CULTURE
We can help you with implementing and sustaining culture change.
Creating a strong culture in the organization can be an enabler for innovation, employee engagement and retention which ultimately ensures organizational renewal and competitive advantage. We are a proponents of the outside-in approach when creating a new or different culture in the organization, starting with how key customers or external stakeholders perceive the organization and how they find that the organisation should differentiate itself.
Remember that culture change starts with personal transformation of your leaders! Organisations can only transform and continue to evolve successfully if their leaders can change their values and behaviours and align with other leaders regarding the aspired values and behaviours.
​
In order to successfully implement a change management or cultural change process four conditions must be met. These are shown in the figure 1 on the right.
​
Because all aspects of an organisation are interconnected (performance is influenced by culture, culture is influenced by values and behaviours, and behaviours are influenced by motivations, and to a certain degree by incentives), it is important in any change management or cultural change process to affect the whole system, not just part of it.
Figure 1:
Four conditions for whole system change. The four conditions are described below:
Personal alignment: There must be an alignment between the values and beliefs of individuals and their words, actions and behaviours. This is particularly important for the leaders, managers and supervisors. The leaders, managers and supervisors must be authentic and walk their talk. If they say one thing and do another, there will be no trust in the organisation.
​
Structural alignment: There must be an alignment between the stated values and beliefs of the organisation as expressed in the espoused values, vision and mission, and the behaviours of the organisation as reflected in the structures, policies, procedures and incentives of the organisation. In other words, the organisation, as a whole, must also walk the talk.
Values alignment: There must be an alignment between the personal values of employees and the lived values of the organisation. Employees need to feel at home in the organisation so they can bring their whole selves to work. There must be no fear. There must be a sense of autonomy, equality, accountability, fairness, openness, transparency and trust.
​
Mission alignment: There must be an alignment between employees’ sense of purpose or vocation and the role and duties they are asked to perform in the organisation. The level of job complexity must also be in alignment with employees’ level of personal development, and employees must feel that the organisation is on the right track.
The process of culture change
Culture change in organisations requires a shift in the values and beliefs of the leaders, managers and supervisors (see Figure 2). When the values and beliefs of the leaders, managers and supervisors change (1), their actions and behaviours change (2). This, in turn, leads to a change in the values and beliefs of the culture of the organisation (3), which in turn leads to a change in the actions and behaviours of the organisation (4).
Figure 2: The process of culture change in an organisation.
To assist companies’ or public/NGO organisations’ leaders, Circle Coaching & Consulting makes use of the Barrett Values Centre’s Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT), which are designed to support leaders in building high-performance, values-driven cultures that attract and keep talented people and increase staff engagement.
​
Our surveys provide the input you need to plan and manage your change initiatives, your cultural transformation programs, your diversity interventions, your talent management and leadership development initiatives, and your customer feedback. They make the intangibles tangible and provide lead indicators for measuring individual and collective performance.