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Competing Values Framework (CVF), which we discussed last week, has been applied to a host of situations where organisational culture is a critical ingredient – leadership, management development and strategy implementation. But it is first and foremost known as ‘culture change’ tool.

Assume that your organisation sees a need for a cultural change. First, start with a graphic or vivid verbal description of the current culture. Then describe what the change will mean for everyone in the organisation. The culture ‘map’ that has been drawn for the organisation will assist in providing a visual direction for change, a language to describe it and a tool for measuring progress. (We discussed this ‘map’ last week.)

Generally, people will only sign up for change if they ‘understand’ what it involves. This implies that those who drive change need to be capable of ‘explaining’ to others. Many managers have considerable difficulty with this: they tend to speak in jargon-ridden slogans, probably provided by a consultant or borrowed from a management text. The best way to do this is to tell stories.





Example
For example, you want to move a little up on Adhocracy scale. This may involve a move towards greater customer responsiveness. That means you wish to give the frontline staff greater discretionary power in dealing with customer issues. The manager can explain that in a story-like way:  that staff will be making the decisions not the management; that staff need to use their own best judgment; that the management knows staff won’t be always get it right; that no one will get into trouble for making a wrong call; that staff and the management need to decide what sort of training they need to fit into their new roles; that training will be available; that managers and higher-ups will still be around to help.

Yet, there are only a limited number of steps senior managers can take to achieve the cultural change.

•  Leadership behaviour - Decisions must be taken which aspects of leadership behaviour require change. (For e.g.  Bit more Hierarchy and a bit less of Adhocracy while keeping Clan and Market at current levels).
   
• Systems of the organisation - This includes rules, policies and procedures. For example, a Performance Management System has a great impact on sustaining a culture.

Organisational culture is a complex recent management notion. It seems to offer answers to some of the troublesome issues such as:

• Why the organisation is customer-focused or does not have an effective customer-service? Check what happens to an employee who repeatedly fails in satisfying a customer’s needs – most likely nothing!
   
• Why do employees not wish to be empowered? If you check the control systems, you will find the answer. In this organisation making mistakes is punished or severely reprimanded.
   
• Why sales people, although well-paid and earning good incentives, leave the organisation within a few years? Check the extent of teamwork and cooperation with the organisation – you won’t find any.
   
• Why employees are in the lunch room for extended hours? Check the extent to which anyone follows protocol? Probably they have not heard about ‘protocol’.

Remember: organisational culture offers an explanation of what is going on. It is not a prescription for change. At best, the opinion can inform the decision-makers about the changes that need to happen within the organisation.




Managers’ role
Probably, the culture’s biggest role is to change the concept that managers actually control the organisation. For as long as most people can remember, the job of managers has been to give orders, see that the orders were followed and hold people accountable if they didn’t comply.

Managers were paid to guarantee that certain results happened. If they could deliver the goods expected by their management, they got nice bonuses and were promoted.

All that has changed; a manager’s job is no longer that of a watchdog, policeman or slave driver. Managers must be able to shape a more supportive work environment and find ways to help each employee be more productive. So, the job of the management has changed -from control to influence- from command to lead and from directing to supporting.

The modern decision-makers must accept this fact. Old mechanical model is insufficient to explain the modern organisation. The sooner they accept it, sooner they can stop stressing the managers. What is needed is a highly-dynamic model with full of un-predictabilities, which is the trend today. Then the managers have a realistic base from which to build their coping strategies. The concept of organisational culture (specifically CVF) will help the decision-makers to move towards a dynamic model.  





Chart
See the chart. By rating six key aspects of organisational culture that were found to determine success, you can assess the current and preferred organisational culture. The outcome is based on the Competing Values Framework and consists of four culture types: Clan Culture, Adhocracy Culture, Market Culture and/or Hierarchy Culture. In the same way, the preferred culture is determined.

At this point, one might ask, why change anything? Because the world is changing rapidly, most organisations have to adapt to survive and succeed. Change only when it’s necessary. Signals that indicate change are low productivity, new competition, complaining customers, absenteeism and so on. Sustainable change is possible when executives and employees change their working culture and behaviour and thus their results. Using CVF is a first step in improving performance.

As earlier stated, managing culture is tough. There are many pitfalls like the decision-makers’ failure to understand what is involved in culture change and to change leadership behaviour and systems. Until an organisation addresses such issues, cultural change well continue to be just an interesting idea.


(Lionel Wijesiri, a corporate director with over 25 years’ senior managerial experience, can be contacted at [email protected])