Creating Accountability in Culture.

Cultural Change that is Accountable.

What is Cultural Change that is accountable? And how do you I like the concept of going beyond behaviours to beliefs and experiences. In the book Change the Culture, Change the Game by Smith and Connors the authors seek to define change  as the concept of going beyond behaviours to beliefs and experiences therefore also making it accountable.

When faced with changing an organisation's culture, many executives and management consultants tend to brush over cultural change. If they do penatrate deeper than the surface level often they believe that by simply announcing, "We want a Change and Alignment to Strategy," employees would immediately get to work and match their efforts within this broad and obscure desired state. However, it rarely works. 

When changing a organisations culture you have to integrate change from the top down.

Changing from the Top Down.

Goals, Visions, Values, and communication are only a small part of the larger change. In order to penetrate deeply into the organisations culture you have to consider all the elements at play. Only through identifying and winning the hearts, minds and movtivations of your employees is change that is lasting.

We can consider these in three key categories:

Company Experience.

Employee Beliefs.

Ingrained Practice.

Ensuring these elements are covered ensures that change is integrated and sustained effectively over time. Smith and Connors  make the claim that when these elements are considered correctly this moves to the desired state. In the desired state the organisation runs like a well-oiled machine.

The book is riddled with examples of the Change from GM. It uses GM to display how changes in a company culture impacted the overall goals. Then it looks at the change from the perspective of a change culture transition and transformation. The focus or differentiating factor for this distinction is the ongoing nature of the transition. This processing  will be continuously developing.

The Results Pyramid:

Experiences, Beliefs, Actions.

Managers shape a companies culture everyday thought the experiences which they share with the employees. Employees intern participate in the experiences and learn the ways things are done. This is how an organisation culture establishes itself.

Despite this many organisations fail to clearly establish a healthy company culture. In some cases an unhealthy culture began a downward spiral for an organisation.

To create an effective culture leaders must embed and integrate change at all levels starting from the top down.

But how is this done? How do you actually change a company culture. Connors and Tom Smith propose the results pyramid using the results achieved by GM to demonstrate the usefulness.

The Results Pyramid: Experiences, Beliefs, and Actions.

The three key components that make up the results pyramid are: Experiences, Beliefs, and Actions. Staked on top of each other, the components all contribute to the end results, or the achievements of your organisations.

Experiences promote beliefs.

Beliefs impact actions.

Actions generate reustls.

For GM this involved redefining the goals and the strategy to reach them. For example within GM "Make decision. Take risks. Most Fast. Be accountable" which the GM put forward to change its culture and stop the company from losing money.

The end result of this is employees who are motivated, optimistic, and determined to get the results and execute. 

Creating a culture of Accountability

What is the ideal culture? For GM this was written in the last line of the reformed strategy: "Be Accountable". But what exactly is accountable.

Accoutnablity is vital to a strong organisational culture, it is shaped by every action an employee performs. In organisations there exists a very thin line that separates great companies from poor ones. You should strive to have your organisation operating above the line and not below the line.

Operating above the line ensures accountability through four simple steps.

1. See It: Considering other peoples view points, communicating honestly and candidly, exchanging feedback and seeking difficult truths.

2. Owning It: Accpeting an organisations goals and priorities as ones own. Only when you are able to enable this can we work to solve it by asking what else could we do to get the results we cant.

3. Do it. Performing the tasks we defined, focusing on priorities and being reliable and trustworthy.

While your company should strive for above the line actions, below the line actions will only harm your organizational culture.

When we act below the line, we refuse to accept responsibility and instead become obsessed with blame games, cycles of finger pointing and employees playing the victim.

Of course, acting below the line is also human. But by remaining below the line, you’ll tread in dangerous waters regarding accountability.

Accountability shouldn’t make the question, “Who’s accountable for this?” sound like a punishment. It should instead be empowering. Accountability isn’t about “getting caught” or failing, but should be approached as playing a starring role in reaching a solution.

Change your Team; Change your Culture.

The paradox of change management  - The world is transitioning at a rapid pace, external and internal forces are rebalacning all the time, Change management is required to stay competitive. You cant take time implementing culture change. But equally important you cannot take shortcuts.

Too often leaders focus on changing the way people act. However to get the results you want a leader must change the way people think or what they believe. Employees must not only appear involves, they must actually be committed to the company cause.

When a company (or company leader) fails to change the way people think and their believes then only the top of the results pyramid is being addresses. Therefore the leader end up treating the symptoms and not the cause of the company culture.

Connors and Smith argues that a new culture HAS to require a new actions and new results.

Creating a shift in experiences and beliefs take more effort but yields substantial long-lasting changes that create a firm foundation for the desired results.

Make sure everyone is on the same page before using the change.

In order to gain momentum around the desired state the key results must be clearly defined and stated. But how do you get people to rally around those key results? Alginment.

You can think of Alignment as the guiding beliefs and deliberate actions that an organisations applies to a clear and common goal.

When people are on the same page and following the same goals, decision making is faster and more efficient, other processes across the organisation also speed up.

Alginment is vital for effective cultural change. When there is no alignment, with goals or people, there is a lack of clarity where effort should be directed.

The author uses the example of Working with Fast Grills management team to achieve its goal of improve profit margins. During the meeting, the author as Management, 'What exactly was the change in margin goal they wanted to see?' This lead to a myraid of answers.

Fast Grills management confusion and lack of clarify was the first factor which lead to poor execution. This below the line behaviour allows for slow change.

The first step to solving this was to ensure that everyone is one the same page and totally signed. Alignment is a process, not an event. It is something you must constantly work to achieve.

Leading Culture Change requires Responsibilty, Responsiveness, and Facilitiation.

If you want to lead a culture through change you'll need a good leader. The leader and leadership must have certain key skills. Having these skills accelerate the process and enhance the overall leadership process.

The main theme of all the skills is know as Ability to Lead Change. Leading the change on a major scale involves emboding the strategy and vision. This includes understanding there will be criticism. To deal with this you need to be able to respond back to all stakeholders, not just those that critise.

To prepare yourself for this you must indentify the beliefs which you want others to share and develop the ability to communicate this belief. You must know the experiences in which you are deliver to your employees.

The final skill is to be facilitative. If you want to change the culture of your organisation then you have to encourage dialogue, teamwork and collaboration.

To demonstrate the point of change the authors share the story of how Steven Nickel of Sony VAIO raised the customer satisfation score by 15 percent. We will not retell the story here, but rather note the intented importance of empowering an organsation with ongoing communication.