They don’t rely on luck, chance and magic to be healthy and live longer

It’s pretty much the same with corporate culture. Hence the need to call out loudly and clearly, “ It’s the culture, stupid!”

So what can companies do to take the first step?

I recommend that Boards, senior leaders and HR practitioners would be well served by reading Tim Kuppler’s article, including taking the 12 Question Culture Challenge, and then seeking help from people with extensive cultural change experience. 

Rely on luck, chance and magic at your peril!