What are the Culture Change trends you need to know?

To create an agile and flexible culture, distributed decision making about the organizational structure itself is needed. This requires ground rules and a clear process how this can happen (i.e. via a tension-based process) Second, it requires a clear organizational purpose, that is sensed and understood throughout the company. It should drive that decision making. Whenever an individual senses a gap between the status quo and how the org could better satisfy its purpose, that is the tension. Third, the org needs to remove hierarchical power. Top-level leaders need to trust the system to solve problems. Not fall back to old command-and-predict patterns. Build your org like this and it will evolve as needed when circumstances change.

The organizational capacity for change and adaptation (business agility) is defined in relationships in daily interactions. It is in small contacts that collaboration is fostered, that creativity and innovation find opportunities for growth. Daily exchanges configure the fundamental values of organizational culture: autonomy or hierarchy? Empathy or cold rationality? If we want to know to what extent the organization will react, change and adapt, we must ask what kind of interactions and values are being promoted by the leadership style. What values are the performance and management systems promoting?

Only two things change culture; Crisis and Leadership. Agile leaders = agile culture Flexible leaders = flexible culture Collaborative leaders = collaborative culture Empowered leaders = empowered teams Even in a world of agility, your culture needs to be grounded in something, to give consistency. Look to your leaders, even better, look to your owners; their needs often come first ;)

Culture change has been coined as a difficult thing to influence. My approach has always been to work with this alongside projects that are tangible and people can grasp hold of. An example would be the implementation of a new ERP system or ITSM ticketing where people need to adopt a new way of working, adding specific and targeted culture shifts to the new behaviours and tools can be a great way of embedding them into the new way.

Culture changes are driven by what the company needs to achieve. More specifically, the organizational culture is derived from - formally and informally! - the company's management model. Until recently, that management model was focused only on increasing efficiency/productivity. But now we have a different market (and life) reality, mainly because of advanced technologies and IoT. The focus now is on creativity, innovation, and speed. This requires us to rethink the current management model - we won't achieve agility and speed if everything has to go through 5-10-15 hierarchical levels and getting things done has a lower priority than not trespassing on anybody's turf.

Organisations are built around a story - or more a fable. They are legal creations which are essentially disconnected from human families and the natural world. Purpose driven and values based are attempts to counter these innate limitations. Without an attempt to weave values into an organisation they can become very dangerous, has history has taught us.

Aligning personal and professional goals with the mission and vision of the organization has always been a prerequisite for companies to function properly. This is not a new trend, in that sense. However, the real question is why the alignment hasn't happened yet, even though we've been using the current company model/system for around a century and a half. I think we've rightly identified leadership as the culprit, but even after tons of resources and training of leaders, we still don't have this alignment in place. I believe it's time for us to admit that the company model/system is flawed by design: it breeds a culture that doesn't support - and often even undermines! - the organizational mission and vision.

Truly purpose driven cultures are very rare. They are often found in founder-led organisations, where the founders vision is super clear, and unwavering. Before you head down the route of purpose driven culture, STOP and ask yourself these questions: 1. Are you prepared to take the time for your most senior players (top 10-12) to genuinely co-create a vision that they emotionally and deeply connect to? 2. Do you have the levels of trust in your most senior team to create such a vision, what are the relationships like. If you have a purpose, or vision, created by your strategy team or consultants based on their research, you will have a knowing <> doing gap, and are doomed to fail.

Articulating your core values means doing a lot more that writing them on a poster or a web page. It means using your values to inform everything from the way you recruit and select people and how they are rewarded, to how leaders are expected to behave. For example, define your job roles in the context of your values - if one of them is "One Team", how does a person doing that job demonstrate that value on a daily basis, what behaviours are evidence of alignment to that value?

People today are no fools. Because of media being so available everything is os out there. You're constantly monitored - people crave authenticity today for good reason. So if your values and your company's valuea are aligned it will foster a stronger sense of action otherwise really hard to achieve.

If you are creating this type of culture and are doing it to check the box for statistics, then you are doing it wrong. For example, in the USA, there are requirements for companies to report their data as a mechanism for diversity, equity, and inclusive hiring practices. DEI&B are not only a trend, but the right thing to do. Why? Everyone has some type of attribute that they identify with. The more common ones Race, Sexual Identity, Economic Status, or Religion. What about Disability, both visible and non visible? Perhaps you are color blind, have a neuro-cognitive reality, or we’d adaptive assistance.

As we embrace diversity one of the greatest challenges form my perspective is not gender or race or disability; it is the different way of thinking GEN Z and those after bring to the workplace. An environment often run by male middle aged managers now has to cope with, understand and work with those whose aspirations and work ethic differs from theirs. Whether to accept, compromise or confront is a difficult emerging choice to which there are no easy answers.

It relates somewhat to the previous point but I would add here that the more you let people express themselves the better. People might surprise you even the most outlandish thought can nake a hige difference. Regarding diversity the more the merrier group thinking can be absolutely defeating!

For me it's the 'foster a sense of belonging' that takes time - to do it well here are three tips: - 1. Let teams know how they can contribute 2. When good output and benefits are realised celebrate them 3. Share and communicate the impact of community and feeling connected.

In today’s interconnected world, Diversity is a given. The challenge is creating inclusiveness. My motto : “Born with Talent, Shaped by Culture, Stronger with Strengths” is based on a “Me-We-Us” process. ✨Me: learn about your innate talents. What energizes you? What drains your energy. ✨We: share with others. Learn their innate talents and preferences. ✨Us: share the cultural influences which have shaped your beliefs and behaviors. Only together can we create a shared sense of belonging which is what inclusiveness is: being valued for who we are and what we bring to the table.

MI suggest that there is a new cultural class due to the recent surge out of the pandemic: work location style (digital nomad, remote, office, hybrid, 4 day work week, etc). Clearly, there is an ongoing debate about where people should be working and what productivity is. In order to do your work remotely or hybrid, you are more reliant on technology and digital culture. You have to have an office setup that has these components to do your work successfully and sometimes out of pocket. Bring data driven can be to your advantage b/c you better understand the numbers and stories of your business. The trick is that many people are flustered with numbers, math, and translating them into action via a compelling story.

As someone who leads digital transformation I must accept it! But seriously it is really important to go digital for the right reasons to create new value streams or improve existing processes. Data drives all of this forward and make the process that much better

While this is certainly true, we have to be extremely careful what we measure (and encourage/promote), because that drives behavior like nothing else.

Being digital and data-driven in the lens of change management means that you listen to your people and believe them when they speak. Building the infrastructure to couple behavioral data with employee self-reports is a necessary step in this process, but being willing to listen as a leader is perhaps more important.

Many of the newer companies and workforce are more inclined to be adaptable. They build change and transformation into their culture as a ‘norm’ or key competency’s Yet, other organizations and workforce groups are finding themselves adapting and changing to the cadence of change. Sometimes this is due to too much ‘office’ politics, processes, or antiquated systems. Therefore, they are facing more resistant to the new change curve as they strive to be more resilient by exercising this corporate muscle.

Resilience and adaptability come from agility and flexibility (see above). Constant change is normal for those organizations. Important: the change comes from within the organizations via distributed, collaborative and tension-based decision making. Not top-down. Even C-level leaders need to respect the decision making process and process their tensions through that system. This helps everybody in the organization to understand decision and share their objections, when they see a potential risk for harm to the organization. In such organizations, that are often described as „flat“, there should be no notion of „top-down“ or „bottom-up“. They have clear structures, but no fixed/predefined hierarchies.

Building trust and psychological safety, fostering a growth mindset and a learning culture, and promoting agility and flexibility will not happen if the company's management model doesn't change. We cannot change culture in isolation from the management model, because the latter drives the former. If it were in any way possible to change culture without changing management, we would have achieved it a long time ago and wouldn't be having these conversations now about the need for a culture change. Culture change starts with management.

Resilient and adaptable organizations prioritize learning and development. Learning supports a growth mindset, and it strengthens resilience. Resilient, adaptable employees are people who view change and challenge as an opportunity to problem solve and innovate. Leaders can cultivate resilient thinking and behaviors by asking: what did you learn? This makes it safe for people to "fail-forward" and takes the emphasis off performance, which is a byproduct of effort (where the focus should be).

At the risk of bringing up a classic in a thread about change, the basic structure illustrated through Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs once again confirms that we need to set ourselves up for success through progression rather than strictly adaptation. I won't reiterate the theory's basic concept as so many people are very familiar with it but suffice it to say that you need to start with a solid foundation. Does it match your vision success with your initiative? Does it align with your resources? Does it allow you to weave a golden thread of your values through of? Sometimes looking outside the box review one is already in the box that can be helpful to your future.

In addition to customer centric and empathetic, there is a new brand: employee centric. Perhaps you could make the argument that your employees are a customer, so therefore this is not new. Yet, many successful companies are directly focused on the onboarding, hiring, retention, and experiential aspects of adding and maintaining staff as their most important resource. Several of the levers mentioned for customers in the description are also applicable to employees. I am not certain that empathy is a cultural style as much as it is a personal attribute. Their behaviors and EQ can influence if they are apathetic, sympathetic, or empathetic. This is often based on their personal experiences, feelings, and EQ.

Customer centric seems so chewed today but it is true. Remember you're not doing this for yourself. You mist think how your customer engages with you. Does he suffer somewhere? Also your employees are customers as well treat them the same

I see revenue and growth mentioned here and I want to stress that those should be the byproducts of our company activities, not the main focus. The main focus should be value and purpose - everything else will follow.

Culture Change is often one of the more challenging types of Change to make. This is due to: - an intangible sense of what culture is or isn’t - involving people’s habits, rituals, and behaviors to change. - It takes time to see results and for them to be adopted. When culture is aligned and coupled with strategy, this is when companies accelerate their performance using culture as the catalyst. Culture doesn’t eat Strategy for breakfast, It instead adds more value to separate your company from others.

In agile and flexible organizations, there will be much less talk about „culture change“, as it just happens. Constantly. Culture Change is only big and painful if it was neglected for months or years and the gap between the status quo and the optimal state became too big. In organizations where every individual is a „tension sensor“ and has an efficient and effective way to process that tension, status quo and optimal state stay much closer aligned through constant evolution of the organization. „Culture change“ isn’t a big topic in those organizations because there is no need to discuss and predict the best solution in rare „change initiatives. It just happens. Continuously and incremental.

I believe an article about culture change should start with 1) goals the companies need to achieve (vision, mission, strategy, values) —> 2) management change that needs to happen to achieve them, and only then —> 3) culture change. Now we're discussing culture change in isolation, but that is the end step of a long chain of events. The reader might be left with the impression that culture change can be implemented irrespective of everything else, and that cannot be further from the truth. Always keep in mind that informal systems and channels (communication, culture, etc.) are always more powerful than formal ones.

It's often a mix of all the above, what moves the culture within an organization. Another key trend is clearly the shift into future skills needed like data literacy, digital literacy, and / or faster changing products and technologies. To remain competitive as individual will be essential, but also, will the organization understand that and support the right actions, adapting the culture along?

Watzlawick (1974) asserts that change involves the logical restructuring of a problem at a higher reflective level. He emphasizes that addressing a dialectical problem necessitates more than merely eliminating one of the factors or poles involved; instead, it demands a fundamentally different approach. The emotional responses evoked by such challenges contribute to a cognitive shift, prompting a re-conceptualization of information and fostering inquiries that compel a critical examination of the prevailing status quo (Watzlawick et al. 1974). This perspective underscores the interconnectedness of emotions and cognition in the process of change, highlighting the significance of a comprehensive and transformative approach to problem-solving.