MODULE 4: organzational culture
Overview:
Organizational culture is the sum of the patterns of beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors that drive the decision-making processes within an organization. Organizational culture has often been identified as the greatest challenge we face when we try to put in place the changes that will advance the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Leadership, staff, and our Boards should reflect the diversity of the persons we are seeking to serve, and our organizational cultures may resist the changes that would allow us to reflect that diversity.
Organizations can’t send a memo to change a culture, they can’t eliminate a cultural element, they need to replace it. Organizations need to identify what needs to change, engage their staff around why they need to change it and identify what they need to do instead. Organizations should repeat this process many times as they practice those new behaviors.
If we want to change the decisions that our staff are making, we must learn how to adjust the culture that is guiding those decisions.
Our organizational cultures are more dynamic and powerful than many of us have realized.
When the pace of change is rapid, we may feel like we’re trying to drive a speedboat that is dragging an anchor. Cultures are incredibly resilient. They usually encompass a broad series of beliefs and thoughts that guide behaviors. If we decide that we need to change those behaviors, we must engage our staff around the specific patterns of beliefs and thoughts that guide those behaviors.
Strategies:
- Understanding Organizational Culture
- Establishing an Organizational Culture
- Characteristics of a Performance Based Organizational Culture
1: UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
“Organizational cultures are like a big-box warehouse that holds the sum total of all the decisions the organization has ever made, all the rules we’ve ever taught, all the mistakes we’ve ever made, and all the stories we’ve ever told. It’s a massive historical data bank.” “The culture teaches new staff more than we ever teach in our orientation sessions. Our organizational culture has teachings on everything. Much of what’s in the culture we put there, but a lot of it came on its own. Our organizational culture has teachings about new staff, old staff, color choices, menu selections, new projects, old projects, new directions, and all styles of leadership—you name it, it’s in there’ (source Tom Woll, Strategic Change Initiative)
Torben Rick describes an organizational culture like an iceberg, there is the visual part of the culture which you see (“the way we say we get things done”) and then there is the part below the surface he describes as the invisible culture (“the way we really get things done”). If an organizational culture is not appropriately addressing the invisible part of a culture can “sink organizational change” Rick depicts organizational culture in the following drawing:
2: ESTABLISHING AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
The elements of our individual culture tend to be fully integrated because those elements help us to make sense of our world and help to guide us in the decisions that we make every day. Our individual culture is directly connected to our personal sense of identity. Our individual culture often defines “who we are.”
Teams, by virtue of working closely together over time, come to develop several shared cultural elements. The more closely those cultural elements are shared amongst the team members, the more they are “integrated” into the ways the team members perform their work responsibilities, the more the team is said to be “cohesive.”
The elements of shared culture are said to be “integrated” when they are shared and agreed upon throughout the organization. Most organizations have many cultures. Most strong organizations have a number of clear cultural elements that are shared throughout their entire organization.
The “cultural elements” that are shared relate to patterns of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors. Those cultural elements tend to embody the values and the identity of the organization.
Patterns of Thoughts
Organizations need to be able to convey, “This is what we think about that,” and “This is what we are trying to accomplish,” and “This is why we do it that way.” Integrated patterns of thoughts get everyone “on the same page and moving in the same direction.” They answer the questions about what we are doing and why we are doing it. They can help organizations to integrate the past with the present, but they may need to be altered to help prepare an organization for the future.
Patterns of Feelings
Values are imbedded into a culture in many ways. The deepest penetration is accomplished though our patterns of feelings. “We really like this, and we really don’t like that.” “We get upset when anyone does that.” “That makes me angry.” “You have to be able to handle feelings of embarrassment.” Culture tells us how to handle our own feelings and the feelings of others. Because this level of cultural penetration is so deep, these elements are often hardest to change.
Patterns of Beliefs
We are organized by our beliefs and many individuals believe that our beliefs are simply a representation of our values. If we believe something should be done a certain way, it will be difficult for us to change that belief. If we believe our Mission says we should do some specific thing, it may be difficult to shift that belief. Sometimes we are aware of our beliefs and sometimes they are hidden from us. When we need to change a belief structure, we want to do so slowly and gently. We should never simply repudiate a belief to try to change it because we are organized by our beliefs.
Patterns of Behavior
When leaders are trying to change an organizational culture, they often focus on the specific behaviors they want to change. They can sometimes forget that those patterns of behaviors are supported by patterns of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Leaders want to plan to address all four of the cultural domains if they hope to change an organizational culture. Behaviors are often directed by the habits that have been formed from our patterns of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. Leaders want to engage them all if they want to change an organizational culture. Full engagement around the patterns and consistent support in developing new skills and breaking old habits will eventually lead to cultural change.
STRATEGIES
- Leaders want to be as proactive as possible when preparing for any transformational change. They want to work to identify the three key cultural elements in each of the four cultural pattern domains that will need to change.
- When leaders say, “Stop thinking this or feeling this or believing this or doing this” they risk endangering a sense of safety within the staff. Instead, they want to develop and teach the alternative elements for each pattern that they want to support as a replacement.
- Some of those alternative elements will require new skills and some of them will require the substitution of old habits for new habits.
- Organizations want to make sure their leaders and supervisors understand and embrace the alternative elements and know how to teach the new skills and how to help to substitute the new habits. Whenever the old habit is displayed, the goal is to look forward, not backward, and say, “Next time, try this instead.”
AN EXAMPLE OF THE STRATEGIES USING TRAUMA-INFORMED CARE
- A pattern of thought element that is often present when trauma-informed care is first being installed is that everyone should be treated the same. Trauma-informed care calls for us to individualize. Leaders want to build the case for accepting individualization instead of a “one size fits all” pattern of thought.
- A pattern of feeling element that is often present is a sense that we should never tolerate a show of disrespect. Trauma-informed care calls for us to be very selective about the “battles we choose to wage and the times we choose to wage them,” and suggests that sometimes it’s best to ignore an obvious taunt at the time it is offered. Leaders want to build a case for accepting that sometimes we ignore obvious taunts in the present so we can address them and process them more effectively in the future.
- A pattern of belief element that often exists is that families are the problem for youths who are having difficulty. Leaders want their staff to view the strengthening of families as the solution. They want to build a case for accepting the importance of helping families to become more stable as the goal of their efforts.
- A pattern of behavior element that often needs to be reconsidered is the use of “power and control” approaches to manage behaviors. Trauma exposure often causes power and control approaches to be viewed as a threat and can result in dangerous escalations of relatively minor incidents. Leaders want to build a case for remaining calm in a crisis and avoiding doing things that can dangerously escalate a situation.
“Culture is identity. Identity is connected to a feeling of safety. If we need to change our culture, we can’t do it in a way that will threaten that feeling of safety for our staff.”
3: CHARACTERISTICS OF A PERFORMANCE BASED ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
There is a culture developed in high performing organizations. There are specific activities strong organizations do in regard to culture when they are high performing as well and certain activities leaders exhibit. The Bridgespan Group depicts characteristics of strong organizations in the following diagram (Source: Strategies for Changing Your Organization’s Culture by The Bridgespan Group):
Leaders:
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“I keep thinking about how you can get someone to change what they believe. That’s what culture is, a set of beliefs. I’m finding out that it takes an awful lot of conversations with our staff (or anyone for that matter) to begin to change a set of beliefs.”