Is Culture Blocking Your Transformation? Here Are 3 Evaluation Criteria to Find Out

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the clients talking about culture when they talk about transformation are the ones most successful in their work.

All too often, organizations get so caught up thinking about where they want the culture to be that they forget to reckon with where it currently stands. I’ve seen one too many leaders wax poetic about their innovative company culture without realizing it’s not a lived experience. And if your ethos only exists aspirationally in the pages of internal messaging docs rather than as a living, breathing energy within the walls of your organization, you’ve got a problem. A problem that will only get more severe once you embark on transformation. 

In other words, if you want to transform you can't afford to ignore your culture. 

My recommendation is to make sure you examine the truth of your current company culture as soon as possible. Find the existing nuggets that can actually be leveraged to your advantage even if at first they seem counterintuitive. Understand the gap between where you are and where you want to be, then build a bridge between the two. Here’s how…

Ask These 3 Evaluation Questions:

Transformation requires a fundamental shift in how work gets done, which can feel really threatening to a staff that has been operating the same way for years, or even decades. 

Evaluate your org to find out if it can be vulnerable and open to this major change by asking the below questions. The answers will tell you if it supports or doesn’t support transformation from the outset, and expose any major mismatches in what you say your culture is, what it actually is, and what it needs to be.

1. How do decisions get made? 

Is your team empowered to operate somewhat independently, or is leadership involved at every turn? Is every decision, no matter how small, escalated to the C-Suite level? If so, how do you think that lack of autonomy is going to play out in transformation? Figure out what’s preventing people from autonomous decision making today, then determine what should be done to address it in order to get to your desired future state.

2. What happens when people take calculated risks that don’t work out? 

A lot of companies like to believe their culture supports risk taking, but does it actually? Are people being punished or shamed for failing? Do you reward team members for being brave enough to go beyond the safe zone? How can you aspire to be an innovative organization if you aren’t commending people for taking calculated risks (and then learning from them)?

3. Are internal teams playing fair and being respectful? 

I hear a lot of organizations talk about how their teams work respectfully and collaboratively as one, but what happens when you look below the surface? So often the reality is that teams carry stigmas and bias against different departments. Are business leaders referring to the tech teams as nerds, geeks, code monkeys, cave dwellers, eggheads, or order takers? Is there a misconception that IT can’t be strategic? In a modern organization, business is IT and IT is business. There’s no separation. And if your culture is reinforcing these outdated notions, you've got a long way to go on your transformation journey.

Take Action: 

Maybe you ran through that list of questions and realized the diagnosis is not so hot. Or maybe you realized you can’t honestly answer any of the questions confidently. That’s okay! It means you’re ready to take action by collecting information from across the organization to get a really clear picture of where your culture is at. 

As a leader, you’ll have to separate yourself a bit to pressure-test the ideals on the page. Move beyond the boardroom to find the disconnects, anti-patterns and subtle undertones that only the frontline people may experience firsthand. 

Here’s how you can get the intel: 

1. Conduct skip-level interviews 

Engage people at different levels of the organization to get an understanding of how they operate and experience the company culture. This is your biggest opportunity to understand what’s going on in the trenches. These insights are critical to properly evaluating where your culture currently stands, and potential obstacles to transformation.  

2. Run employee focus groups

Gather members of teams from across the org – frontline, back office, and everything in between – to have a discussion about the challenges and barriers to getting their work done. How do they feel about working with other departments? Do they experience autonomy in their decision making and day-to-day activities? Be thoughtful about how you group people. You want them to feel free to be honest in their discussion without devolving into a pile-on session.

3. Leverage neutral third parties to manage the process

It’s usually best to designate someone from outside of the C-suite or even the organization to facilitate these discussions. A consultant can help neutralize politics, get honest answers to your questions, and objectively assess the situation and synthesize the disconnects.

Your culture may already have myriad strengths that can be applied to transformation. It may also exhibit behaviors that are antithetical to the process. To weed out the truth, you need to run diagnostics. Only then can you start thinking about how your teams need to work together differently, which is essential for any organization that wants to modernize, and become more nimble and agile.