Changing Corporate Culture is daring, dangerous, and supremely difficult. Peter Drucker, the Great Management Guru, once said:

Yet here we are, proposing to do just that: change your culture. How dare we?

We understand Mr. Drucker’s quote as being holistic. A company’s existing culture is the base of its power (or reason for its demise). To replace a culture is daunting, next to impossible. That is not what we propose.

— Change by addition works. We were part of it. —

In essence, we are convinced that you can take what you have got and enhance it by introducing new elements, without trying to eradicate or remove existing features. Rather like channeling water (the nature of which you cannot change) through a new pathway, you can harness the energy of your company in new ways.

The challenge is to identify the elements that need to be added, and to firmly “glue” those additions into the existing context. Using Gary’s analogy on the right, we are going to set out to define the truffles.

How to make the Change Stick?

To change culture, the “truffle”, to stay in the analogy, must be much more attractive than the “bone”. What constitutes the “attractiveness” of a company and a position? In our experience, backed by the research in this field, there are a few aspects (this list is incomplete):

• Compensation
  Innovation will increase your companies ability to compensate its employees through enhanced profit margins, better cash flow management, revenue base expansion, and, if you are publicly held, share options. Money does talk.
• Personal Experiences
  To work on something that leaves a mark, to be part of something great, that is rewarding. For some people, it is very important their names gets a lot of “hits” on Google. Working with the best is also rewarding to some.
• Personal Expression
  Being able to live out loud, to be creative, to be oneself and accepted, these are important drivers for some.
• Group Status
  Being recognized within their peer group, either internally or externally, is an important driver of satisfaction for some people. Innovation can make your employees shining stars.

These aspects need to be thought about when designing the changes to the organization. How can we make sure we maximize their effects?

We can help you here. Based on proven tools like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™, we will design change incentive charters for the four temperaments making up your organization. For each of them, we will marry the Innovation Strategy with the Retooling Plan to develop appropriate incentives.

What Steps to Success to take?

The Change Path Curve is a powerful tool to gauge, plan, and validate your team’s progress. We used the tool within Whirlpool to give management a framework upon which change activities could be mapped. Take a look at this narrated presentation below. A click will start it.

For each stage, we can define what changes will be introduced to the organization, and how. These can be linked to trigger points, driven either by time (not preferable) or Key Performance Metrics (more robust).

It can be helpful to keep the management team roughly 2 steps ahead of the organization in their experience of change. This gives the some information advantage without created the potential of a “tear-off” between leaders and followers.

How to Measure Progress?

The Change Path Curve can also be used to measure the progress of the organization. We can attach Key Performance Metrics to each of the eight stages along the path. At certain trigger points along the change plan, we will take an audit of the progress to make sure that the organization is ready to embark on the next stage along the Change Path Curve.

This can help prevent “stuffing”, where initiatives are being executed against the backdrop of an stunned organization. Rather, we will define upfront in what state the organization needs to be in to effectively absorb the next set of planned changes.