Change and Culture

I recently completed development of a session about how to effectively manage change in an organization. It is a four-hour course that covers several different issues that tend to arise when anyone is experiencing a change effort and addresses why so many of these efforts fail. One of the topics that we cover and that I read a lot about is culture. The information that I researched was fascinating and could not all be included in the session, so I thought I would share a couple of the interesting bits that I discovered.

There are seven types of cultures that exist in the business world. They are:

1. Predatory
2. Frozen
3. Chaotic
4. Political
5. Bureaucratic
6. Service
7. New Age (innovative and/or entrepreneurial)

The first five cultures are underperforming or failing and in the end create a culture of shame. The last two, service and new age, are high performing and meeting or exceeding expectations and therefore signify successful organizational cultures.

One of the other interesting items of note is that culture is visible. So my question to you is; if your organization’s culture is visible and it is one of the above seven, which one are you? If you are a number six or seven, congratulations; if you are somewhere in the first five, what will you do to improve the culture? Remember, being honest and admitting there is an issue, is the first step to improvement.