"Leadership Matters"
— A Management Newsletter —
Changing Culture — One Activity at a Time
We've all seen the signs: the posters and
coffee mugs and desk plaques reminding us to Innovate and
Win, that the Customer Comes First, that
Quality is Everything. Good CEOs ensure that the
people
at corporate "talk the talk." But corporate communication does not do
the work nor guarantee results. How do managers create or change
culture? What does it really take to "walk the talk" in your group or
team so as to achieve exceptional results?
Corporate Culture
Although people at work often talk about the company's culture, it
is not something they can do much about. At IBM, former CEO Louis
Gerstner tackled an entrenched and increasingly dysfunctional
culture, which had employees acting and thinking in
counterproductive ways (e.g., "respect for the individual" had been
transmuted into "entitlement for the individual"). Gerstner made it
his job to sow new sentiments in the entrenched, bureaucratic
culture. He thought it would take five years to change IBM's
culture, but reflected later that he underestimated how long it
would really take.1
While corporate executives must be keenly aware of the company
culture — the common ways people act and think at work — they cannot
change or create culture via edict or by simply rewriting mission
and values statements. Culture is abstract from the actual work as
it describes a general state of the enterprise. Ultimately, the
accepted and reinforced
behaviors of people doing the work determine culture.
Building Culture from the Bottom
Up
Changing culture is a function of managers leading
teams (working on specific activities) to achieve specific
results. While a negative corporate culture may have a clear impact
on people's performance, when people are effectively organized
(think of a group working on a specific activity or function), the
influences of the immediate work context will usually supersede any negative, prevailing
cultural norms of the company. That is, high-performing work groups
can succeed regardless of the larger corporate culture.
In late 2001, the biotech firm ImClone was denied FDA approval for
its highly anticipated cancer drug, Erbitux. By mid-2002, ImClone was
within hours of being delisted from Nasdaq. In addition, the
company was pilloried in the press for an insider-trading scandal
involving the firm's founder, Sam Waskal, and his famous friend,
Martha Stewart. Yet by 2004, and with the most of the same people,
ImClone had come all the way back to post a profit and move their
stock back from a low of $5 back above $80 — mostly because they
got Erbitux approved. Despite a toxic corporate culture, the
employees involved in the complicated drug approval process kept
working to get the drug approved — to the benefit of future patients
and the firm's shareholders.2
Management: Focusing People on the Work
Although the corporate culture takes years to
change, the good news for managers is that they can change the
culture in specific work activities fairly quickly through
effective organization. In addition to establishing clear common goals, effective
team leaders inject the work context with purpose and then focus people on performance, avoiding messages that end
up confusing or misdirecting.
Managers should avoid phrases like "I want..." or "You need to..."
or other phrases that focus people on individual perspectives rather
than team goals. They can misdirect through statements like "How do
you feel about..." or asking employees about preferences unrelated
to the actual work. By inserting personal questions like, "How was
your weekend?" when people are actually focusing on work, managers can
disrupt focus and undermine effectiveness.
Effective managers are consistent and disciplined about how they set
up situations for team activities; eventually, a culture
(expectations and sentiments) develops that guides future
activities. They do it by thinking carefully about what they say and
what they do — before they say or do it. Usually, they are able to establish cooperative
situations, where members can communicate, where they have common
understandings, and where they are committed to achievement of the
required results.
Employees at ImClone were committed to the cause of a drug they
believed would treat cancer. For IBM's Gerstner, corporate culture
gradually changed because managers down the chain were changing the
culture in their own contexts, one by one, leading teams that were focused on
results. Yes, Gerstner talked the talk by forming values statements,
slogans and new corporate mantras, but IBM's culture change was
achieved by those doing the work, one activity at a time.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
1Gerstner,
Jr., Louis. 2002. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? HarperBusiness.
2Tischler, Linda (Sept., 2004). The trials of ImClone.
Fast Company.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/86/imclone.html
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