A business’s culture is often considered its bedrock. However, few really understand how culture forms and therefore struggle to know how to correct it when it seems to be straying. 

Culture is created from beliefs of employees about how things work. These beliefs are formed through daily behaviors and the response to these actions, and employee behaviors are typically defined or supported by the systems, human and technical, conscious and unconscious, embedded in the organization. So when change is desired, there are three points of entry, but only one can make a difference.

Leadership typically and unfortunately starts from what they perceive is the easiest but is actually the most complex — employee beliefs. The most common ways you’ve probably seen are by handing down edicts where employees are told to do or not do something new or different. Posters, catchphrases, and new mission statements often appear in an effort to motivate or inspire. Unfortunately these commands, words, and billboards are routinely dismissed and/or mocked as toothless reminders of corporate paternalism. However, this approach isn’t done in isolation, it is typically coupled with another point of entry, behaviors.

Directly addressing employee behaviors is a next-level-up effort, but again will often fall short of lasting change. Behavior change is driven by training and/or incentive programs to bring about new attitudes and actions or remove unwanted ones. These efforts only work temporarily because they are left unsupported by management and incentives are rarely made permanent. When both evaporate, employee behavior returns to status quo. These approaches are commonly used by leadership because they will see fast but sadly only temporary change. 

The final entry point is the only one that doesn’t directly target employees and is the path rarely taken because it can shake the organization’s landscape. Systems change is indirect behavior change and it is the element in an organization that has the greatest influence on the previous two. Systems-change efforts can be catalytic mechanisms because of the far-reaching and sometimes unexpected transformation they bring. It is a scary proposition for the status quo but ultimately it is the systems that drive behaviors and behaviors are what create beliefs, and the beliefs form the culture.

Take for example the strong desire today to remain competitive through innovation. We need not look much further than an organization’s intertwined systems of communication and trust for the change. Trust takes on different forms based on communication beliefs. When communication is closed and only top-down, managers direct and employees act. Managers subsequently trust only those that comply and employees trust that if they comply, they will be rewarded (or not punished). This is how a culture of compliance is born; the system of communication supports compliant behaviors and leads to a belief about what matters most in the organization. Compliance is easy and clean but hardly advances the business. If, however, we have an open communication system where managers trust employees to be autonomous and do what is necessary and get what they need, we then create environments where networks thrive and information moves uninhibited. This is fertile soil for high retention, creativity and innovation.

Systems, behaviors, beliefs. Where does your organization begin change efforts? Is it working?       

Mark Britz is a workforce-performance strategist who has launched ThruWork (ThruWork.com), a talent-development consultancy for small to mid-sized businesses. The company specializes in solving organizational performance problems and focuses on non-training approaches to scale employee performance. Contact Britz at (315) 552-0538 or email: mark@thruwork.com or check out @Britz on Twitter.

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