Public Sector HR Podcast

Changing the culture of an organisation in order to survive in these difficult times, is high on many top table agendas.

This month I talk to world renowned OD and Culture Change guru Dr Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, about the best way for organisations to embark on this journey.

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Mee-Yan believes that culture change can be very, very simple, if we actually grasp what culture is and how it forms. In the interview, she explains how culture is formed and then goes on to describe how it can be changed.

Her view is culture is formed in two ways:

• When a group of people get together and start doing something - through time they develop ’shared basic assumption’

• Through leadership - when leaders follow their own vision in order to accomplish tasks, then their values, beliefs, visions and goals are validated, confirmed, reinforced and shared. Over time these will drop out of the consciousness and become taken for granted and part of the cultural DNA   

Therefore culture can be changed by:

• Leaders not talking about their ‘big belief’, but subtly leading the group to do things differently 

• Making sure whatever the group is asked to do has a high chance of success, this validates the leaders way of thinking

• Mixing up certain groups that are reinforcing the old culture, to form a temporary group structure

According to the world’s leading authority on culture change Edgar Schein, ‘Leaders and culture are two sides of the same coin. It can be argued that the only real importance that leaders do, is to create and manage culture. That the unique talent of a leader, is the ability to understand and work with culture and it is an ultimate act of leadership to destroy culture when it’s viewed as dysfunctional. So if one wishes to to distinguish leadership from management or administration, one can argue that leaders create and change culture, while management and administration acts within a culture’.

Mee-Yan thinks that HR plays a critical role in any culture change programme and her advice to HR professional includes:

• Learn about the ‘how’ of culture change and be very savvy and literate about what cultural change mechanism is required

• Stop thinking about culture change as as one of those components we need to manipulate rather than thinking, whatever we do and think as an organisation we therefore think about culture

• Have a long-term strategy to make sure that leaders understand how to do systematic organisational health and development

• Know how to do the intervention or if you don’t, know how to be an intelligent buyer of external services and involve internal OD colleagues

• Plan and design the cultural interventions and don’t let external consultants lead the process

• Help the leaders to hand-pick big opinion forming line leaders at 2nd and 3rd levels to work with them, to lead the culture change

• Give these opinion formers, sufficient capability and support and up-skill them to do this work

• Roll out the cultural interventions into succession planning and talent management

• Get something into the leadership development curriculum, that helps leaders understand the duality of strategy and culture, because one without the other won’t work

• Help leaders to know how to use behavioural modelling to lead the organisation

One very important quote from Edgar Schein that Mee-Yan uses is ‘ Instead of thinking about culture, you need to think ‘culturally’ and by thinking culturally all the time, you’ll be watching the dynamic evolution of culture’.

If you want to find out more about Mee-Yan’s work, you can contact her via her website @ www.quality-equality.com and a wide range of information including a video podcast and slide presentation can be found on the IDeA website.

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I would love to hear your feedback and any suggestions for further shows. Either email me directly at karen@publicsectorhrpodcast.co.uk or click on ‘Comment’ underneath the show title and type away.