11.nóv-change work in practice

Chapter 4 – Case Introduction

Background of Technocom

• Technocom was originally an internal software development department within Global Tech. Later, it became an independent company.

• The company developed advanced technical systems for the high-tech industry.

• Its history was based on research, technical knowledge and producing high-quality products.

• Its culture focused mainly on technology and technical skills. Producing the best technology was more important than focusing on business and customers

Organizational Structure

• Technocom had a matrix organization, meaning that employees could work in different departments and projects and report to different managers.

• The organization combined formal rules and structures with more flexible project work.

• This meant that employees had some freedom to organize their own work, but they also had to follow formal rules and management structures.

• Sometimes there was tension between following official rules and having the freedom to work independently.

Research Model

• The authors created a model to understand how cultural change happens in organizations.

• They do not see cultural change as a simple process with clear steps. Instead, the different parts are connected and can influence each other.

• The model includes six areas:

  1. Background and context: Why is change needed? What is happening inside and outside the organization?

  2. Strategy and intended action: What does management want to change, and what are its goals?

  3. Design of the cultural programme: How is the change programme planned?

  4. Implementation and interaction: How is the programme introduced and carried out in everyday work?

  5. Reception and interpretation: How do employees understand and react to the changes?

  6. Results and outcomes: What actually changes, and are the results what management expected

Important: Cultural change is not just about what management plans. It is also about how employees understand and experience the changes.

Methods

• The authors followed the cultural change programme while it was happening. This is called a real-time study.

• They interviewed 25 managers at different levels and 35 other employees.

• They observed around 30 meetings, project meetings, seminars and workshops.

• They focused on the Technical Department to understand how the cultural change worked in practice.

• This allowed them to compare what management wanted to achieve with what employees actually experienced.

Chapter 5 – Designing the Cultural Change Programme

Central Actors

• John Howard was the CEO of Technocom and one of the senior leaders of the company.

• Richard Allen was the CTO and the main person behind the cultural change initiative.

• Tin Aldridge was involved in designing the cultural change programme.

• Mary Duncan was the HR manager, while Judy Hamilton also worked in HR.

• Tom Neville and Clara Ridge were consultants from Excellence who helped develop the programme.

Drivers for Change

• Management believed that Technocom's existing culture had several problems that needed to be fixed.

• The company focused too much on technology and technical quality and not enough on customers and business goals.

• The organization was socially introverted, meaning that employees mainly focused on their own work and did not communicate or cooperate enough with others.

• Employees did not have much confidence in management because leadership and communication were not always good.

• Teamwork was weak, and the company struggled to focus on customers and finish projects on time.

• Changes in the software industry also created pressure. More companies were outsourcing software development, which made the business environment more competitive.

Important: Management wanted Technocom to move from focusing mainly on technology to focusing more on business, customers and teamwork.

Initiative for Change

• The idea for change came mainly from senior management, especially Richard Allen.

• Management described many different problems as problems with the company's corporate culture. These included problems with leadership, communication, teamwork and customer relationships.

• This meant that culture was seen as both the problem and the solution. Management believed the old culture caused problems but that a new culture could help solve them.

• The approach was mainly top-down, meaning that senior managers decided what needed to change.

• The goal was to create a new identity and culture for Technocom as an independent company.

Design of the Cultural Change Programme

• Management used a top-down approach where ideas were created by senior managers and then passed down to other employees.

• Senior managers took part in workshops to discuss the company's strengths, weaknesses and future goals.

• Richard Allen and consultant Clara Ridge used these discussions to create six cultural values.

• The programme was designed to involve everyone through workshops and group discussions.

• The desired future culture was called the target culture. This means the culture management wanted the company to have in the future.

Target Culture

the target culture described how management wanted employees to think, behave and work in the future.

• Our way of working – Commitment: Employees should care about their work and take responsibility for the company's goals.

• Leadership – Trust and inspiration: Managers should create trust, motivate employees and give clear direction.

• Communication – Sincerity: Communication should be honest, open and clear.

• Decision-making and rewards – Empowerment: Employees should have more freedom and responsibility when making decisions.

• Organizational structure and teamwork – Transparency: Responsibilities and decisions should be clear, and employees should work better together.

Important: The target culture was management's idea of what the company should become. However, deciding what the new culture should look like does not mean employees will accept it or follow it

Implementation Plan

• Management created a large cultural change programme that junior and middle managers were expected to carry out.

• Every employee was supposed to take part in discussions about the new culture.

• A toolbox was created to help managers introduce the programme.

The toolbox included:

• A video of Richard Allen explaining the new Technocom culture.

• Slides explaining the company's mission, vision and business goals.

• Exercises where employees discussed the new values at individual, team and company levels.

• Exercises where employees thought about which behaviours supported or went against the new culture.

• Templates for collecting feedback from employees.

• Kick-off meetings to introduce the programme.

Important: The plan was for managers to introduce the new values to employees and let them discuss how to use them in their everyday work.

Consultancy Input

• The consultants from Excellence helped management create the target culture and plan the change programme.

• The consultants helped with the planning but were no longer involved when the programme was put into practice.

• Different communication strategies and consulting approaches influenced how the programme was designed.

• Other consultants, including Eagle, helped managers discuss the company's strengths and weaknesses.

Important: The consultants helped create the plan, but the responsibility for making the change happen was left to people working inside Technocom.

Chapter 6 – Implementing the Cultural Change Programme

Implementation in Practice

• The launch of the cultural change programme was disappointing and did not create much excitement.

• The kick-off meeting was not very inspiring, and the video of management did not show much energy or commitment.

• Employees often saw the cultural activities as soft activities. This means they seemed less important than their normal work and technical responsibilities.

• The programme felt like something management had ordered everyone to do, rather than something employees wanted to take part in.

• The new culture was presented as something employees simply had to accept and follow.

Interpretation of the Programme

• Many employees and managers did not really understand what the cultural programme meant or why it was needed.

• The new values were quite general, so employees found it difficult to understand how to use them in their daily work.

• Different people understood the same values in different ways, so they did not develop one shared understanding.

• Junior and middle managers were responsible for introducing the programme, but they did not always receive enough help or guidance.

• There were very few activities after the workshops, so discussions did not lead to many real changes.

• Employees did not feel that there was an urgent need for change because management had not clearly explained why it was necessary.

Results and Outcomes

• The programme slowly lost attention because there was not enough follow-up, involvement or support from managers.

• The new values did not become part of everyday work, and many employees barely remembered the programme later.

• The authors explain that cultural change should not only be measured through business results. It should also be understood by looking at whether people's thoughts, feelings, values and behaviour have changed.

• There was no clear evidence that the programme had created the cultural changes management wanted.

• The programme also had unexpected effects. Instead of building trust in management, it sometimes made employees feel that management was even more distant and unreliable.

Important: The programme did not achieve its goals because introducing new values and organizing workshops was not enough to change how people worked and interacted.

Consultancy Input

• The consultants from Excellence helped create the target culture and plan the implementation programme.

• However, they were no longer involved when the programme started.

• This created a gap between planning the change and actually making it happen.

• The responsibility was given to managers inside Technocom, who did not always have enough experience or support to continue the work.

Chapter 7 – Crucial Issues in Cultural Change Work

Actors' Point of View

• Senior managers believed that junior managers and employees should be the main people responsible for bringing the new culture into everyday work.

• However, junior and middle managers expected senior management to lead the change and show employees how it should be done.

• This created confusion because different managers expected someone else to take responsibility.

• Engineers often saw cultural change as another management activity that would soon disappear, rather than as a serious attempt to change the company.

• There was not enough planning, time, support or effort to make the programme work.

Important: People expected others to take the lead, so nobody really took full responsibility for the change.

What Went Wrong?

• Unrealistic target culture: Employees felt that the new culture was an ideal picture that did not match the reality of the company.

• Unclear goals: The goals of the programme were not clear enough, so employees did not know exactly what they were supposed to do.

• Instrumentalism: Management treated culture as a tool to achieve business goals. They believed that introducing new values would automatically make the company better.

• Lack of experience and knowledge: The people responsible for the programme did not always know how to manage cultural change.

• Distance from everyday work: Change agents, meaning the people responsible for introducing change, did not properly connect the new ideas to how people already worked in the organization.

• Lack of meaning: Employees did not really understand or feel connected to the new culture.

• Weak communication: Managers did not explain the programme in a convincing or interesting way.

Important: The problem was not only that the plan was weak. The people responsible for the change also failed to make it meaningful and connect it to everyday work.

Coordination and Prioritization

• It was not clear who was responsible for the different parts of the programme.

• Managers were unsure about how much they were expected to participate.

• Management did not explain clearly how the change should continue.

• Senior managers showed some interest but did not give the programme enough attention.

• Some important people gradually stopped being involved.

• Employees focused more on their normal work because deadlines and other responsibilities felt more important than cultural activities.

Important: Cultural change needs clear responsibilities, good planning and continuous attention. It cannot work if everyone expects someone else to take responsibility.

Poor Symbolic Performance

• Management did not use enough symbols, actions or examples to show that the new culture was important.

• In cultural change, stories, symbols, language and everyday actions help show people what an organization values.

• Managers did not give enough real examples of how employees should follow the new values.

• The programme focused too much on presentations, documents and exercises instead of creating something employees could actually connect with.

• This made the new culture feel unrealistic and far away from everyday work.

Anti-culture and Change Fatigue

• Technocom did not have a strong culture-affirmative culture. This means that employees and managers were not used to seeing culture as something important that they should discuss and actively shape.

• Employees were not used to talking about organizational culture or taking part in changing it.

• There was also change fatigue, meaning that people had become tired of repeated changes and were less interested in taking part in new programmes.

• Because of this, employees were less motivated to take another cultural change programme seriously.

Symbolic Anorexia

• Symbolic anorexia means that an organization does not have enough meaningful stories, symbols, language and actions to give its culture a strong identity.

• Technocom's programme did not include enough stories from the company's history or examples from everyday work that employees could recognize.

• Managers also did not show enough through their own actions how the new values should work.

• This made the programme feel like something abstract that was not connected to the real organization.

• The authors explain that changing culture requires more than introducing new values and words. Organizations also need to change the symbols and everyday practices that show what the culture is about.

Connection to Higgins and McAllaster (2004): Their work explains that organizations should also pay attention to symbols when changing culture. Changing the words and values is not enough if the old symbols and ways of working stay the same.

Conclusions

• The Technocom case shows how a cultural change programme can fail even when management has clear goals and a detailed plan.

• The programme was mainly designed by senior management, without enough involvement from employees.

• There was a difference between what management wanted to achieve and what employees actually experienced.

• The programme lacked clear leadership, planning, commitment and good communication.

• The new culture remained an idea instead of becoming part of everyday work.

Overall conclusion: Organizational culture cannot simply be changed by introducing new values from the top. Real change needs to happen through people's everyday actions, relationships, communication and shared experiences.