How Evolving Leaders Can Accelerate Organisational Culture Change
Organisational culture change can help organisations increase resilience and adapt to thrive in a rapidly changing business landscape. However, to achieve real, lasting change leaders need to start by looking inward.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global business landscape is undergoing unprecedented transformations. Trends like rapid digital technology adoption, increased macroeconomic uncertainty, changing business models, and new work paradigms all impact companies and organisations across all levels.
Organisational culture is often the glue that holds everything together, especially during tumultuous times. Considering the level of change seen in recent years, organisations need to examine if their organisational culture matches the business realities and challenges they face. Genuine transformation, beyond merely adopting new tools or strategies, may be required.
Leaders play pivotal roles in making such efforts and changes a success. However, the leaders themselves may need to evolve first in order to drive effective organisational change. This process of evolution works best when you start by changing leadership thinking and behaviours through personal and professional development.
Harnessing transformation through organisational culture
New technologies, work styles, and evolving business models have huge potential upsides. However, a company's organisational behaviours and norms may need to change to harness their potential. A study by Boston Consulting Group underscores this, revealing that companies emphasising corporate culture change were five times more successful in their digital transformation efforts.
Organisational culture is often defined as a collective set of values, beliefs, and behavioural norms that guide how things are done within an organisation. This culture helps align efforts, predict behaviours, and encapsulate lessons about effective practices. As emphasised by Peter Drucker's famous phrase, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," having an aligned culture is paramount for a company's success and can even supersede strategic plans.
Changes and their effects on organisational culture
As companies' business models and market reality evolve, so do the needs and priorities of teams, departments, and divisions. This can, in turn, place different demands on leaders and the organisational culture. Examples can include the following:
Increased Macroeconomic Uncertainty:
Leadership: Leaders need to prioritise financial resilience, risk management, and forecasting.
Organisational culture: The organisation might develop a culture of agility, where rapid adaptability to external changes is valued.
Introduction of New Technology:
Leadership: Leaders may need to prioritise training and upskilling employees, navigating change resistance.
Organisational culture: Emphasis might shift to continuous learning and innovation. Accepting temporary setbacks or a culture of 'failing fast and learning' can also be promoted.
Restructuring:
Leadership: Focus on transparently communicating the reasons for restructuring, ensuring that the transition does not result in loss of knowledge or lowered morale.
Organisational culture: Flexibility, where employees are prepared for periodic organisational changes, must be combined with reassuring employees of their job security.
Changing KPIs:
Leadership: Redefine success metrics, align the team with the new objectives and provide the required resources (training, tools, etc.) for success.
Organisational culture: A shift in KPIs might lead to a culture that values different outcomes, behaviours, or skills.
The demands placed on leaders and the organisational culture are different in each situation. However, there are uniting factors.
How organisational culture and leadership align
As detailed by Catherine Cote in Harvard Business Review, leaders play a pivotal role in steering organisational culture.
However, their ability to set the tone for changing or evolving organisational culture requires more than an Intellectual understanding of the logical connection between their words and behaviours and the resulting corporate culture. In our experience working with leadership and organisational culture change, this can often be one of the most challenging aspects for leaders to fully appreciate at the beginning of a culture transformation process. Another common aspect is well-placed questions about how leaders’ transformation can help themselves, their organisations, and organisational culture change efforts.
In both cases, the answer revolves around what you need to succeed with organisational culture change. This process is about more than stating that you, as a leader, are in favour of the culture transformation and asking that others support it, too.
Leaders' behaviour and values pave the way. To understand and be able to leverage these aspects, leaders may have to review mental models and values on both an individual and a collective level. This process often leads to leaders becoming aware that they must address insights into their personal beliefs and values as a first step for organisational culture transformation - and take an honest look at their biases.
Put differently, employees and stakeholders will quickly identify leaders who view organisational culture change as an exercise and a tool meant to achieve specific goals but not founded in genuine belief. In other words, they will perceive "all that culture stuff" as another example of "lip service". The rhetorical questions are: who would follow a leader like that, and what are their chances of engaging with – and achieving – real, valuable, lasting change?
Realising how you lead to organisational culture change
Underlying mindsets must evolve to embody and display new behaviours that support the desired organisational culture change. In that process, it is crucial to pinpoint the link between discrepancies in corporate culture and individual leadership approaches. It should be a benchmark for exchanging feedback, tracking advancements, and determining the results.
Culture is shaped by the messages leaders convey and, more importantly, by how the team perceives these messages. Ultimately, the essence of leadership lies in how the team perceives and interprets a leader's actions. Such perceptions might differ vastly from the leader's intentions. A leader's actions play a pivotal role in crafting organisational culture, and the personal interpretation of these actions paves the way for cultural shifts, often necessitating the leader's personal growth.
For successful organisational change, leaders may have to prioritise new objectives, reassign tasks, and alter their team engagement methods. Unfortunately, many leaders overlook cultivating specific behaviours crucial for spearheading organisational change, which could jeopardise new strategies.
Modifying one's mindset and behaviour is challenging, as many who have attempted it can confirm. This challenge is a central theme in many solutions and services Global Perspectives offers. Nonetheless, leaders can focus on several key areas to facilitate this change, including:
Increase your self-awareness: Leaders can only change their behaviour when they’re aware of how it’s perceived by and impacting others, and reflect on the thoughts and feelings they themselves experience as they attempt to change.
Make commitments: While awareness of how others perceive us can be a change catalyst (hence the saying "the most powerful driver of change is a mirror"), making commitments to others increases accountability, and therefore the likelihood of success.
Overcome interference: Despite credible intentions to change, leaders may need help when they encounter thoughts and situations that derail their intentions. Again, accountability makes a difference here.
Practice: Rarely do leaders find they can set a personal change objective, choose a path, and execute without trouble. Successful change usually arises from trial and error, which takes deliberate practice.
