WEAKENED CULTURE
Actions in direct conflict with corporate
values, as with the space shuttle disaster,
are a clear indication of a problem with
culture. More subtly, witnesses to those ac-tions
who choose to remain silent, rather
than speak up, point to a culture’s failings
as well.
Canadian engineering giant SNC Lavalin
recently struggled through several troubled
years, embroiled in headline-making scan-dals.
While only a handful of employees
may have been directly involved in illegal
activity, there were plenty of silent witness-es
who never spoke up about what they saw
going on.
“A key way you can tell if culture is be-ing
reinforced is how employees react
when they see behaviour that’s inconsis-tent
with the prescribed values and beliefs
put forward by the organization,” said
Norm Sabapathy, executive VP, People at
Cadillac Fairview.
At SNC Lavalin – a company that lists
respect for its code of ethics among its core
values – the employees who didn’t speak
up were as indicative of a broken culture
as the actions of the wayward employees.
TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP
While a leader can’t single handedly de-velop
a strong corporate culture, it’s nearly
impossible for an organization to have one
without a visionary leader at the helm. But
culture isn’t simply a top-down exercise.
Instead, it needs to be shared and made
real from the bottom up as well.
“Followers give leaders permission to
lead and they can take it away just as eas-ily,”
said Flatt.
In some cases, a CEO might engage
employees to drive the change, as was the
case at IBM just over two decades ago. In
1993, IBM was floundering as an organi-zation
and brought in a new CEO, Louis
Gerstner. To help realign the culture, he
ran a company-wide grassroots consulta-tion
on values.
“He tapped into the views of all employ-ees,
and basically rebuilt the values based
on bottom-up input across the organiza-tion,”
said Lowe. “They followed through
with good communication and took steps
to engage the workforce. While it was a
participatory process, none of it could have
happened without the 100 per cent dedica-tion
of the leadership of that organization.”
Typically, the roots of change begin with
questions. Flatt, for example, typically asks
her clients, “Why is your organization
here?” A compelling why is a necessary base
for a strong culture. Southwest Airlines,
for example, is here to democratize air
travel. Apple is here to disrupt the status
quo. Disney is here to create dreams. Your
organization’s “why” provides an overarch-ing
statement that should resonate across
the entire company.
Under that overarching umbrella, the
executive team can begin to develop values.
“One of our clients hired us to work
with the leadership team, get really clear
on the culture and change it,” said Flatt.
“So we spent two days with them in a
workshop. After the team got clear on the
company’s overarching reason for being,
we asked each person to share stories and
we helped them unpack their individu-al
values.” Each person identified two or
three important values of his or her own.
From there, said Flatt, “We asked, okay,
what are the collective values of the group?
What do you really stand for as a lead-ership
team and as a business? And they
narrowed it down to four values.”
DEVELOPING BLUEPRINTS
Before attempting to encourage staff to
embrace those values, it’s critical to under-stand
the current lay of the land. After all,
it’s impossible to create a map to point B if
you don’t know where point A is.
“Take time to measure baselines,” said
Sabapathy. “What are the shared stan-dards,
attitudes and beliefs in your current
organization, and what would you like
them to be?”
When you’ve got a handle on those co-ordinates,
you can understand what sort
of gap you’re attempting to bridge in each
area of the business and you can create a
tailored map for each stakeholder group.
KEEP IT REAL
Whether an organization is working
with a set of values or an umbrella vision
statement, it’s likely that each area of the
business will understand these through a
slightly different filter. HR can help each
group establish what these sometimes
lofty-sounding ideas and principles might
look like in the real world.
“If you ask someone to share their val-ues
with you, they’ll give you a blank look,”
said Flatt. “If you ask them to share a story
they’re really proud of, when they were at
their best or something they want to cele-brate,
you’ll hear the values in that story.”
BEHAVIOURS AND POLICIES
Simply sharing values with team mem-bers,
however, isn’t likely to have much
impact on culture. Instead, each group
within an organization needs to define
what behaviours support the values, as
they understand them.
At Disney, for example, the umbrella
statement “We are here to create dreams”
might be defined by different actions in the
accounting department than in the mar-keting
or customer service departments.
Teams can also influence policies that
empower employees to take action in sup-port
of those values. Online shoe and
clothing company, Zappos, for example,
lists “Deliver ‘wow’ through service” as a
core value. Company folklore tells of cus-tomer
service reps arranging pizza delivery
cover feature
“CULTURE IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF ANY COMPANY.
THE CLEARER AND MORE PURPOSEFUL YOUR
CULTURE IS, THE MORE YOU’LL DIFFERENTIATE
YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPETITION.”
– BONNIE FLATT, LEADERSHIP COACH
22 ❚ JULY/AUGUST 2014 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL