Change and adoption
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9 min read
Key findings
Culture programmes that produce a values statement work at Schein's second level, while behaviour is driven by the third.
Five kinds of rule carry most behaviour: promotion, approval limits, response to failure, resource allocation and exceptions.
A rule audit compares the written rule, the rule in practice from the last ten decisions, and the behaviour it produces.
Culture change is measured from records the business already keeps, such as time to report a problem and escalations per month.
A rule changes behaviour when people see it enforced in a decision that affects someone they know.
To change organisational culture, define the behaviour you want, find the rule that produces the current behaviour, and change that rule where everyone can see it.
The rules that matter decide who is promoted, who approves spending, what happens after a mistake and which exceptions are granted.
Most culture programmes start somewhere else, with a values statement, workshops and a communication plan.
They leave the promotion criteria, approval limits and responses to failure untouched.
Eighteen months later the same complaints return in the engagement survey.
Culture In Three Levels
Edgar Schein's model of organisational culture separates three levels.
Artefacts. What can be seen and heard, such as offices, dress, jargon, forms and meeting habits
Espoused beliefs and values. What the organisation says it believes, in strategies, charters and values statements
Basic underlying assumptions. Beliefs so taken for granted that nobody states them, which drive what people actually do
Schein notes that espoused values are often abstract enough to contradict each other.
A company can claim both the highest quality and the lowest cost.
Where the stated values and the underlying assumptions disagree, people act on the assumptions and repeat the values in meetings.
A culture programme that produces a new values statement has worked only at the second level.
Why Culture Change Programmes Fail
Schein counts vague change goals among the biggest mistakes leaders make.
The other mistake he names is assuming that culture change is needed at all.
When a client asks him for a culture change programme, his first question is whether the client can explain the goal without using the word culture.
A goal stated in behaviour can be tested. Plant managers approving routine maintenance spend without waiting for regional finance is one example.
A goal stated as culture, such as becoming more accountable, gives nobody anything to check at the end of the quarter.
Three further faults recur in programmes that stall.
The work sits with HR and communications instead of the leaders who control the rules
Everything is to change at once, so nothing changes visibly
Progress is measured by a survey of attitudes instead of by behaviour
Stating the goal in behaviour is the first job of the adviser, and it is a case of framing the problem before proposing a solution.
How Leaders Embed Culture
Schein lists six primary mechanisms through which leaders embed their assumptions in an organisation.
What leaders pay attention to, measure and control on a regular basis
How leaders react to critical incidents and crises
How leaders allocate resources
Deliberate role modelling, teaching and coaching
How leaders allocate rewards and status
How leaders recruit, select, promote and remove people
He treats a second set as reinforcing only. It includes organisation structure, systems and procedures, rituals, office design, stories and formal statements of philosophy.
The secondary mechanisms work when they are consistent with the primary ones.
Otherwise people ignore them, or they become a source of internal conflict.
Most of the primary mechanisms run through rules that HR can name and help to change. They are the questions leaders ask regularly, budget allocation, reward and promotion.
Two Documented Rule Changes
Schein describes two cases in which a leader changed a small rule and the message travelled.
At Alcoa, a former chief executive wanted to show how much safety mattered.
He insisted that safety be the first item on every meeting agenda.
Schein cites it as a case of consistent attention, and says that consistency matters more than intensity.
The second case comes from Douglas McGregor, who was asked to help install a management development programme.
McGregor asked the president whether he really cared about developing managers, and the president said he did.
McGregor then proposed a reward rule in place of a curriculum. Half of each senior manager's annual bonus would depend on what the manager had done to develop immediate subordinates.
The president added a monitoring rule. Each quarter he would ask every senior manager what had been done.
Schein observes that the bonus was less important than the duty to report regularly.
The managers launched a series of activities, and a coherent programme took shape over two years.
Where Rules Fit
The organisational psychologist Paul Spector argues the opposite case, that policies cannot change culture on their own.
A policy, in his account, is words on a page, and people who feel coerced by it may do the opposite.
Spector places climate between policy and culture, and defines climate as shared perceptions of what is rewarded and punished.
That argument and the case for changing rules describe the same mechanism.
A rule changes behaviour when people see it enforced in a decision that affects someone they know, such as a promotion, a budget or a mistake.
A rule that stays on the intranet changes nothing, and Schein's secondary mechanisms predict exactly that.
Schein also shows how routines carry a leader's attention into daily work.
Formal budgeting and planning routines, he observes, are often followed less to produce plans than to remind subordinates what to pay attention to.
The rules worth changing are of that kind. They include the approval limit, the promotion criterion and the review after an incident.
Each one is used every week, by named people, with visible results.
The Rule Audit
Before changing anything, list the decisions that produce the current behaviour, and write down three things for each.
The written rule, from the policy, the delegation of authority or the promotion guide
The rule in practice, from the last ten decisions of that kind
The behaviour that the practised rule produces
The culture usually shows in the gap between the written rule and the rule in practice.
Schein describes operators who adapt formal procedures to local conditions and then teach the adapted version to newcomers.
The process is known as practical drift.
The audit needs only records that HR and finance already hold. These are the delegation of authority, the approval log and the last two promotion rounds.
Five Rules That Carry Behaviour
In most organisations, five kinds of rule produce most of the behaviour that people call culture.
Promotion criteria. Who was promoted last year, and what the promotion committee said about them
Approval limits. The level at which people stop deciding and start asking
Response to failure. What happened to the last person who reported a mistake early
Resource allocation. What was cut first in the last budget round
Exceptions. Which requests to bend a rule were granted, and to whom
People read each of these as a statement of what the organisation values.
They read appointments most closely of all.
The culture usually shows in the gap between the written rule and the rule in practice.
Values Converted Into Rules
A rule states what happens in a named situation.
Anyone can check at the end of a quarter whether it was followed.
Three conversions show how a values statement becomes testable.
Openness. Bad news is reported within twenty-four hours, and the first incident review asks what the process allowed before it asks who made the mistake
Collaboration. No proposal reaches the executive team unless the affected function is named and has been consulted
Development. Every manager's objectives include releasing one person each year to a role in another part of the business
Each rule can be argued with, and each can be tested against the record.
The Steps Of Culture Change
State the goal as behaviour, without using the word culture
Audit the written and practised rules behind the current behaviour
Choose one rule that a named leader owns and can change this quarter
Change it in a decision people can see, and let the story of that decision travel
Measure the behaviour before and after, from records
Move to the next rule once the first shows movement
The fourth step is where most rule changes are lost.
A changed rule that nobody sees applied is read as another policy.
A Worked Example
Consider a hypothetical manufacturing business. The executive team asks HR for a programme on ownership, because plant managers escalate small decisions.
The written delegation lets plant managers approve maintenance spend up to a set limit.
The last ten requests show that plant managers sent almost every unplanned repair to regional finance. Many of those repairs were well inside their limit.
Asked why, plant managers point to a colleague. Two years earlier he was criticised at a quarterly review for an overspend that was within delegation.
The practised rule is that anything unplanned goes upwards. The behaviour is repairs waiting days for a signature.
The change is made by the regional operations director, who owns the review.
At the next monthly review she states that spend within delegation will not be questioned.
She also approves nothing that falls inside a plant manager's limit.
When the first decision inside the limit goes wrong, the review asks what information the plant manager lacked.
HR tracks two numbers for two quarters, which are escalations per month and days from repair request to approval.
The executive team gets a result it can see in the operations data, without a values workshop.
Survival Anxiety And Learning Anxiety
Schein explains resistance through two kinds of anxiety.
Survival anxiety is the discomfort of seeing that the old way no longer works.
Learning anxiety is the fear of being temporarily incompetent while learning the new way.
His first principle is that survival anxiety must be greater than learning anxiety.
His second is that the gap should be created by reducing learning anxiety, because a higher threat makes people more defensive.
When a rule changes, give people the means to meet it. Useful means are training, time, a named person to ask and a protected first mistake.
Middle managers carry most of that learning in any rule change, which is one reason change programmes stall in the middle of the organisation.
Subcultures And Interfaces
Schein describes three generic subcultures that every organisation needs to align.
They are the operators who run daily operations, the engineers and designers who build the systems, and the executives who run the finances.
A sales team and an engineering team with different norms reflect different work.
Uniform values will not remove the difference.
The rules worth changing across subcultures sit at the interfaces, such as hand-offs, joint approvals and shared targets.
Culture Change Timescale
Schein estimates that changing basic assumptions, without destroying and rebuilding the organisation, takes five to fifteen years or more.
He cites Procter and Gamble, where all the plants took fifteen years to convert to a new manufacturing system.
A single rule change moves faster, because it shows up in the records of the decision it governs.
An approval limit shows movement within a quarter, and a promotion criterion shows it at the next promotion round.
A sequence of visible rule changes is how the longer shift in assumptions is built.
Measuring Culture Change
Culture measurement usually means an attitude survey, which reports the espoused values back to the organisation.
Behavioural measures come from records the business already keeps.
Time from a problem occurring to its being reported
Share of decisions within delegation taken without escalation
Internal appointments against external hires, by level
Exceptions granted, by unit and by seniority
Survey items on trust and voice can sit beside these, provided the survey leads to action, as set out in building an engagement survey action plan.
The Role Of HR
HR usually receives the request as a programme to run.
The useful response redirects it without refusing it.
Bring the executive team three things.
The goal restated as behaviour, in one sentence
Three rules that could change this quarter, each with an owner and a cost
The before-and-after measures for each rule
A sponsor who asked for a programme and receives a costed set of rule changes can act on it at the next executive meeting.
A new leader is the other opening, because the leader's first decisions are read as statements of the new rules.
In the leader's first month, say how the first three decisions will be read. Ask what the leader will do the first time someone brings bad news.
A restructure is a common trigger too. The way it is announced is the first test of whether the new rules are real, as covered in how to announce a restructure.
Where The Tools Sit
Trusted Talent Advisor covers the conditions work and the adoption sequence in its change and adoption component.
The diagnostic that separates a capability gap from a conditions problem is in its core practitioner guide.
The template pack includes the conditions audit and the adoption tracker.
Related reading: why pilots fail to scale.
Sources
1. Schein, E. H. Organizational Culture and Leadership, fifth edition. Wiley.
2. Schein, E. H. The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, new and revised edition. Jossey-Bass.
3. Spector, P. Policies Cannot Change Culture. paulspector.com.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
How do you change organisational culture?
State the goal as behaviour, audit the written and practised rules behind it, change one rule that a named leader owns, apply it in a visible decision, and measure the behaviour before and after.
Can policies change culture?
A policy alone changes little, because people follow what is rewarded and punished. A rule changes behaviour when people see it enforced in decisions that affect someone they know, such as a promotion or a budget.
How long does culture change take?
Schein estimates five to fifteen years or more for changing basic assumptions. A single rule shows movement sooner, an approval limit within a quarter and a promotion criterion at the next promotion round.
What are the steps of culture change?
State the goal as behaviour, audit the rules behind the current behaviour, choose one rule a named leader can change this quarter, change it visibly, measure from records, then move to the next rule.
Why do culture change programmes fail?
Goals are vague, the work sits with HR instead of the leaders who control the rules, everything changes at once, and progress is measured by attitude surveys instead of behaviour.
What is the role of HR in culture change?
HR redirects the request for a programme into three things for the executive team: the goal as behaviour, three rules that could change this quarter with owners and costs, and the before-and-after measures.
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