Changing a company's culture is a lot like losing 50 pounds. There are lots of books to read, seminars to attend, and processes to follow. Yet, the vast majority of efforts fail.
Why?
The question is especially pertinent to emerging growth companies trying to get out of No Man’s Land and achieve business growth. Many of these companies need to change their culture to suit their evolution from start-up to a more mature company that has institutionalized its founder’s capabilities.
These companies need to focus on a critical preparation phase in order to meet business growth expectations. Let's call it Painting a New Vision. The vision needs to be not only clear and crisp, it must be enticing, inspiring, interesting and potentially fulfilling. If it is not, why change?
People need a compelling reason to willingly alter their behavior and thought processes. Creating a burning platform without a path to survival creates more anxiety than positive change. Raising performance standards, revising incentive plans, adding job duties, altering schedules, and trimming benefit plans all make employees angry and disengaged, unless they have fully, heart and soul, bought into the new vision.
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Business Growth Challenges Defined: You May Be In No Man's Land
Management Speak
Also, there must be no management speak (MS) in the new vision. This means that any word you first learned in an accounting or business class is forbidden. Curing cancer, bringing clean water to impoverished third world countries, making the USA an energy independent nation are all inspiring pursuits. No one company can do these things alone, but many companies can create vision statements which tie into a greater purpose. As a health care executive, I defined a housekeeper as someone who helps eliminate hospital acquired infections and a billing clerk as someone who helps to bring in earned revenue so the hospital will be able to care for the next sick patient. Other companies create technologies to produce food, enable transportation or make the world more beautiful or a safer place.
The vision must be painted with strong brush strokes, vivid colors, and clear lines so that every employee and stakeholder can understand its meaning. Communicating the vision effectively will be covered in a future article but for now, suffice it to say that it should be communicated with respect. Your employees know that a new vision usually means that the way business will be done in the future will be different than how it was handled in the past. Smart people know that changes are on the way. The way you communicate the sensitive issues will either enhance your credibility or destroy trust. If you want to proclaim integrity as one of your company values, you must demonstrate it at all times, especially during a time of change.
Then Culture
An effective business culture should be crafted to not only support but to propel actions towards reaching the vision. Next step is building a coalition for change within your company. These people will help to crystallize the new vision and begin to identify the strategic, operational and cultural changes necessary for business growth.Stay tuned for Part 2 of this perspective on changing your company’s culture.
How does your culture effect your business growth? Share your thoughts with us below, and don't forget to download our free guide "Business Growth Challenges Defined: You May Be In No Man's Land."
This post was originally published in October 2012 and has been updated. We believe it remains relevant to the challenges that our blog readers face.
