Accelerate Culture Change by Leveraging Your Strengths

To Accelerate Culture Change, Focus on the Strengths of Your Culture
Unless you have a systemic organizational culture problem or toxicity that threatens the very existence of your business, we advise our clients to focus on what’s right with their culture rather than what’s wrong if they want to accelerate culture change at work.

In our over twenty five years of helping clients transform their corporate culture, we have found that when companies focus less on what’s toxic in their culture and more on what’s healthy in their culture, they are able to leverage their strengths and more actively engage their people to drive the cultural changes required to execute their strategies.

The Positive Approach to Accelerate Culture Change
Sure, there are almost always aspects of workplace culture you want to change.  But don’t lose sight of what’s working. Take a positive approach and build on your cultural strengths.

Four Best Practices to Accelerate Culture Change at Work
After you assess your organizational culture to understand strengths and weaknesses, here are four best practices to help accelerate culture change:

1. Make the Case
   It is human nature to resist change when things are going relatively well. It will be up to you as a leader to explain to your employees why the change in culture is needed and how the successful transformation will benefit the work force, your clients, and the company as a whole. Make sure each employee clearly understands the vision for the change, the urgency for change, and what’s in it for them as individuals.

   The more you actively involve stakeholders in the process of change and the more transparent you can be about the case for change, the more willing your work force will be to embrace and support it.

2. Respect the Good, Motivate Toward the “Even Better”
   Here’s your opportunity as a leader to appreciate and recognize what is working. These are the strengths of your culture that help both the people and the business. Articulate the good whatever it may be — from a strong customer service orientation to an unwavering commitment to quality.

   Then use that as a platform to build cultural strength and change where it is needed most.

3. Monitor, Track and Reward Desired Culture Change
   In order to accelerate culture change at work, you must translate the changes you desire into practical actions and visible behaviors needed from each employee. Everyone needs to know exactly how they are expected to do their work differently to align with the “new way.”

   Then you need to carefully watch for employees doing it right, praise them for the desired behaviors, and recognize them for both their effort and success.

4. Create Culture Change Leaders
   Look for the early adapters who have embraced the change and recruit them as change champions to help accelerate culture change. The best culture champions are trusted influencers and natural leaders and are skilled at coaching and developing others.

   They support people managers, tell the positive personal stories that sustain the vision of successful change, and inspire and motivate their coworkers.

The Bottom Line
It is possible to accelerate culture change at work if you build on strengths rather than focus on weaknesses. Instead of berating employees for all that’s going wrong, you can encourage them to do more of what’s going right.  Don’t underestimate the power of the positive approach.

To learn more about the key areas of culture leaders must get right during organizational culture change, download The 3 Levels of a High Performance Culture