Assess Current Culture
In this stage you need to assess exactly what culture your team is currently a part of, which parts of that culture you want to keep and which parts you want to change.
Decide Desired Culture
Your next step is to find out exactly what you want. Now this might seem a bit pointless to spend time on this but trust me its worth doing. Getting specific here is important, the last thing you want to do is think you want just a culture of trust in management but neglect to include other beneficial culture traits such as independence, confidence and understanding. All of these can compliment each other and you don’t want to end up adversely end up creating a culture dependent on management instead of one that trusts and works with management.
Getting specific is the key to this step, identify exactly what you want and be ambitious as there is no reason to put effort in to achieve half a result. Unless you know where you want to go you will not know when you have got there.
Identify Motivations
Once you have identified where it is you are and where it is you want to be its time to investigate the how. It is important to understand the motivations around the negative or unhelpful culture, this is also a key coaching technique. Once you understand the motivations around the unhelpful culture you can as a leader start to make changes to bring about motivations for your desired and helpful culture. For example say you have a culture of mistrust and you investigate the cause and it turns out this is because of years of broken promises from management. It is your job to then find motivations for the desired culture.
You do this by taking information, listening to what your team is saying, watching what they are doing and asking for honest and open feedback. This might be difficult as you may have staff who are uncomfortable being so open about issues or problems with their boss. One way to overcome this could be to include anonymous surveys to try and encourage honest feedback. Use the conversations you have with your team and your observations to see and understand the motivations for the current culture. With regards to the motivations for your desired culture you need to use a combination of common sense, and again conversations with your team.
Find what drives your team to be what you want your team to be, they say you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink, but I’m pretty sure if you lead a thirsty horse to water you won’t have to make drink it just will. The same goes for your team find their motivations and the change will come naturally.
Getting specific is the key to this step, identify exactly what you want and be ambitious as there is no reason to put effort in to achieve half a result. Unless you know where you want to go you will not know when you have got there.
Make Adjustments
The adjustments phase is where you start to implement your newly discovered motivations.
Returning to my previous example, you have identified a culture of mistrust and the motivation for this. Let’s say we decide to turn that culture of mistrust in management to a culture of trust. As a leader we can give regular updates on what we are doing to our staff so they are aware of our actions towards meeting their expectations. This would help to change the motivation of broken promises by allowing staff to see how management are working towards doing what they said they would. Again honest feedback from your team can be useful at this stage when deciding which of your identified motivations to change, if you get a resounding ‘no’ from everyone the likelihood is this adjustment won’t work and isn’t worth your time implementing and taking to the next phase.
It’s important to mention the adjustments you make don’t always have to be things you do as a leader. Adjustments can be changes to the environment, the structure of team meetings, your rewards scheme etc. Motivations can be literally anything that is a part of your team’s working life and any of them that can be changed give the potential for an adjustment.
Test
Now, even with all the preparation in the world we are all still human and make mistakes, for this reason the next phase is to test. Changing a workplace culture is by no means a quick and easy job so give it some time and then evaluate the differences. It might be useful to be open and honest with your team so they can tell you if they feel different, more energetic, trusting or whatever your ideal outcome is. Use your own knowledge of your team and get involved, watch what is going on and you will be able to spot the changes you are looking for. Again this is a period where you have to be really honest with yourself and be brutal in deciding “Have I achieved my desired culture?”.
Amend
Once you have tested your new motivations you will probably find that there are further improvements to make, the next step is to amend your strategy. Make tweaks based on the information you have found out, again I will return to my earlier example and say you find there is still a level of mistrust with management. Take a step back and look at your workplace from your employees’ eyes and you might find that it feels like management are just saying all the right things but you’re seeing no results. Here you have a perfect opportunity to tweak your motivation. Instead of just giving feedback on what you have been doing you actively involve your staff in the actions you take; ask for feedback, enter discussions, take them to meetings, involve them in activities and invite them to evaluate the effectiveness of what you have been implementing.
The Ongoing Process
What we have done here is explore the current work environment and investigate the means to change it. Once you have completed the process above there is still more to do, the only constant in this world is change. Unless you continue to work with your team, get involved with them and understand them it will be impossible to lead them. Your job as a leader is not only to help your team through change but also to create change so the business can succeed. Managing the workplace culture is ongoing and requires your attention throughout your leadership, if you don’t you run the risk of old cultures returning or the culture you created becoming unfit for the future of your business.
Lets be honest this is not a quick and easy thing to do but would you rather deal with a business where the staff were helpful, happy, enjoy their work and want to provide you with a good service? These businesses will have a strong positive work culture that fuels that performance, having this culture gives your business an edge it will draw more positivity towards it as it becomes more positive. In the long run culture is something to be invested in as its long term rewards are worth the hard work.