Culture is a very vague word in my opinion. I ask leaders how’s the culture in their organization and they generally answer, ‘yeah, it’s great!’ Then I ask: Good, what makes your culture great and it seems like a very hard question to answer properly.
When you look at it from a strategical point of view, there are a couple of common enablers which I see in many sustainably successful organizations. They build relationships through communication that is candid and clear, in turn they build trust and they hold each other accountable. Therefore, they look forward to be a member of an engaged team, they lead with curiosity and genuinely have an interest in their people, they actively seek feedback for continuous improvement and innovation and finally they have a strategic vision aligned with their customer focus.
Once you have those enablers in place, collaboration comes automatically because you clearly understand that the collaborative behaviour means more than its parts.
It all starts with culture and it’s not a one-time event or just one manager who’s involved. It should be a wide organizational process. And it takes time, effort and a sense of awareness that everybody is different (just like you and me) and everybody might add a value which we probably won’t be able to see…
Which leads me to the answer for this question: 'How do you ensure that the cultural changes you recommend are sustainable?
Actually, you can’t. However, you can create ways and use tools to assist professionals change their behaviour, support them so those behaviours become habits and eventually re-shape the culture. While facilitators and programmes act as an ignition mechanism, it’s up to the people in the organization to make this sustainable.
Ok, so how can we contribute?
We can encourage people to make ‘safe experiments’, where people come up with a couple of commitments about what they’re going to try out. I personally experienced the impact of such an example : Provide coaching tools, and models, encourage people in the organization come up with an action plan, aka safe experiments, execute, note what worked and what didn’t and check back in with you for continuous improvement.
I think it's worth a try...
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