If you try to pull off a change in company culture, resistance is what you will get.  That said, there are times when selectively violating cultural norms is crucial if improvements are going to occur.  But when the change threatens employees’ ideas of what the company represents, the resistance can be both acute and subversive. 

If you contemplate a change initiative, you’d better have your eyes wide open and you’d better prepare well.

So what is the right time to violate cultural givens and how do you select?

Unseen aspects of the influence of culture

Much has been written about corporate culture and its influence is widely accepted, at least conceptually. Management can say that cultural change is needed within an organization without, however, quite appreciating what  cultural change might imply to the work force or how it might be implemented.

Most people working for organizations large are keenly aware of unwritten rules that are enforced without their ever having been explicitly stated. Many might even go on to say that the culture dictates the style of the organization, what the organization is known for informally, and to a significant degree what it is like to work there on a day-to-day basis. Finally, some would also agree that organizational culture affects employee morale.

Despite this apparent seeming consensus, the influence of culture still does not seem to be understood on a practical level when it comes to organizational change. And this is especially true at upper levels of management. At that level it is as if  cultural influence is theoretically understood, but its influence underestimated as minor and transitory. Thus on a daily basis, despite the hype and ink, at crucial junctures cultural imperatives are ignored, scorned, or their force misunderstood, and change efforts are attempted without assessing their cultural effects.

One only need review the upheaval brought about by such bungled mergers as that of Daimler-Chrysler and Bank of America to see what happens when cultural concerns are underestimated.

This ignorance seems to be related to the phenomenon of children sometimes knowing family rules that escape recognition by their parents. In the same way, many unwritten company rules, taboos and sanctions obvious to rank and file employees are invisible to upper management.

What time is it safe to leave work? Which days can you take off and for what reasons? Does the company care about and look out for you? What is actually rewarded and prized? These are not subtle issues to the rank and file, but the nuances of how these issues play out sometimes escape those higher up.

Culture matters, and it has been well established that in many cases culture is more important than compensation when it comes to attracting, retaining, or repelling employees. For this reason company culture wields influences of which those in upper management are unaware.

It is probably for this reason that it is fairly common to hear upper management speak of deliberately instituting cultural change, as if such change can just be hammered home without consequence. This is the biggest mistaken notion.

Culture and resistance to change

The single most important thing to know about cultural norms is that violations of them are automatically resisted and violators are sanctioned. For example, people new to organizations who do not conform to cultural expectations are shunned, shamed, or ostracized if they do not conform, even if they function at a high level within the organization.

Gil Amelio, who came from outside Apple, had a difficult time at Apple in large part because he wasn’t seen as “an Apple guy.” His presence threatened a change in Apple culture. The Board at Apple failed to recognize the problems this could bring about when they hired him and he failed to generate support. The consequence? Many rank and file employees fled Apple left during the Amelio years because Apple was no longer “Apple” enough.

The upshot? A change initiative that runs counter to existing cultural norms will encounter resistance. In general, it is therefore simpler and less expensive to modify a change initiative so that it fits an existing culture than to alter the culture so that it will accommodate the change.

When to break taboos.

That being said, there are, however, moments to be radical—moments when the entrenched cultural patterns of an organization,ones of which it is proud and has held most dear—must shift in order for the organization to continue to be viable.

The classic case of successfully altering corporate culture was IBM. Internally held views of Big Blue suggested that it could go on forever providing lifelong security to personnel while continuing to generate profits, just by being IBM. “IBM succeeds because it is IBM, and succeeding is what IBM does” was the line this thinking took.

These views about IBM, however, were becoming crippling. IBM needed,to be transformed but transformation was a wrenching, draining, exhausting process.

If you determine that cultural change is necessary, the way to go about it is not a matter of guesswork. The wheel has been invented, there is a science to it, and there is no need to operate in the dark and hope for the best.

Basic principles of violation.

To make changes that break taboos, management must proceed forcefully and unequivocally, but at the same time prudently and with great attention to detail and to soliciting and dealing with resistance. This can only be done after a thorough appraisal of the existing situation and creating a plan for how to proceed.

Remember, to even violate cultural expectations, much less to alter them, creates automatic resistance, and therefore requires selective efforts done with care and done well. The rank and file do not want to fix what ain’t broke.

The first step in making the change at IBM, which involved downsizing and reinventing, was to make the business case—to sell the idea of change to rank and file employees as absolutely necessary. The business case for the radical violations of IBM company culture had to be clearly communicated. Then the change had to be presented as underway, completely backed, and already adopted by people who demonstrated that they were invested. To say it in other words, the change required sponsoring. Change always does.

For cultural change to be adopted by the rank and file, its embrace therefore must start at the top and be followed through at every organizational level below so that the endorsement of the change cascades down through an organization in an unbroken stream. That means from the CEO down or in a flat organization the direction of acceptance must spread across equally. There can be no mixed messages, no pockets of resistance that disrupt this flow through or across the chain of command.

There simply must be, as swiftly as possible, massive, visible buy-in at every level of the organization. Without this early show of strength and consensus, the organization will turn and as a whole begin to resist the change like an invading toxin. The change effort will fail.

Cultural change does not, cannot, and simply will not happen on its own. Change on any scale has to be managed, but to an even greater degree cultural change requires a form of management exquisitely orchestrated in advance. The change process, to be successfully completed, must be well thought out and fully invested in, including materially.

The human reaction of resisting cultural change must be planned for as carefully as any other aspect of the change. Change automatically produces resistance and specific plans must be drawn up to draw out that resistance, welcome its expression, account for it, counter it, and overcome it.

Resistance must be expressed. People want to be heard and feel that their views are considered. They do not want to be squelched. And do not forget that resistance can include the expression of legitimate concerns that wind up contributing to an improved change initiative.

Selecting sponsors.

Especially important to this process, therefore, is the matter of selecting in advance those who will champion, actively sponsor, and model the change at each level in the organization. These people must be chosen early and made to be intimately knowledgeable about the nature of the change and the business case for it. They must know how to translate that into the practical concerns of employees at every level.

Personnel selected to fill this role throughout the implementation of cultural change must not only be chosen for their abilities, but also must be provided every means and method available to make the case for the change. This means that they must be given time to do the sponsoring, and be given tangible resources.

Since sponsors must model and extol the benefits of the cultural change, they are the “where the rubber meets the road” people. Though everyone in the organization must align with a cultural change for it to succeed, the daily heavy lifting has to be done by sponsors, the assigned change agents.

There are three major criteria for selecting sponsors, or change agents, that make sense in light of their crucial task.

• High level communication skills. At the day-to-day level, the sponsor or change agent is ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the implementation. Therefore the sponsor must be able to invite resistance, communicate clearly and persuasively with diverse target groups, and engineer support.

• Team-building and other teamwork skills. The change agent must be able to develop alliances across turf boundaries in order to successfully implement cultural change. The change will not succeed without the change evolving into a “we” and “us” experience instead of remaining a “they” and “them” experience. Team-building creates trust, reduces disruption, and replaces rote compliance with commitment.

• A clean political history. The change agent must be seen as politically neutral and free from baggage associated with prior political struggles or turf battles. This enhances everyone’s ability to focus on the message instead of on the messenger.

If the change agent is seen as politically biased, what he or she says about the change will be seen as an extension of his personal agenda and interpreted in that light. This will make it much harder for the actual change initiative and its purpose to be rightly understood by employees. There is reason enough to resist something as disruptive as a cultural change. It is important to eliminate past politics so that the desired change not be resisted for extraneous reasons associated with old battles.

In summary, despite the perils associated with it, violating existing corporate cultural injunctions and imperatives is sometimes necessary to make progress. It can be done relatively smoothly provided that it is done selectively and in the right way.

Done poorly, a cultural initiative will simply fail, and its failure will imperil all future change efforts because the history of the failure becomes a part of the corporation’s cultural lore. Done well, on the other hand, change brings additional payoff beyond the immediate case.

Change becomes a part of the cultural tradition of the corporation, and the corporation moves toward creating a culture that supports innovation.