This week I'm looking at the question of how to change corporate culture and challenging some of the premises that are often used.  Today I'm asking the question: does the corporate culture need to change, or is it something else that should change?

Cultural change is most usually driven by the team at the top, whether it be the management team of a division or the directors of the whole organisation.  Often, however, it is not the organisation that needs to change but the team at the top.

It may take some time to achieve, but the values, beliefs and behaviours of any organisation tend to mirror those of the most senior managers (or 'compensate' for them).  This isn't something that one has to plan to implement, it happens naturally.  Even when a senior team feels it is disconnected from the rest of the organisation, eg: because they seem to have different skills, values or beliefs from most of the workforce, there is an organisational osmosis whereby their behavioural example, or behaviour that is a dysfunctional compensation, percolates down through the rest of the organisation.

"If that were true" you might say "then this would make cultural change easy: we decide what culture we want and then let this 'organisational osmosis' do its work".  However, there are two main problems that cause something different to happen than what is intended.

The first is that this process is one of the organisation gradually starting to mirror the behaviours of their leaders, not their wishes or intentions.  And I'm talking about ALL of their behaviours, not just the conscious ones or the ones that the managers like.  If most of the time in the boardroom is spent trying to resolve power struggles between directors then the organisation will, over time, develop an unwanted power culture.  Or, if the use of power lower down the hierarchy is consciously suppressed or not delegated, the organisation will develop some compensatory dysfunction - eg: unhealthy competition between divisions or lack of cooperation.  But if the boardroom is collectively focused on achievement, then there will likely be a task culture that is shared across the organisation.

The second problem is that of leadership: where does the organisation get its leadership from?  If the top team are not sufficiently visible then there is a vacuum of leadership and, as vacuums are wont to do, this may attract people other than the top team into the role of providing leadership.  Cultural leadership might then come from the people who are the mainstay of the grapevine, rather than the people who are supposed to be leaders according to the organogram.

For the organisation to either mirror or compensate for the behaviours of the top team takes a long time, and the bigger the company the longer it takes.  But it is an inevitable process and the behaviours that get emulated tend to be the unconscious ones.  Tomorrow I'll take a look at what the top team can do to take control of their own impact on the corporate culture.