Assess whether your company's culture can stall or advance management

Numerous studies and experiences have already shown that a company’s culture is a factor of success or failure in organizations.

In this context, a deeply rooted and widespread organizational culture leads people to behave in specific ways within organizations. And that is where the problem or the solution may lie. Depending on the values of that culture, it can either help or hinder the evolution of management.

For example, some organizational cultures are very focused on hierarchy, on command and control, on a style of leadership that does not listen and is highly centralizing, on a style of people who are very resistant to change, to risk, to experiments...

There are also, as another example, cultures that promote elitism within the organization, singling out a group of thinking people and excluding others who may only execute. Similarly, there are cultures that do not value the people who work at the front line, that disregard the ideas employees can bring...

These and other similar examples represent characteristics of cultures that work against changing the management of an organization. And sometimes this goes unnoticed, yet is maintained. These are cultures that are so deeply rooted that they end up creating nearly insurmountable barriers, with multiple levels of blockage throughout the organization, resisting any change. This can paralyze the company.

In contrast, there are the less traditional, more progressive organizational cultures that try to bring into companies’ daily practice the idea that it is necessary to encourage everyone’s effective participation, taking the total focus off hierarchy, reducing command and control, creating conditions for people to truly engage in dialogue, to speak and listen, decentralizing problems and solutions, encouraging people to change, to be less resistant to change, etc.

The subject of cultural change is quite complex. In the lean system, it depends on a profound change in mindsets and practices.

Changing a culture presupposes transforming the way people think and act. This can recreate and/or reinforce the new values one intends to practice. Merely theoretical changes, based on speeches or campaigns, are generally insufficient. People need to experience the changes.

This depends on several transformations. One of them must come from leadership, which should be the main front of cultural change. It will also depend on how everything is done in practice to generate and consolidate changes in all processes, every day.

So, before starting to implement a management transformation, it is necessary to try to understand the culture that already exists in the organization. And to assess how it will interact with the change one intends to make. Whether it will be a facilitator or an obstacle.

Often, in order to learn and practice something new, it is necessary to unlearn previous ways of working. And for that, it is necessary to change and evolve toward cultures that value experimentation and participation. Otherwise, any initiative will be blocked by the invisible wall of the old, entrenched culture.