How to Rapidly Transform Your Company Culture

Most attempts to change an organization's culture fail because of a governance problem.

Many leaders think that transforming an organization's culture is particularly difficult. In reality, the recipe is simple. The reason it very rarely works is that it is simply poorly applied.

This recipe consists simply of explicitly defining the desired interaction rules of an organization's members — in other words, the culture (a set of knowledge, values and behaviors that facilitate a company's functioning by being shared by most of its members) — and of ensuring that these rules are respected. Culture is generally implicit, and what happens in reality is rarely in phase with the proclaimed “values.” The latter are therefore very rarely lived on a daily basis and are often perceived as a “marketing” exercise.

A gap with reality

Several reasons explain this gap between proclaimed values and reality. The first is that most so-called values are merely behavioral injunctions, such as “innovation,” “sharing,” “communication” or “team spirit.” Since a value should be an end in itself, and certainly not an expected behavior, this conflation creates a semantic confusion that is not always consciously perceived by employees. But the consequences are real: they struggle to give these values the importance desired.

Second reason: everyone interprets these terms as it suits them. The word “respect,” for example, ranges from politeness to submission to the boss's authority, by way of political correctness. When a concept is vague, it is difficult to enforce. It is therefore better to express principles in the form of a sentence: thus, “No attack on employees' dignity” is much more intelligible and meaningful than the mere notion of “respect.”

Finally, the third reason — the most problematic: for a principle to really define the culture, it must be respected by all members of the organization. When this is not the case, it is only wishful thinking. That is where the shoe pinches, because most companies have no reliable mechanism to enforce their values. Those who are supposed to enforce them (the managers) are unfortunately often the first to grant themselves special privileges. Abuses of power are commonplace: according to the Swiss HR barometer of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, 60% of Swiss employees say they are disappointed or cynical about their manager or management, because of difficult relationships or unkept promises.

The power of the... counter-power

The only way to avoid abuses of power is to have a counter-power. Montesquieu expressed it without ambiguity: “It is an eternal experience that every man who has power is led to abuse it: he goes on until he finds limits. So that power cannot be abused, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power checks power.” What he calls “the arrangement of things” corresponds to governance. To settle disagreements, an independent power is needed. In regimes where there is no way to prevent abuses of power, psychological safety is impossible.

A variant of authoritarian regimes is the enlightened dictatorship: the one where the despot is benevolent. Although he holds all the powers, he uses them wisely for the good of the people. While this proves “less bad” than pure and simple dictatorship, it does not eliminate the psychological insecurity inherent in any system without a counter-power.

Enforcing the organization's values

In organizations, it is the executives who embody both the executive power and the judicial power. This does not ensure a sufficient level of psychological safety for employees. In reality, organizations are structured like enlightened dictatorships, in which executives are supposed to do the fair things. But all this is little brought to light or denounced, which explains these feelings of insecurity and cynicism.

This configuration — or, more exactly, this governance based on the logic of an enlightened dictatorship — prevents the proclaimed values or principles from really being enforced. When managers are judge and party, it is illusory to hope that employees feel psychologically safe. Yet this incapacity to enforce the defined principles is the major obstacle to their use as a vector of cultural transformation.

To restore psychological safety, it suffices to reduce the power of those who are tempted to abuse it. The most widespread approach consists of relying on a leader who guarantees respect for the said values. Some acquit themselves very well, but the mechanism depends too much on themselves. So much so that when this enlightened boss is replaced by another who is less so, the situation deteriorates dramatically. For employees' psychological safety to be lasting, it must not depend on the person of the leader. It is governance, globally, that must prevent abuses of power and other transgressions.

Few companies have put in place an organization, or a mechanism, in this sense. Yet leaders are almost always convinced they have such a mechanism, but this conviction is often the result of a lack of lucidity that does not withstand rigorous examination. To know whether a mechanism aimed at preventing abuses of power is indeed in place and effective, it suffices to measure employees' perception of psychological safety.

A tailor-made culture

Once a reliable and independent mechanism has been put in place to enforce the company's principles, the rest of the recipe to apply in order to evolve the culture is relatively simple: it suffices to draft a “charter of non-negotiables,” which contains a good selection of fundamental principles defining the desired culture — in other words, the organization's DNA. As there is no one-size-fits-all culture, it is always a tailor-made exercise: the choice of principles will determine the result obtained.

Here are a few examples of non-negotiables: “The collective interest prevails over individual interests”; “Aim for a fair arbitration between equity, benevolence and performance”; “Executives are responsible for optimizing the engagement level of their teams,” etc. These principles are compasses that make it possible to assess the behavior of each employee, regardless of their hierarchical level. They are much clearer and more easily usable than abstract values.

Experience shows that, in general, fewer than a dozen non-negotiables suffice to determine an organization's culture. Depending on the pre-existing or desired culture, these principles can be defined by different bodies, such as senior management, or in consultation with all employees. The more the base adheres to them, the more these non-negotiables have a chance of being respected. The whole challenge is to choose them well. When employees embrace these non-negotiables, the culture, too, will evolve quickly.