Culture Change By Small Steps

This blog article has two accompanying articles:  one on positive culture, and another on positive deviance

The Challenge

‘How can we respond to the staff survey in away that helps to promote a culture change in this organization?’

The Need

This 800-1000 people strong engineering organization was previously part of a Government organization. Many attitudes and behaviours persisted from that time. The organization was a classic top-down command and control structure with a strong emphasis on structure and process. It was becoming apparent that to compete in the commercial world the organization needed to become much better at accessing the strengths of all its employees. It needed to become faster, more flexible and more responsive. As an organization, despite changes in ownership, little had really changed in many years. This was not a situation that could continue. While the employees were skilled workers, many of whom had been there all their working lives, the quality of leadership was variable. There was a much greater emphasis on efficient management than on effective leadership. The HR Director knew that the culture needed to change. She wanted to come at it from a complex adaptive system perspective: as she put it, lighting small fires where she could. During the couple of years she had already been with the organization she had built up good credibility with the senior leadership working on issues such as pensions and performance management and was trusted to act with some autonomy.

The parent organization was disappointed with the results of the first staff survey and wanted to see some improvements fast. The HRD spotted the opportunity to address this challenge differently. This was an opportunity to bring more participative, bottom-up development processes into the organization. It was an opportunity to help the organisation in its expressed, but not yet enacted, desire to become more flexible, responsive and innovative: in other words to move from one where change is a hierarchical, top-down, mechanistic process to one where change is more organic, bottom up and emergent. She engaged us to bring in our expertise in these modes of engagement and change and to work in partnership with her to create this shift in culture. 

In addition it was hoped that the activities and outcomes would have a positive effect on the scores on the employee survey when it was re-run in approximately 6 months. To ensure this connection, the process was to focus specifically on communication, coordination and productivity.

The Process

This idea evolved initially into 4 Appreciative Inquiry based days and 3 World Cafe based events. We would be working with groups of up to 30 people at any one time, both to avoid excessive disruption to production and also to keep the process within the permission and influence remit of the HRD. We aimed to touch 10% of the workforce in one location and 50% in the other.

From these events a number of ideas emerged that the front line staff involved were supported to develop into business case arguments. Once the business case was clear, the groups were supported to create short, impactful, presentations outlining their case to a decision-making panel. Three decision-making events were held,  they involved the project teams presenting their business cases for innovation and change to a senior management panel of three who had to hold their decision making discussions in public and give their answers there and then. These events were attended by all those involved in the project groups and were very successful, high-energy events.

We also ran one Simureal event and two celebration events over two locations over a period of a few months.

In designing this process and running these events we pulled on our understanding of: 

• Organizations as complex adaptive systems
• Organization as social systems
• Culture as patterns of interaction, relationship and communication
• Change through interactions
• Positivity, positive reinforcement, practical outcomes
• Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology

The Outcome

 The employee survey was run six months later with good improvements in all the targeted areas. Other observable outcomes were:

1. 12 active improvement projects, all from the ground up and all focussed on improving work communication, coordination or productivity
2. A number of staff feeling empowered that they had been heard and had been able to put ideas into action. This experience was counter to the strong organizational story that they couldn’t influence things.
3. High quality communication between front line staff and the Managing Director and other members of the Senior Management Team, leading to positively changed perception both of managers of staff and vice versa.
4. An appreciation in the senior team of the value of working in these ways, and a commitment to doing more

By giving people in an organization a different experience of the organization one can begin to shift the perception of the organization. When perceptions shifts so behavior changes in line with the new understanding. Our interventions affected the established patterns of relationship, communication and behavior and so created change. In this way culture change can be encouraged as a system-wide experience of difference rather than as a top-down plan of change.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Simureal.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Making Strategy Real

The Challenge

‘We want to hold a strategy conference and we want to do it in a strengths based way. Can you help us?’

The Need

Richard and his commissioning team from the local authority already knew that they wanted to involve myriad local senior decision-makers in the development of their strategy for implementing the government driven initiative ‘Family First’. A day and a venue were earmarked. Up to 200 people were invited. Key-note speakers had been arranged. An exhibition of local services was arranged to run as a trade fair alongside. The planning team knew that within these parameters they wanted to do something different. They didn’t want a conventional conference, they wanted something that was strengths based, something that would make strategy real from the start. Could we help?

The Process 

Working closely with the multi-functional planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day that would be participatory and engaging and would meet the strategic commissioner’s need to develop strategy. Calling on Appreciative Inquiry as a framework, the day was designed to identify existing strengths across the network, to create a variety of shared ideas of what the future could be like if this strategic objective was achieved, and to begin to identify ways to achieve it. The day was delivered by Appreciating Change working in partnership with the planning team.

The Outcome 

The day (attended by 150 people) delivered a number of identifiable strategic results:

•   We improved the social capital of the delivery system of Think Family, that is the quality of trust, knowledge, and information-sharing processes across the system, so increasing the system self-organization abilities and reducing time drag, saving time and energy.

•   We enhanced the relational strength of the delivery system of Think Family, increasing connectivity and the ability for good practice, knowledge and skill to flow to where it is needed to deliver the strategy. We increased the system’s responsiveness.

•   We identified the positive core of good practice that enables Think Family, so identifying the heart of the strategy and saving time and energy collecting and disseminating this information through other means.

•   We co-created a shared understanding, or vision of, and desire for, an integrated, joined up, responsive, flexible, family needs-led, strengthening, honouring, interconnected service for families in the borough, saving time and energy on ‘getting buy-in’ amongst stakeholders to the vision.

•   We helped the system understand itself much better, so enhancing the abilities of the component parts to utilise the strengths of the whole system, increasing overall effectiveness.

•   We created positive energy in the system that enhances its ability to create change reducing the need for driving and motivating as separate parts of the implementation process, saving energy.

•   We created a propensity within the system to act in a greater Think Family way, creating a united strategic intent, saving energy.

•   We created a series of resolutions for individual and joint action that will serve to move things forward, creating positive impact.

All these positive outcomes were achieved at a very difficult time of cutbacks and redundancies (and government change!).

Measured evaluation on the day showed outcomes included increased clarity about how the strategy would look in practice, increased sense that the vision was shared across all stakeholders, greater clarity about the key elements and increased energy and enthusiasm for making it happen. The modal average for all of these indicators moved 3 points on a 10 point scale in a positive direction.

In addition the planning team have now become the sustainability team and are embarking on a process of closely questioning the system to discover detailed stories about the changes in people’s practice and the impact of this on families in the borough. Once discovered, these can be amplified and broadcast to help grow the emerging awareness of system change and improvement.

The Feedback 

Many comments were made at the event about the value of the conversations being held, the stories being shared and the connections being made. One participant was moved to record her appreciation more formally:

‘May I pass on the congratulations of our Line Manager, Mary Taylor, and all members of the Transfer Team for the terrific organisation on this excellent recent conference. The Transfer Team found it to be of enormous benefit and we made some excellent colleague contacts with other teams. We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to learn about the work of other teams and to be able to discuss the work of the Transfer Team with colleagues who have greater direct contact with families who may benefit from our assistance.’

The Council Member was formally congratulated, in Chamber, on the success of the ‘innovative and creative’ event.

In addition the term ‘think family’ became part of the system lexicon, used to call people to good practice and as shorthand for the objective of the changes in practice. This is strategy come alive in hearts and minds.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on the use of Appreciative Inquiry here and on Strategy here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Support through Culture Change

Background - Planned change and resistance

The organization was going through a planned change process centred on the introduction of a new IT system and work processes. Less acknowledged was the appreciation that this was only part of a larger ‘culture change’ aspiration. After a long initial internal consultation process, the project was launch and small group of 7 managers were designated to work with the consultants and internal programme manager to drive the implementation through.

Appreciating Change was approached by the HR and OD managers who were picking up some discontent amongst staff as the project entered the implementation phase, and some uncertainty from managers about how to ‘lead’ through the transition time. They wanted to offer help and support to both these groups. We decided that the offerings needed to be ‘bite-sized’ i.e. a couple of hours, so that over-stretched people would feel they could take the time to attend them. And that attendance should be voluntary and self-selecting. It was very brave of the HR department to agree to this.

Introducing Emergent Change

It was clear that the planned change was not connecting with the wider organisation. To introduce some emergent change at this point we designed 2 two-hour workshops

1. For  managers: Supporting Teams through challenging times

This work was to offer practical guidance to leaders on:

• How to maintain a sense of pro-activity in the team by helping them focus on what they can influence rather than what they can’t.
• How to motivate and energise the team to see beyond the immediate challenges to potential future benefits
• How to continue to offer effective leadership through periods of turbulence
• How to create and maintain a positive work atmosphere in the face of difficulties and challenges
• How to access team resources to help create resilience and optimism

To do this in the workshop we thought about and explored:

1. What happens to people during change
2. The priorities of leadership during change and uncertainty
3. The group’s stories of leadership and their leadership strengths
4. How to extend the idea of working with strengths to their teams,
5. The importance of maintaining morale through encouraging positive mood states and examined the benefits of that for the change process and also how to do it.
6. We also made commitments to action to help support our teams during challenging times.

Outcome

Participants feedback comments indicated that they came away from the workshop with a greater awareness of the need to attend to creating and positive workplace climate even when things were uncertain; the need to be visible and to make allowances for people’s confusion.  They were interested in the power of asking questions and of focussing on what their team can influence rather than what they can’t. And how to turn challenges into ideas about positive outcomes. I think this referred particularly to a team that were facing closure. We had spent a short while exploring the of focussing the challenge against definitions of success and performance into those that matched the task – in other words, thinking about what a really great closing down process would look and feel like and what the team would need to be focussing on to make that happen.

       2. For staff: Making sense of the forthcoming challenges

This workshop was different in design, it was based on a world café model where the group addressed a series of questions. Initially these were framed as

• What will be different in the future state?
• How will these differences impact my work, and within this what can I influence?
• What is it that we are being asked to do differently or different exactly?

In the event the workshops developed some different questions to focus on  such as:

• What fires can I light/seeds can I plant to help this organization continue to be a great place to work?
• How can I contribute to help make the experience of change as good as possible for me and others?

Outcome

In a final round people reported that they felt, more positive, more accepting, more assertive, more pro-active, more choiceful and braver. They articulated ideas they had about how they could positively influence the current situation for the benefit of themselves and others. They really liked the flexible format that allowed it to be adapted to the particular interests, situation and concerns of those in the room. They expressed appreciation at the opportunity to spend constructive time thnking and talking about what was going on, how they were feeling about it, and what they could actively do to improve things.

Their post-event feedback suggested that the opportunity to talk in a constructive way in a safe environment was much appreciated. They suggested that the creation of a bigger picture of change and the challenges of change helped shift the ‘us and them’ mentatily that was in danger of developing. Like the managers, many came away with a recognition of the importance of focussing on the things you can change or control, not those you can’t.

Combining The Planned And Emergent Change

The series of workshops culminated with a third session called ‘Embracing Change at...’. The challenge was to link the workshop to the recently designed and issued set of organisational competences. This workshop was three hours which allowed some time to explore the two ideas about change as being both a planned and an emergent process and to relate the discussion to the current situation. We then moved on to exploring how people behave in change and what needs to happen for people to be engaged, pro-active and innovative in a change context. After this we shared understanding of what positive engagement with change looked like. 

Finally we gave groups 5 different change scenarios and asked people to compare how they might have reacted prior to the workshop, and how they might react now. These scenarios included ‘My boss has told me I have to do something different and I don’t really understand why and I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’ And ‘someone has made a change that impacts on my work without consulting me!’

These workshops were very well received.

This case study is a good example of how ad hoc emergent change approaches can be brought to a planned change process to help ameliorate some of the worse effects and to promote a positive and appreciative approach to people in change.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Culture change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715