“You’re overworked, you don’t have time to rest, you think too much? Then take 20 minutes a day to relax and breathe deeply! “
A typical example of corporate culture
This good practice and sound advice can be really hard to hear for a hospital nurse who doesn’t have enough time to take care of her patients. In fact she may totally reject it!
Depending on the context, the environment in which we work, certain practices, however useful, are incompatible and can be very badly received, proof that we have understood nothing of the problem! You only have to turn on the TV news to see glaring examples of this!
This is a great example to illustrate the importance of corporate culture. If your solutions go against what is possible, you will fail.
To set up a successful change process and identify what needs to evolve and what is compatible, I first need to understand an organization’s culture.
Corporate culture, the cornerstone of change
And the problem with corporate culture is that it’s made up of a visible part and a hidden part, on which it’s very difficult to act since, by definition, we can’t see it.
- The visible part is what is written on the walls, values, rules, and people’s behaviours…
- The invisible part is made of the informal instructions for use we’ve created over the course of the company’s existence. Often, we’re not even aware of it, because we’ve been trained by people in-house, and we’ve learned to react according to what others do. It all seems so natural to us, because we’ve been in this environment for so long. This explains why we do a lot of things, but sometimes without knowing why.
A typical example of the manifestation of corporate culture is a lack of alignment between what is said and done. What is done becomes the acceptable norm, even if it goes against the written values or rules.
When the context changes, these engrained ways of doing are no longer necessarily the most relevant things to achieve our goals, and we don’t realize it. This is where resistance to change is often born.
How to facilitate implementation
Understanding the corporate culture upstream of my interventions through an audit enables me to adjust my recommendations, and propose the path that offers the least resistance, like water digging the easiest path through the land when forming a river bed.
Sometimes a straight line is not the fastest way to get somewhere! Are you struggling with implementing something? Are you baffled by why it’s not going the way you had anticipated? Let’s talk!