Measuring culture change

Changing culture is not easy, in fact it’s one of the hardest things to do in business.

How could we make it a bit easier? And how could we increase the chances of succeeding?

In order to improve anything effectively we need to be able to measure it.

Improving Culture is no different. However it’s often harder to measure — it’s not as tangible as revenue or conversion rate.

What metrics would you use to measure culture? How would you know the culture has successfully changed and improved?

In fact, what is culture? Here’s a brief definition of it: The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of particular people or society.

“We can change culture if we change behaviour” — Dr. Aubrey Daniels

While culture itself is quite intangible, it manifests itself in certain behaviours some of which can be measured.

So when changing a culture and looking for ways to monitoring the progress, start by asking what behaviours you’d like to change. Which ones would you like to reduce or eliminate and which ones would you like to see more of?

Our focus is the culture within a sales organisation. And our objective is to make it more objective :-) to change it from one based on guesswork and gut feeling to a data driven culture.

Here are some behaviours you might want your staff to demonstrate:

• Using reports regularly and using them to drive decisions
• Populating CRM correctly and consistently
• Prioritising leads and opportunities well
• Reducing and eventually eliminating excuses based on anecdotal evidence
• Avoiding disputes around data inaccuracy
• Holding regular meetings between Sales and Marketing and singing from the same hymn sheet

All of the above behaviours can be measured or monitored in some way — some easier than others but where there is a will there is a way.

What’s important in order to drive the culture change is to set clear expectations. It’s similar to teaching a baby to use a potty.

It requires patience and consistency and at times it can be a bit awkward and gross but eventually the new behaviour becomes a norm.

But beware! When you are monitoring the behaviours avoid using the metrics to punish people.

When people fear the punishment they might look for ways how to fake their behaviours. For example, if you insist they use certain reports every day, they might open them every day but they might not really use them.

Retaining a true and real picture of behaviours is more valuable than ticking a box. So cherish it when you see the true colours of things and think how you could inspire and motivate people to change their behaviour on their own accord rather than forcing them to do that.

And the moment your sales team learns to use a potty, I mean, becomes data driven… priceless.