Creating a cultural fit is an important element of the AIM Change Management Methodology. Your organization’s culture is arguably your greatest strategic asset. Your competition can potentially match your product or service. Competition can create a marketing strategy that’s equally powerful. But no competition will have your culture.
Unwritten Rules are Most Powerful
We all recognize that our organizations have unique aspects to them which we can term the "corporate culture." The culture includes:
In a successful organization, values are consistently expressed, modeled, and reinforced. When the there is a mismatch or lack of alignment between the “walk,” the “talk,” and the reinforcement from leaders, there is less confidence and trust. In terms of implementation, this lack of trust impacts the speed and resources required for successful implementation.
Low Trust = Low speed, more resources needed
High Trust = High speed, fewer resources needed
Remember that reinforcement has the greatest impact on the successful outcome of your change, and when there is a mismatch between what is expressed, modeled, and reinforced, you can expect confusion and less readiness for the change.
While values are important, it’s the unwritten rules that are the most powerful determinant of culture. So powerful, in fact, that if your change is inconsistent with the culture, you ultimately will be faced with two choices—either change the change, so that it is consistent, or change the culture, which is a long and very difficult process {Tweet This}.
Changing the Culture is a Difficult Proposition
Don’t go up against your organizational culture without a business imperative to do so, because you can expect lots of resistance. There are many reasons why culture change is so difficult. First, leaders will be inclined to reinforce the culture that made them successful in the first place—culture is self-reinforcing! So, consequently you can expect a lot of resistance from the leaders themselves (as we say, you can expect the greatest resistance from those that have the highest investment in things remaining the same.)
If changing the culture still makes good business sense, we strongly recommend that you do it by applying the cultural change to 1 or 2 strategic initiatives, rather than attempting to train people to the new desired culture. The new values are then applied to the project in several ways:
Culture change requires more than a vision of the future state—you need a solid implementation plan that includes specific plans for building Sponsorship, Readiness, Reinforcement, Communication, and Change Agents.