Corporate Culture

A strong corporate culture has been shown in many, many studies to be the difference-maker between success and failure; between the effective organization and the one that struggles. Yet organizational culture is not new; it is as old as organizations themselves. Any group of people will develop their own “way of working”, so why is measuring and changing culture becoming all the rage only very recently?

It was actually during the 1980s, with the advent of major organizational change initiatives such as “Total Quality Management (TQM)”, “Re-engineering”, “Down/Right-sizing” etc. (more of which failed than succeeded) did academics and practitioners alike realize that organizational change without a change in the organization’s culture was destined to failure. There are countless accounts of such failures and successes, but this one tends to summarize it best:

“When TQM and downsizing were implemented independent of a culture change, they were unsuccessful. When the culture of these organizations was an explicit target of change, so that the TQM or downsizing initiatives were embedded in an overall culture change effort, they were successful. Organizational effectiveness and strategies are altered—organizations return quickly to the status quo.”

Fast-forward to 2020, and the much, much quicker pace of change, driven in large part by rapid changing technology, means that our clients and prospects find themselves struggling to adapt and change. Although many have always known deep down that they need to “change the culture” to be successful with their change management, the very thought of “changing the corporate culture” is so daunting that many feel it’s impossible.