Changing the Corporate Culture

 The business is just not moving in a positive direction any longer.  The business environment has changed and you have not.  You have a new opportunity in the marketplace to take advantage of and have to change your company to a new direction.

Involve All Your Stakeholders Establish basic foundation information along with your preliminary strategy. Present it to all stakeholders who you believe are important to maintain support of your new strategy.

Involve All Your Stakeholders Supply them with initial plans, goals, what their responsibilities would be, how this will affect the organization, and, most important, how it will affect them. Not everyone receives the same information; except for the master plan concept, only changes that would affect them personally were supplied.

Team Performance Form teams to deal with every major change area. Team members may be on a variety of teams and some individuals may head more than one team. Try to have each team have at least one member representing every area or department of the organization that would be affected by the change.

Team Performance This may not be possible in all cases. The team leader would then work with any department head, one on one, that did not have a representative on their team. The team concept will help re-invent the company culture into a teamwork effort, which is needed to facilitate change.

Changes In The Organizational Structure Focus on how the work should change, rather than what the new corporate structure should look like or job position changes. This will help eliminate people posturing themselves for more power or protecting themselves.

Create A New Spirit- Words And Deeds To Rally Round Create cultural changes in attitudes and awareness. This can be accomplished by resetting priorities and creating expressions and deeds for the company to rally around to help facilitate our change.

Create A New Spirit- Words And Deeds To Rally Round An accounting person can no longer just call sales people or departments to correct paperwork. They first had to ask, “how was business” or “what’s selling”. Establish a new office appearance: color, motivation posters, etc.

Create A New Spirit- Words And Deeds To Rally Round Business cards should be given to every employee with your logo. A video could be produced to explain the culture of the organization to new employees through images and music.

Train The People In The New Concepts Teams should be created to help move in the new direction. A team to monitor change was established. Customer selling and Service, presentations, reduction of paperwork, upgrading our computer system, marketing and advertising, how to train.

Train The People In The New Concepts As new concepts are developed and tested, manuals and training materials are prepared and the training of personnel begins. Never have more than one training topic per department going on at once.

Train The People In The New Concepts When one was complete, we waited two weeks to begin the next. This is done not to overload your people with too much change at once. All training areas should have testing, goals, and benchmarking where available.

Train The People In The New Concepts For example, sales training can be comprised of selling games, tests such as memorizing acronyms, hourly sales productivity goals, and benchmarking your sales against others competitors in your market place

Empower People-give Them Responsibility To Change Redefine your company. Produce a vision statement. It is not only the goal of your organization but a blueprint for you to follow for success. Each person in the organization should be given the vision statement to read and comprehend, and then be required to live it. Ask each individual how they would interpret the vision and how they intend to change to meet the objectives.

Empower People-give Them Responsibility To Change Encourage people to begin the change process by creating innovative concepts to bring you through the metamorphosis. Many of your people will have great ideas.

Empower People-give Them Responsibility To Change Give your people full authority and allow them to test various theories and ideas in their departments.

Reward and Recognition Create an incentive system that rewards people first for change and then for performance. Both recognition and cash should be used to reinforce the new behavior.

Reward and Recognition Develop an interim bonus to constantly reinforce the change. We call this bonus program “Catch ‘em doing something right”.

Reward and Recognition Your existing incentive system should be revisited to reward productivity, profit centers, and sales increases.

Reward and Recognition When various employees can repeat the new vision, they should be rewarded on the spot.

Leadership Has To Practice What It Preaches All managers should go through training first and start to create the change themselves. If this cannot be accomplished, the people underneath each manager will have difficulty making the transition.

Identifying People Problems The organization should be broken down into four groups. Group one embodies the change and begins to live the new ways. Group two consists of those who welcome the change but do not have the talent or personality to change.

Identifying People Problems Group three are those who were still on the fence and needed further conformation. The last group believes you are either wrong or were not comfortable with change. They resist change.

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary The change committee must make a decision. After identifying the people in the four groups, we work with all to help move each from a non- believer to a contributor. Set time periods varying from three months to nine months depending on their area and its importance of contribution to the change process

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary  There will be individuals who are so negative or unwilling to change it will be necessary to change them at once so the process would not be impeded.  Do not create an unhealthy atmosphere in the organization by making any major or quick dismissals without appropriate warning and time to change. Your management culture should be caring for your employees and give a fair chance.

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary  You may have to make a fair number of personnel changes throughout the organization, but many may leave on their own, realizing that the new direction was not in their best interest.  You must take the following position with those who are on the fence or are willing to change but do not know how: establish goals with them and ask them to come up with their own program to make it work for them.

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary You may have to change job duties and responsibilities for various people who have been loyal to the organization, placing them in positions that are more suited to their style. Example: a regional manager with poor selling and presentation skills was made the head of security.

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary The most difficult problems will be with individuals on your own change committee who cannot make the change. Reassign this person areas that he was responsible for during the change period. Assign this person to comfortable areas that were more mechanical in the change and really did not require different skills. Areas, for example, such as accounting, shipping, warehousing, etc.

Work With Your People But Make Changes When Necessary A problem employee can turn out to be a good sounding board for change. The employee could play devils advocate to many of your new concepts. You may able to make adjustments and changes and in some cases not change at all.

Change The Belief System Through A Series Of Minor Changes  One of the key components for successful change is the belief system - not to mention it speeds up the process and is probably the catalyst for successful change.  Set up various goals and benchmarks along the way. Some of the goals and/or benchmarks appeared to be quite simple or minor, but the minor ones were probably the most important in the change process.

Change The Belief System Through A Series Of Minor Changes As each goal is reached, move on to the next. Eventually, the entire process is completed.

Change The Belief System Through A Series Of Minor Changes A major breakthrough can occur which will have a major impact on your business.

Change The Belief System Through A Series Of Minor Changes One particular department or even some individual can make tremendous strides after initiating change.

Change The Belief System Through A Series Of Minor Changes Immediately disseminate the results to the rest of the company. This will help foster the belief system in the new culture.

INSANITY IS DOING SOMETHING THE SAME WAY AND EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS Albert Einstein