Navigating Change and the power of organisational culture
11 February 2025 | Dr Ruth Adams
All organisations, however long established, have a unique identity. This develops into a corporate culture which pervades behaviour and actions. A commentator said, Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction, it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult.
The next three years will see an unprecedented amount of change for many local government employees. At this time there can be a sense amongst employees that change is happening to them rather than by or for them. It is a pivotal moment for leaders to set the direction of the sail, to try, as far as is possible, to maximise the potential for smooth sailing.
Fundamentally a positive organisational culture requires:
- Empowered people who understand their value to the organisation
- An organisational operating model built on a clear shared purpose and collaboration
- A dialogue on culture, values and behaviours that is experienced as opposed to a mere slogan.
Giving employees the opportunity to explore and share an understanding of the outcome required of change and to have a stake in the change process mitigates some of this fear and potential negativity. Engagement can open the door to higher performance and motivation and for hidden talents to come to the fore.
Supporting employees to be owners of change requires attention to:
Responsibility
Accountability
Communication and challenge
Resourcing and performance
Responsibility
Culture change is a shared endeavour, it is the responsibility of all, not simply the leaders. In the spirit of a post-Christmas keep fit workout it requires top-down, bottom-up, middle- out commitment to action.
Top down: Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate some of the qualities of optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity. Many culture change efforts fail because they start at the top of the organisation and hope that it will trickle its way throughout the organisation.
Middle out: (the abs of the organisation), organisational middle managers or team leaders need to shape what’s expected of them of them to live and demonstrate the behaviours to tackle the changes ahead.
Bottom-up: it is about all feeling empowered to change, so positive behaviours are demonstrated in the hearts and habits of people.
Organisational change is the start of a movement akin to a murmuration of birds moving together, collectively. No two journeys are the same. But the murmuration see the collective working together for the good of all. Movements to change can start with a call to action, but invariably they start with emotion. This emotion could be a dissatisfaction with the way things are, or from the belief that a new alternative way of working provides a positive vision and a path that’s worth committing to.
Accountability
Being an owner of change, requires that personal accountability is clear, understood and owned. As a visual person, I envisage a jigsaw puzzle and each member of the organisation holding a piece of the jigsaw, which they have a choice to use. To exercise this accountability, employees need to see the whole picture and understand where they fit.
Communication and challenge
The third driver of change rest on effective communication and challenge. Effective culture change and effective movement makers are extremely good at building coalitions, harnessing the power of networks, bridging disparate groups to form a larger and more diverse networks that shares a common purpose. Dr Asa Don Brown, a psychologist, and communications expert famously said, communication is the lifeblood of every organisation.
Promoting effective communication and challenge and harnessing the power of the murmuration mean all need a voice, supported by processes to ensure that voices are heard and listened to. One of my favourite sayings is where two individuals are present, there are always three viewpoints! Meaningful communication will always lead to challenge and all change requires some friction to be meaningful.
Resourcing and performance
Recruitment and resourcing at times of change can be challenging. It is essential that in these moments’ recruitment starts with your immutable values. This is not to downplay technical expertise but the what needs to be done must be matched with the how we work and the behaviours we value. For established staff change needs to be supported by training, developing, or coaching to maintain knowledge of the agreed values, attitudes, and behaviours. Performance management must be aligned to organisational values and dialogue on performance must flow throughout the organisation.
As the change process progresses and evolves, SEEs support to our member organisations will also evolve. We are already responding to feedback from Chief Executives and Strategic HR leads for support on TUPE and compliant change processes. We are mobilising an enhanced employee engagement offer building mini pulse surveys to ensure leaders and managers regularly and routinely hear the voices in their organisation. We are expanding our training, development and coaching support for employees and Councillors. We want to work with you through the challenges and opportunities of the coming months and years.
Ruth