Pushing top-down initiatives to drive cultural change in companies (V)

· Etiquetas: Change

Starting with the managers driving the change is an important step, but not enough. Cultural transformation is consolidated with two other elements: a set of top-down initiatives and messages and the creation of a bottom-up “viral” movement.

This second approach consists of the sum of messages and initiatives that are launched from the top (the management team) downwards (to the rest of the organization). Some of these initiatives could be the following:

  1. Translating changes in the markets into strategic initiatives, and these into a new power structure and generic behaviors that are intended to structure the new culture.
  2. Create a narrative about the purpose of the culture change and the reasons why you want to include personal improvement work in the management team and a viral process.

The content of the story could be along the following lines:

    • Leading is leading by example.
    • You want to have people on your payroll who feel they are activists of change, not passive employees.
    • The goal is to make the company brim with the energy that comes with feeling like a “volunteer” for a cause.
    • Together great things can be done.
    • People management is understood as a process to activate people’s commitment to excellence and the mobilization of talent in pursuit of a noble purpose.
    • We do not understand people management as a set of control and administration activities.
  1. Operationalize the key behaviors on which we want to build the new culture so that they are easy to be explained and understood. This means starting with the behaviors that favor the achievement of business objectives and “translating” them to the various audiences within the company. This “translation” is what will be used to viralize bottom-up behaviors.
  2. Review the organizational structure and the other elements that promote its proper functioning (coordination systems, incentives, careers, human profiles, leadership quality, etc.), so that structure and culture feedback in a positive way for future sustainability.