LONDON -- As I type up the notes this weekend, there are a few things that strike me as worth a further, longer conversation.
One in particular is the need to change organisational culture to do this stuff right.
Many of your on the course last week seemed caught up with that. The interesting thing was that some of you seemed to be leaving saying:
"Right. I am off to change the company culture. That way this stuff is sure to succeed."
While others were thinking:
"There's no way our company will change. Better people than me have tried and failed. I had better scale down my ambitions, and try to win friends one at a time."
And I can relate to both.
What worried me is the chance that both sets of people will end up disappointed.
Organisational culture, as a concept, is enough to set the most soft-hearted executive against you. Most people in business tend to find the idea of a company having a culture quite frightening. And on many days I kind of agree with them.
So, how can you talk about it -- and do it -- without alienating people?
Talk about "the way we do things around here."
There are many different ways of looking at company culture. We use an 8-dimensional model. (No, seriously, we do.) But as you are starting out why not focus on three simple things:
1) Your media -- the channels you manage. How can they mirror (not direct) the culture change that you want to achieve?
2) Processes -- the systems and infrastructure that your company uses. One example a colleague brought to the session was the fact that all the social media sites are blocked at their workplace. That's a big message passed on to employees by a system or process. What others do we have?
3) Leadership -- these are the most important 'culture makers'. Not just the CEO, but line managers and mid-level execs. Heck, even the guys and girls in the post-room or the smoking hut. How can they start to do things that show changes to "the way we do things around here"?
Worth a thought.
What do you think?
/df
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2 comments:
It all sounds so simple when you put it like that. We're a small yet complex organisation - 10 offices/260 employees - that I strongly believe would benefit from greater use of social media to share information and ideas - just to form relationships. The blocking of social media websites is a major issue for me - trying to paint pictures with just words when the best way to understand social media is just to do it. OK some elements may be juvenile; but once you've got past the hilarity of tagging peopele's photos; poking them; reminding yourself why you lost touch with those schoolfriends in the first place; then you start to see how it could work in a business context. Especially for organisations with a wide extended family of stakeholders - who are neither fully internal or external - such a this one. Anyway, I fear I am ranting now. Suffice to say, if anyone knows a good method of getting ICT to unblock social sites, please let me know...
Kate,
Interesting questions. We did look at those on this course. In fact, it was great to see people sniggering and then turn deadly serious when they got passed that and saw the potential. You need to get bosses to tell ICT to unblock sites. They tend to block the wrong ones anyway... but now they need to know what cost they are incurring by blocking them. IBM, for example, say they cut email traffic by 40% when they started using wikis.
That's real cost.
Come in and talk to us about it any time you want. It would be good to see you again.
/df
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