At the Australian Institute of Company Directors update this week at the Recital Hall, the number 1 prioirty for Directors is culture. A question was asked by the audiance on how you measure culture? There was some debate as whether you can.
This article is explain how to measure and how to drive cultural change. First of all you need to understand the common behaviours of staff and this you can do simply by observing. Within a few days in the role at Telstra I had uncovered 6 behaviours that were resulting in poor culture.
No 1 was excuses were used to explain why things did not get done. I created a behavior framework showing what great looked like, good, aveage and poor being the excuse behaviour. Great was driving for a result no matter what is in the way. Where there are obstacles, overcoming them to get the result.
I showed the 6 behaviours and 4 standards for each behaviour to my managers and asked them where they sat for each. The discussion that developed helped them to see that the behaviour was not acceptable. In meetings or day to day conversation the managers would catch themselves as they gave me an excuse and then say ” you dont want to hear that and stop themselves, whilst they worked out the action they were going to take” the results are transformational.
This framework you can score before and then after to see the change. Now 18 months on the team operate at the highest level for each behaviour. So yes you can measure progress and more importantly help your managers to understand what is acceptable and non acceptable behaviour. Communication and consistently holding the team accountable for their behaviours is a must.
In Colcusion yes you can measure cultural change at every level in an organisation.
behaviour framework
Angela Lovegrove 