Changing your organizational culture is the toughest task you will ever take on. Your organizational culture was formed over years of interaction between the participants in the organization. Changing the accepted organizational culture can feel like rolling rocks uphill.
Organizational cultures form for a reason. Perhaps the current culture matches the style and comfort zone of the company founder. Culture frequently echoes the prevailing management style. Since managers tend to hire people just like themselves, the established organizational culture is reinforced by new hires.
The good news? Organizational culture change is possible. It requires understanding, commitment, and tools.
Steps in Organizational Culture Change
There are three major steps involved in changing an organization’s culture.
My earlier article discusses How to Understand Your Current Culture. Before an organization can change its culture, it must first understand the current culture, or the way things are now. Do take the time to pursue the activities in this article before moving on to the next steps.
Once you understand your current organizational culture, your organization must then decide where it wants to go, define its strategic direction, and decide what the organizational culture should look like to support success. What vision does the organization have for its future and how must the culture change to support the accomplishment of that vision?
The Essay on Planned Organizational Change
... organizational change failures. Many businesses have allowed small unofficial organizations to form within organizations; this creates internal “kingdoms” which prove fatal to organizational change. ... and don’t understand the need for change. Many people view any organizational change as &# ... necessary to sustain the current change effort. If planned change is to be successful, ...
Finally, the individuals in the organization must decide to change their behavior to create the desired organizational culture. This is the hardest step in culture change.
Plan the Desired Organizational Culture
The organization must plan where it wants to go before trying to make any changes in the organizational culture. With a clear picture of where the organization is currently, the organization can plan where it wants to be next.
Mission, vision, and values: to provide a framework for the assessment and evaluation of the current organizational culture, your organization needs to develop a picture of its desired future. What does the organization want to create for the future?
Mission, vision, and values should be examined for both the strategic and the value based components of the organization. Your management team needs to answer questions such as:
What are the five most important values you would like to see represented in your organizational culture?
Are these values compatible with your current organizational culture? Do they exist now? If not, why not? If they are so important, why are you not attaining these values? Take a look at the rest of the actions you need to take to change your organizational culture.
Plan the Desired Organizational Culture
The organization must plan where it wants to go before trying to make any changes in the organizational culture. With a clear picture of where the organization is currently, the organization can plan where it wants to be next.
Mission, vision, and values: to provide a framework for the assessment and evaluation of the current organizational culture, your organization needs to develop a picture of its desired future. What does the organization want to create for the future?
Mission, vision, and values should be examined for both the strategic and the
value based components of the organization. Your management team needs to answer questions such as:
The Term Paper on The types of organizational change
“Organisational change is an irreversible adoption of any feature of its strucutre, personel, products or processes” (J.Naylor) Today’s business environment is forcing entities for changes. If we would think from corporate point of view it is essential for the companies’ success to be in accordance with new markets demands. On the other hand, individuals are ruling the ...
What are the five most important values you would like to see represented in your organizational culture?
Are these values compatible with your current organizational culture? Do they exist now? If not, why not? If they are so important, why are you not attaining these values? Take a look at the rest of the actions you need to take to change your organizational culture.
What needs to happen to create the culture desired by the organization? You cannot change the organizational culture without knowing where your organization wants to be or what elements of the current organizational culture need to change. What cultural elements support the success of your organization, or not?
–For example, your team decides that you spend too much time agreeing with each other rather than challenging the forecasts and assumptions of fellow team members, that typically have been incorrect.
–In a second example, your key management team members, who must lead the company, spend most of their time team building with various members of the team on an individual basis, and to promote individual agendas, to the detriment of the cohesive functioning of the whole group.
