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Click Here to downdoad the Slides.
3 October 2006
The views expressed here are the personal views of the participants and are not necessarily the views of their organisations. The following people were present at this mindstretch®:
After introductions and the agenda , Karen put up some slides which represented the contrasting views of culture change , and then Gary asked for the group to identify their definition of culture, as there was so little consensus on the concept from academic and popular writing.
The group came up with…
The group agreed that the term culture has a very broad umbrella of meanings – beliefs, norms, values, cognitions, emotions, practices, rules, routines.
The famous “catch all” is “the way things are done around here”.
Karen pointed out that often, the definition depends on the perspective you come from. Some writers see it as instrumental and defined in terms of its impact on performance (Peters and Waterman, Deal and Kennedy, Kotter – who sees it as the cement which fixes the changes that have been made earlier in his process).
Others see it as descriptive – where management can’t use it to DO anything, but that it’s capable of being studied, interpreted – for example, John Van Maanen and Gideon Kunda, Hugh Willmott, David Guest and Gerry Johnson, who uses a “cultural web” to help plot strategic change and identify the issues of change. Gary noted that he’d used the cultural web with clients and that it provided an interesting guide to the discussion.
Angela said that she wasn’t sure she could identify a culture in her organisation and thought that people might be conforming to the norms to fit in. She went on to say that in terms of change, you can identify how easy people find it to change – but that religious culture is less pliable and that working against those beliefs was very difficult.
Chris commented that he thought culture could be very subtle – but that if you didn’t “get it”, you didn’t get on.
Carol wondered whether it was measurable and asked what was meant by the term “hard”. Paul said that he thought that there was a danger when you looked at culture that people think it soft – but in his view things like language and symbols provide insight, and as they were all observable, could be viewed as hard. He went on to say that some of the measures used by Barclays to measure employee engagement were very “hard”, to justify the money spent on the exercise.
Carol thought that hard measures might be an ambition, but wasn’t convinced that we were there yet. Paul’s response was to give an example of his experience of call centres; being treated in one way (an outcome of the culture) would make him unlikely to return to the company (a hard outcome).
Moving the discussion on, Gary introduced the protagonists for culture change. Sue said immediately that she had used the Peters and Waterman extensively and that the training materials around it were excellent. She said that to make 1,000 things one percent better was a brilliant way to achieve change.
Paddy wondered if the Peters and Waterman had stood the test of time and Keith agreed that many of the principles they espoused had appeared in the quality literature. Gary pointed out that there were loads of people we weren’t going to include – Goffee and Jones, Dunphy and Stace, John Kotter, Charles Handy to name but a few of the famous ones, not to mention the hoards of individuals who release books and theories every year. He said that on Amazon.com, a search on “culture change” narrowed down to business and investing yielded more than 8,000 books.
He said that Peters and Waterman had opened the door for the Excellence school and then introduced the key elements of their approach. The authors consider that the “right” culture (an Excellent culture) could provide the basis for competitive advantage.
Karen commented that the idea was a huge success – it seemed to promise nirvana to organisations which had previously struggled to find an answer to the need for tight levels of control AND high commitment – after all, no set of rules could ever cover EVERYTHING in an organisation and management relies on the goodwill, creativity and good sense of their employees to make companies function.
Peters and Waterman examined 43 of Fortune 500's top performing companies. They started with a list of 62 of the best performing McKinsey clients and then applied performance measures to weed out what they thought to be the weaker companies. Characteristics of “Excellent” companies were:
Chris commented that he thought this was fascinating – that in some large organisations who had adopted the approach, these elements weren’t true – certainly not in all parts of the organisation. He thought that HSBC, for example, didn’t do a lot of this now.
Gary said that when IBM was struggling, countries were mandated by the corporate centre in New Jersey to be more flexible – the loose-tight properties. He pointed out that it was difficult for IBM senior managers to adopt these behaviours which would enable them to do this, having been guided from the centre for so long.
P&W are in no doubt that culture can be changed, and that it is well within the prerogative of managers to do so for the benefit of the organisation.
Paul pointed out that the words “values” and “culture” were being used interchangeably and thought that the management of values was different from that of culture. He felt that organisations have a responsibility to impose culture – but not values. Chris wondered if this was just values, or whether it meant behaviour.
Karen proffered her view that a value that was held internally, by an individual, and which was shaped by that person’s history, their background. Her view on culture was that it was something that came from the interaction between many people in an environment.
Turning to Deal and Kennedy , the debate on values continued. Deal and Kennedy see values as a key managerial concern. Deal and Kennedy's Corporate Cultures (1982) incorporated five critical elements:
We looked at the Deal and Kennedy model. They identified four types of culture which are likely to emerge based on two axis of risk taking and the speed of reward and feedback.
The Tough-Guy Macho Culture. Feedback is quick and the rewards are high. This often applies to fast moving financial activities such as brokerage, but could also apply to policemen or women, or athletes competing in team sports. This can be a very stressful culture in which to operate.
The Work Hard/Play Hard Culture is characterized by few risks being taken, all with rapid feedback. This is typical in large organizations, which strive for high quality customer service. It is often characterized by team meetings, jargon and buzzwords.
The Bet your Company Culture, where big stakes decisions are taken, but it may be years before the results are known. Typically, these might involve development or exploration projects, which take years to come to fruition, such as oil prospecting or military aviation.
The Process Culture occurs in organizations where there is little or no feedback. People become bogged down with how things are done, not with what is to be achieved. This is often associated with bureaucracies. While it is easy to criticize these cultures for being overly cautious or bogged down in red tape, they do produce consistent results, which is ideal in, for example, public services.
Deal and Kennedy see culture as the prime mover in organisations - rather than strategy, or structure or politics.
Gary thought that one reason why this approach would have gained acceptance was that the business environment values heroes. But at least, he said, there didn’t seem to be “one right” culture – but that the right “sort” of culture was one that was strong.
Karen pointed out that strong cultures may bring other problems, and Chris agreed, citing the story of the Abbey Life sales force, whose strong culture eventually turned out to be self-defeating. The values of the organisation were so strong that the business operated without questioning them. They had a recipe for success which had lasted 20 years but which then collapsed because it wasn’t appropriate.
Taking up the issues with a “strong” culture, Keith wanted to know that what happens if someone who is a wonderful sales person but who didn’t fit the typical sales culture – i.e. that instead of going out in a big group after work, wanted to go home and see his kids. Did he leave?
Chris agreed, and suggested that the organisation needed to do something to provide a break. People demand to have a more equitable work-life balance, so if you wanted to keep people, you have to realise that they sometimes needed a break from the organisation, particularly if the work with colleagues was very intense.
Finally, we turned to Ed Schein. Gary explained that the elements at the top of the model were the most visible, while those at the bottom were hidden, difficult to get at and difficult to change. There was immediately some debate about the terminology, with many disagreeing that basic assumptions were the most “hidden”.
Schein’s model of change, based on that of Kurt Lewin, also raised some debate.
Unfreeze/disconfirmation
Cognitive restructuring
Schein believes that behavioural change will not follow unless this cognitive restructuring has taken place – people slip back into previous ways of doing things
Reinforcing new behaviour and new sets of cognitions
Coming back to psychological safety, Schein believes that people learn effectively i.e. get rid of learning anxiety ONLY when this is present. Learning anxiety is fear of temporary incompetence, fear of punishment for incompetence, fear of loss of personal identity and fear of loss of group membership.
However, Schein is not of the school that believes culture change is easy. Gary pointed out the view previously expressed and shared by Schein that developing a strong culture may make it more resistant to change. In addition, he believes that “Considerable change can take place in an organisation without the basic cultural paradigm changing at all.”
So Schein, despite his model, also recognises that culture is difficult to change, and that in many cases, it may not be required at all. In particular, he holds that the constancy of deep beliefs, values and assumptions is one of the keys to organisational longevity and points to the work of Collins and Porras….which would imply that the development and articulation of culture should be pulled out of the organisation, not plastered on to it.
Chris said the HR director of Liverpool Victoria wanted to change the culture of the HR function – but when he realised he couldn’t do it, he outsourced it! Chris thought that a change in behaviour was more attainable than a change in values, as eventually, values followed behaviour.
Karen then moved on to talk about the anti-culturalists. Professor Meek believes that cultures are not created, they emerge over time from social interaction and argues against the view that “there exists in a real and tangible sense a collective organisational culture that can be created, measured and manipulated in order to enhance organisational effectiveness. She also believes that corporate culture change is unlikely because the protagonists’ denial of conflict, differentiation and power.
John Van Maanen and Gideon Kunda view culture as descriptive, giving clues to how things are. Karen reminded participants who came to the symbolism mindstretch® of the fascinating study done by John Van Maanen and Gideon Kunda on DISNEY, saying that they have a very dim view of some of the practices employed by Disney and talk eloquently of the ways in which employees duck rules and the Disney Way – and still keep their jobs.
Hugh Willmott had provided much of the more provocative comments about culture change. The quote on the next slide was from an article entitled “Strength is Ignorance, Slavery is Freedom: Managing culture in modern organisations” – using a quotation lifted from George Orwell’s 1984. It’s clear he has some concerns about the premise of culture change and this article focuses primarily on the “dark side” of culture change.
Paul commented that socialism was interventionist in nature, and so was culture change, and suggested there was an internal inconsistency in Willmott.
Chris, seeing this slide, thought that culture change was not about changing everything and wondered if we really needed to change values to change “the way we do things around here”. Fiona thought that there might be an inconsistency in the semantics about organisational and personal values – you don’t necessarily have to change personal values to be able to accommodate organisational values.
Karen responded by saying that looking through In Search of Excellence, it was quite clear that the authors were addressing a change of individual values in that the strength of the culture came from the values being shared.
Sue asked if there was any reason why the protagonists emerged in the 1980s and why the critical reviews were in the late 1990s. Karen said she thought that it was bound up in the issue of the dominance of the idea.
Culturalists have dominated management thinking to the extent that “Culture has come to be seen as the great cure-all for the majority of organisational ills” (Wilson 1992). The comment has been made that corporate culture has been one of the marketing successes of the 1990s.
One of the reasons why the idea of excellent companies and strong culture is so dominant is that it has received – until relatively recently – little academic attention.
Because it does not build on solid academic theory, academics have largely ignored it – which means that as an idea, it has gone relatively unchallenged with the exception of the latter part of the 90s, when it became the target of critical review, particularly by left-wing academics; according to Willmott, the questioning of corporate culture has been overtaken by its decoding, which has become an end in itself (symbolism, use of language etc).
One of the major criticisms of culturism is that it assumes that people can be aligned to one set of thoughts. Given that employees come from different backgrounds and have different values, and that events OUTSIDE the workplace may influence these, the idea that they’ll all jettison these in favour of a set of values and beliefs from senior management is ludicrous. And yet, the idea of SHARED beliefs and values is writ large in the culture literature, as being indicative of the efficient operation of the organisation. The existence of subcultures, often in conflict with the managerial culture, is ignored.
She added that, surprisingly there are some areas of agreement, for example:
but that there is little agreement beyond this – even among those who believe that culture can be changed have a multiplicity of routes of change and different definitions of culture.
Moving on to the other key areas of criticism, Karen suggested that if it’s difficult to accept employees changing their beliefs to those defined by management, then what we might end up with is what Ogbonna and Wilkinson defined as “resigned behavioural compliance”. Instead of deep identification with the core values, employees are selective, and calculate their compliance – so it looks good. This of course, may successfully modify their behaviour – but this psychological distancing from their role is unlikely to be without cost.
The Excellence literature is unabashedly American. Research was with US companies. So will these ideas translate to different cultures and are they Transferable across countries? Even in the west, the ethos of individuality sits uneasily with the collectivist aspirations of the corporate culture devotees…
In the prescriptive literature, it is always assumed that Strong culture is a good thing, and that strong culture is homogenous. The critical interpretation of this is that there is a lack of a rival “end” where energy might be misdirected. As even Schein has noted, a strong culture is difficult to change.
Karen also asked if the idea of changing corporate culture was Morally and ethically suspect. It is presented as a recipe for economic and moral recovery by promising employees meaning as well as money. Campaigns to strengthen corporate culture are frequently tied to an increased emphasis on personal responsibility in the performance of the organisation, and the promise of greater autonomy. But this is within the boundaries set by management and “freedom” is severely restricted. Corporate culture hides the concept of managerial control that sits at its heart.
Do managers have any RIGHT to mess around with “hearts and minds”? Should they not be concerned with just BEHAVIOUR?
Sue suggested that you have to do things at work that you don’t always want to do – but that those things would not necessarily be against your values – and that the digestion of corporate values might be just about filtering them.
Chris agreed. The CEO of Sun Alliance would only promote people who he felt he could trust, and it was a place where spelling mistakes were not allowed – but this was hardly about heart-felt values.
Karen came to her final point, asking if culture change is actually possible?
Well, the critical writers say not, as you’d expect. A few of the reasons not previously mentioned are that:
Paul commented that the interventionists seem to believe that organisations are closed systems, whereas antagonists see them as open. A closed system is linked with control (rules and process) where an open system might be linked more with guidelines.
Fiona agreed, particularly that the leader reflects the culture, and impacts it, but doesn’t create it. Carol added that if the company was smaller, a new leader would have more impact on the culture when they arrived and Keith said that when the Industrial Society became the Work Foundation under Will Hutton, there was a tremendous impact.
Paul asked how important was size? For example, if you looked at other types of the organisation like the Labour Party, it had moved VERY quickly to change and had elected a leader to reflect an open system, changing the visible parts of the organisation. There was some debate about how deep the perceived changes in ideology went in the Labour Party….
Paddy said that the Blood Service had spent two years trying to impose a set of values on their employees and even though they were trying to be inclusive in identifying the values, in reality it was only the top team that adopted them.
Paul wondered if there was a transactional analysis angle here - imposing top-down values indicated a parent-child relationship, and asked if that was where the interventionists were coming from? A paternalistic approach?
Chris said he felt that it was not about dominating different subcultures – it was about managing them together, rather than imposing one “right” one – organisations are more complex than the intervention suggests.
Karen agreed with his view that in organisations there is never just “one” culture.
Sue pointed out that in M&A it is always key to merge the cultures and either get one to “win” or to come together naturally.
Paul suggested that culture should be seen as an output – a result. In the merger of Lloyds and TSB, his team managed certain things that eventually produced a “new” culture, but that most of it emerged naturally at branch level – the centre had no view of what the culture should be.
People thought this might have been a bit risky and Chris asked if there was a view that the merged company had so many customers that it didn’t matter. Paul responded that their focus was on running the day to day business and that they allowed the culture emerged over time.
Chris thought that such an approach might not be suitable for all types of industry and quoted engineering, where to operate at all, there had to be a culture of safety. Gary agreed, saying that the only way the safety culture in the railways would change – regardless of the privatisation – would be if they were to sack all the workforce and start again, as the culture of safety brought in from British Rail was so central.
Chris commented that a vision of what the culture should be might only be required in certain industries. For example, when Phoenix and Sun Alliance merged, although there wasn’t a plan for the culture, the Sun Alliance senior management didn’t want to be “like Phoenix” – so they knew what they didn’t want!
Paul said that when there was a change of CEO at Lloyds TSB, to an ex-TSB executive, the culture began to change.
Paddy told us he’d heard Ricardo Semler, a Brazilian businessman, and that his rule for running an organisation is to not expect anything from your employees, and that although some are hard workers and some are slackers, it will even out in the end. A novel, maverick approach – although he didn’t think it was certain to be applied in the UK.
Angela disagreed that management should let culture “emerge”. She thought you needed to have a vision of the culture you needed to have, minimum standards.
If we see culture as an output, rather than something more instrumental, then the final part of the discussion, on Hofstede, becomes more relevant. Karen explained that she’d included this slide as a possible way forward, particularly as Hofstede believes that personal values are fixed in the individual from the age of ten, and that it takes something critical to change them. He’s also not so quick to suggest that we try and change the culture, and suggests instead that with the cultural diagnostic, management should consider exploiting strengths and circumventing weaknesses rather than changing the culture completely.
A couple of the points he made were very pertinent. For example, if culture is developed through the interaction of people, then changing who people work with and interact with will mean that they will need to renegotiate those relationships. Which will in turn, says Hofstede, change the culture. He also said that when recruiting, personnel managers unconsciously maintain the hero models for the organisation, and that these may need to be revisited.
Here, Hofstede is more concerned with changing the nuts and bolts of the organisation than people’s “hearts and minds”.
Chris commented at this point that Hofstede goes back to defining “the way we do things around here”, which doesn’t touch the values. Carol agreed that corporate values weren’t always personal values and didn’t need to be. She had used the SDI to help people map their own values and to understand how to get a level of alignment with their new organisation that they could live with. Angela thought that this would be helpful to people, and Sue felt that this could be helped by setting the expectations of new joiners through the recruitment process right through induction. Carol cautioned that it was important to realise that individuals might interpret these sorts of messages differently and they needed to be checked.
Our general conclusions were that not only were values difficult to change, it wasn’t really necessary to focus on changing them, because what organisations actually want to change is behaviour. Given our agreement with the idea that culture can only be managed systemically, tinkering with culture may result in unexpected – and perhaps unwelcome – consequences for behaviour.