Is transformation really required?
Not every culture change initiative needs the same size of response. Get the approach wrong and you’ll likely disengage people before the work starts.
A culture refresh is light. Once a year, bring the team together, look honestly at what has drifted, and agree what needs to change to hit next year's target. Low disruption, and the level most organisations skip because nothing looks broken enough to bother.
A culture reset is heavier. A deliberate re-founding, usually forced by a change in leadership or an engagement result too poor to explain away. The reset takes more time, involves more people and requires more effort. The benefits far outweigh the cost of undertaking it.
A transformation is the whole thing at once; structure, operating model, vision, values, and behaviour together, driven by a fundamental shift, merger or an ambitious target. It involves a much bigger audience and requires much more time to bed in.
Yet not every transformation needs to be so (regardless of how it’s branded).
Apply too much process to a small change and you generate resistance. Try to transform after a big change has landed and you generate detachment. To get change right, you always need to match the effort to the need.
To find out more about scaling culture change read my new paper ‘Making Culture Change Stick’ at www.colindellis.com/culture-papers
Download my new white paper ‘Making Culture Change Stick’ to find out more about how you can build, change or retain a great place to work at www.colindellis.com/culture-papers
