Culture—the shared practices learned over time—is the driving force behind performance, making it inherently vital to your organization’s success. But what if it’s not delivering the desired results? How can you harness the full potential of your people? As the managing partner and resident behavioral organizational anthropologist of a firm specializing in helping organizations superpower their culture to drive results, I am often asked these pressing questions. Instead of attempting to change your organization’s culture head-on, I urge you to first take a step back and explore what truly influences it. Only then can you unlock its power and optimize its impact.
Beginning The Culture Change Journey
Culture is often thought of as set in stone, immovable, unshapeable. As I and my fellow anthropologists have learned and observed through studying culture in various social contexts, culture isn’t static; it’s a dynamic force that evolves and changes through time. It changes when people leave or join an organization. It changes with different leadership and also shifts when the environment outside it changes.
You don’t have to look far to see this. We are all very well aware of the impact the most recent pandemic had and is still having. If you want to change culture, the first step is to dive under the surface to find the underlying currents that create visible patterns of behavior. Start digging deep, at the roots—places you can’t see. Remember those behaviors came from somewhere.
When you are digging deep, what should you be looking for? Well, you know the ‘what’ because you can see it. To find out what is shaping the currents that you see, you need to get to the ‘why,’ and that will require some effort and commitment. Start by creating a space for open and authentic conversations so that you can understand what motivates people—what makes them tick. Listening to your team members’ stories and experiences can help you unravel the reasons why they do things the way they do. Untangling what motivates people makes it possible to craft an effective plan for change that will allow you to identify potential obstacles. This results in faster acceptance and adoption of the change within the operating culture.
Trust, Behavior And Hesitation
There can be several obstacles to change, but the most significant and undoubtedly the most important is the absence of trust. If trust isn’t there, people are less likely to open up and share their true thoughts and feelings, which makes it difficult to get to that deeper level of understanding of what is shaping your culture. As leaders, we have the privileged responsibility of fostering and nurturing an environment of trust.
One way to nurture trust as you are uncovering the ‘whys’ is to ensure that you are prepared before you have a conversation with someone. Most importantly, be prepared to ask a lot of questions, listen more and talk less. Let people speak freely and let their answers be your cues to what you need to ask next. Without this consideration, people may give you answers they think you want to hear rather than what they really want to say. Empathetic listening, and also checking in with your own emotions as you have these conversations, will help you avoid getting inauthentic and guarded responses—or even no response at all. (Of course, we all know that no answer is an answer.)
What does this mean for leaders? Well, it means that you need to take the time to learn more about the nuances of human behavior. There are many ways you can do this. For me, it’s most effective to apply an anthropological lens, which allows me to get into the nitty-gritty of how humans make meaning of the work they do every day. The best way to understand this is to look at the behaviors that are currently shaping your culture. Ask yourself, “What are the behaviors that show people are in service to our customers, and what are the behaviors that do not?”
For example, let’s say in your current cultural environment people rarely escalate issues. They spend time solving problems on their own. After digging into customer complaints, you’ve learned that the problems that led up to an issue could have been rectified earlier in the process had you or other members of your team known about it. How do you prevent this from happening again? Begin with what is shaping the decision not to escalate and then decide what should have happened. Once you have this in place, you can confidently define the desired behaviors and put actions in place to change the old behaviors. Remember, simply telling people to do or not to do something won’t change your culture. Embracing the right behaviors will.
One of the most uncomfortable and frustrating things for leaders occurs when their team members hesitate to answer a question or don’t respond at all. The question to ask here is, “Why?” In my experience, this hesitation or lackluster response happens when people don’t know the answer but are not comfortable saying so. Here’s where we need to get comfortably uncomfortable. Embrace the discomfort of open conversations and let them unfold organically. This takes courage and vulnerability, but it’s worth it. When people are guarded, it’s hard to get true answers. Remember, you’re not looking for what’s right or wrong—you’re looking for the “why” behind the behaviors. That’s where the learning starts, and it will help you figure out the best direction to guide the group and the organization.
Shaping Positive Outcomes
The potential for a well-functioning culture is huge. Behavior shapes culture, culture drives performance, and performance helps you deliver results. To set in motion this holistic, self-reinforcing cycle of success, it is important to create an environment where people feel like they want to come to work—not like they have to come to work. This can help guide every aspect of your organization.
By creating a culture where common values and beliefs are grounded in trust and people are considered and feel that they are contributing to the organization’s success, you create a powerful force that can deliver exceptional value to your customers, effectively and consistently. Remember your end goal: giving your customers what they want, when they want it and how they want it. And the way to do it is through your most vital strength: your people.
Published by Forbes.com
