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Before exploring this popular phenomenon, let's see what organisational culture is all about. Can we grab it, hold it, look at it? The answer is no, which is why organisational culture is so difficult to understand and also highly challenging to manage. In theory, organisational culture is a set of values, behaviours and beliefs that people demonstrate on a day-to-day basis. Actually, you can feel it as soon as you walk through the company's front doors. Are the premises light or dark? Is the place spacious and open-office style or traditional with many closed doors? Do people in the hallways say a friendly hello or do they seem to be very busy and not even notice you?

"It's the way things are done here" would probably be one of the best and most simple descriptions of organisational culture.

So what is all the fuss about? Every company has its own and unique organisational culture, its "way of doing things", so why should we change it? Well, the issue is that many companies are facing non-constructive behavioural styles which cause many problems in daily corporate life. Such culture can literally "eat strategy for breakfast", according to management guru Peter Drucker. When we experience passive and defensive behaviour, criticism, cynicism, excessive power displays and control, overly competitive and aggressive behaviour, status quo, lack of accountability, distrust and over-obedience etc. on a daily basis, this is an alarm and a clear signal that you need to do something about it. And you need to start now.

The first step is to use empirical tools to understand employee attitudes and actions. What gets measured, gets managed. Then, after analysing your current culture, define your ideal organisational culture. Ask yourself and your people, how this place should ideally look like? How should we behave to feel proud? Usually, companies will target behaviours that reflect quality of work and achievements, innovation, customer-orientation, daily possibilities to use and develop own potentials, cooperation and uniqueness. In other words, these are constructive behaviour styles which are proven to support the achievement of company's goals.

If the current situation conflicts with the desired cultural values, pick your general future direction and "implement like hell", as Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric and management guru, put it. However, "leaders must understand that their beliefs and actions are the primary drivers of the organisation's culture. Senior leaders must drive cultural change, just as they do other cross-organisation issues, reinforcing the behaviours necessary to support the business strategy" (Deloitte Human Capital Trends, 2016).

  

Picture 1. Three simple steps for changing organisational culture.

So how can we change it? If you want to be an innovative company, create time and space to explore ideas in an unconstrained manner. Unfortunately, making colourful meeting rooms for "brainstorming" without any proper freedom and support won't help much. If you want to enforce more collaboration, empower teams of high-performing individuals instead of empowering managers and hierarchies, allowing them to dominate the discussions. If you want to drive accountability, give people slightly more freedom that you are comfortable with and do not allow management practices that are overly directive and micromanaging. In other words, if you don't feel uncomfortable, you have not given your people enough freedom.

Last, but not least: start with the basics. Each and everyone in the company is responsible for creating your corporate culture. As a leader, you could start by setting a positive example and consistently saying "thank you" and "well done" to people. On the other hand, if you tolerate negative attitude, solo players and comfort zone, don't be surprised if this becomes "the usual way of doing things" in your company.

Sources:
• Bock, L. (2015). Work Rules!. London, John Murray (Publishers).
• Deloitte Human Capital Trends (2016): https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/human-capital-trends/2016/impact-of-culture-on-business-strategy.html
• Garton, E. (2017): Time, Talent, Energy: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team's Productive Power. Boston, HBR Press.
• https://jackwelch.strayer.edu/blog/five-questions-that-make-strategy-real/