Culture dominoes
The top lesson I’ve learned about culture is that it spreads top down. If the business leaders are not on board and changing their behaviours, no real change will occur anywhere else in the business.
Yes, there will be individuals who embrace change on their own accord but they are a minority and in order to see a major benefits you need to change the majority of your organisation.
One of the greatest work experiences in my life was seeing a culture shift happen throughout an organisation. It was an exemplary case.
It was like falling dominoes.
Managing Director was highly analytical and he has asked me to help him get insights into his sales organisation. I have built him a suite of reports that he loved and used all the time to identify issues and to improve the business performance.
The Sales Director spoke with me one day and he said — “I saw the reports but I don’t really use them, they are not useful for me”. My ego started to cry :-D
But he continued. “What would be really useful to me is to see the same reports broken down by a sales person”.
Simple. I did just that and in a week I presented it back. I’ve never seen a business person this happy. It felt like it’s Christmas and I’m the Santa Clause.
The Sales Director finally got an effective tool to dispel some of the most common excuses he had been hearing from the Sales team — such as “We are too expensive”, “no one is buying”, etc. He was able to come back on those and say “Let’s see what data says” and he would pull up a report, pointed at it and asked: “Interesting, if that’s the case, then how come these sales reps hit their target and these others haven’t made enough calls?”
It was a game changer. Very quickly the Sales Team Leader jumped on board as he found it very uncomfortable to be asked questions he had no answer for and he started to manage his team using the same data.
Eventually the individual Sales reps realised there is no point in making excuses and the best way to stay out of trouble is to focus on selling. They embraced the data themselves and used it to monitor and drive their own individual performance.
Arguments and excuses within the organisation basically disappeared, everyone got on the same page since, using the same data and seeing the same information. Communication got easier and focus shifted to the work and results as it should be.
If you are a business leader, a CEO or Managing Director and you’ve got an important change programme taking place in your organisation, make sure you model the behaviour change and see the culture transformation all the way through to its completion.
Business culture is a domino, if you insist your direct reports are on board, they will pass it on but keep going until the whole organisation has embraced the new culture. That’s when you’ll win.
