Imagine a world in which your organization’s most complex issues are solved by a continuous improvement effort and then the new processes are implemented seamlessly into the organization. Where Lean isn’t just a process improvement approach for a few, but a culture shift for the whole organization. An organization that just doesn’t do “Lean,” but where a Lean mindset permeates through the organization. Sounds perfect, right?
If your organization is like most, there is significant emphasis on implementing innovation across the enterprise. Developing market-leading products, business process improvements, new patient care models, ground-breaking strategies, new markets --- all offer substantial potential for increasing market share, efficiency, and competitive advantage. And let’s face it… competitive advantage is what everyone is seeking.
Recognize this: if you are implementing an ERP, Lean/Six Sigma, Shared Services, a new Patient Care Model—you are under-taking transformational change that has a cultural change component. When you begin the transformational change journey, there are inevitable truths your leaders must come to grips with! This is not just a change for the project team, or the organization at large. It is a change for the leaders themselves, and their role can’t be overlooked or under-estimated.
One of the most significant stumbling blocks that business process re-engineering initiatives encounter is in the deployment phase of the process improvement process. There is logic and data to suggest that although statistical analyses can improve organizational effectiveness, reduce unnecessary activities, increase productivity, and reduce costs, no process improvement or culture change will occur unless solutions can be implemented through to utilization and Return on Investment.
Another “mega-merger” hit the headlines this week when AT&T agreed to purchase Time Warner for a whopping $85.4 billion dollars. If the deal is approved, it will be the largest acquisition of 2016. Whether we’re talking about a massive transformation such as this one, or a smaller scale situation, Mergers and Acquisitions require the bringing together of two cultures. And culture change is not a quick or simple task.
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.
Step into almost any organization on the planet and we bet you will hear the same buzzwords flying around. Whether they are on a scenic, motivational poster hanging on the wall or being overused by people during a meeting, these terms are usually jargon laden phrases that are often related to whatever management trend happens to be going on at the moment. “I’ll champion that” and “We like to empower our employees” are just a few examples of phrases we’ve heard this past week alone.
Mergers and acquisitions are international news on a weekly basis. In fact, just this month alone, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced its acquisition of SABMiller in a deal worth over $100 billion dollars. In addition, Dell purchased EMC in a $67 billion dollar deal touted as one of the largest tech mergers ever. Whether we’re talking about multi-billion dollar deals such as these, or smaller ones, there is no doubt mergers mean change is coming for at least one of the organizations affected, and more likely than not... both of them.
Lately in our Change Management Consulting work, we are seeing a lot of organizations who are strategically hoping to become customer-centric-- or for those of our clients in the health care industry, patient-centric. Simply put, these organizations are making changes to their inherent culture to make their primary focus the customer they are serving rather than the product they are trying to sell.
Remember what happened when you first joined your organization? You were probably given a handbook with all the formal policies and procedures. Did you find it helpful? Sure. But we are guessing after just a few days of working there, the "unwritten rules" that dictate how your organization really operates began to surface.
