Implementing a Culture of Change in Your Organization – An Overview

If you imagine your organization as a personality, organization culture is the body of values or traits that make it what it is. You would agree that some amount of dynamism in the culture of an organization can be promising, as it can result in positive change. We have been planning some key product engineering initiatives that will introduce disruptive change in our organization. The success of these initiatives is aligned to the success of certain key organization goals.

This blog will expand on a brief process outline of how we have planned to implement these initiatives. Here it is:

Defining the ‘Why’ for Initiatives

A clear, precise, and focused answer on why the organization is embarking on these initiatives is very important. The ‘Why’ should spell out the aspirational outcome of these initiatives that would help create alignment with key stakeholders. The beauty of defining the ‘Why’ first is that it presents the aspirations but doesn’t get bogged down in the ‘How’ and ‘What’ too early. The ‘How’ and ‘What’ will follow and can be refined or adjusted.

Defining Key Measurable Milestones for the Initiatives

All major initiatives that would lead to impactful changes in the organization have to be broken down into smaller measurable milestones. One should review and conduct detailed retrospectives after every milestone. The goal may be the same but the ways to achieve the goal may need course corrections based on feedback from ground zero.

Identifying the Catalyst Team as the Flag Bearer of the Initiatives

This team should have representation across all levels in the organization. The team should shun hierarchy, be uninhibited and innovative, as well as motivated to drive this initiative to the highest level in the organization.

Defining the Role of Leadership

The leader’s conviction is the key to ensuring the success of these initiatives. You would agree that competent organization leaders provide intent, intensity, and focus.

• Their global stature and appeal will ensure that all employees notice these initiatives.
• It is their job to ensure that all stakeholders are evaluated based on their effective participation in this initiative.
• Akin to cheerleaders for these initiatives, they encourage and incentivize employees who embody these initiatives.
• They take a lead in customer communication and interaction around these initiatives. This leads to customer involvement, feedback, and enrichment of such initiatives.

Setting Organization Policies and Defining the Role of Support Departments

All support departments, especially HR, play a key role in the success of these strategic initiatives. Effective initiation of the program needs an appropriate communication plan followed by introductory training programs to enthuse the ranks and files.

It is easy for any initiative or training to invoke an initial positive reaction. However, true learning needs sustenance and internalization. It means that every policy and action in the organization must highlight the participation and success of these key initiatives. Performance management and rewards and recognition being the key functions of HR, it is imperative that these functions acknowledge and reward the employees who make key contributions to these initiatives.

Training Employees Effectively

Technology-focused engineering services organizations like ours have already recognized the importance of the inverted pyramid- ’employees first, customer second’. If we train and take care of our employees, they will take good care of our customers. However, the most important thing is how to ensure training effectiveness.

It can be achieved if you can connect it with the individual’s growth and goals. For example, consider our product engineering initiatives in the context of employee careers.

Our industry has created a mechanism to convert software engineers into mere programmers. The engineers have compartmentalized themselves as Java, C#, SQL programmers. The management is planning training for them to become ‘Jack the all-rounder’. They are trained in everything like industry domain, communication skills, team leading, and time management. While I am not suggesting that these trainings are unimportant, we should prioritize and conduct focused training programs and workshops to sharpen their saw for the day-to-day rigor which is to write good code. This will surely impact their careers and help them achieve their goals. They say invoking behavioral changes that impact results can only be achieved by influencing the self-esteem and self-worth of every individual. This provokes thoughts of conducting coding workshops. These workshops:

• Challenge them to become full stack programmers who can code in various programming languages across various logical layers.
• Challenge them to analyze software requirements holistically, including functional and non-functional aspects (usage, performance).
• Challenge them for first time quality rather than have them pass the buck to the testing team.
• Showcase model code and have them vouch for writing code with similar standards.Above all, they showcase role models who have attained good heights in their career following the above ethos.

Garnering Customer Feedback

The real testimony of the success of these initiatives is customer feedback. The simplest way to get feedback is to create a list of questions (CSAT/Customer Survey) based on our understanding of the expected outcomes of these initiatives. Assuming these initiatives were aligned to customer success in first place, the outcome of the survey is the litmus test which will help us gauge the success of these initiatives.

There you have it – a detailed overview of our vision of work culture initiatives. We must add that organizational culture types are varied, and it may be necessary to craft initiatives based on the unique type that your organization embodies.

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