we work in the company described above. They have a culture that values reactive repair, little or no planning, and a belief that maintenance simply exists to respond to production’s needs-of-the-day. These are the basic assumptions validated over time. Suppose, however, that these assumptions no longer work, the equipment is always breaking down, and the company is losing money. In this instance, a change to a proactive work process is possible because one could challenge and clearly point out that the expressed value of reactive repair considered valid by the company is not valid. Such a challenge opens the door to new change initiatives and allows for the introduction of new assumptions. This dissatisfaction with the current state sets the stage for change.
2.4 Types of Organizational Culture
There are many types of organizational cultures; each one acts and inter-reacts differently. It is important to understand this if we want to be able to initiate a successful change program because, being different, each requires a different approach.
The differences in cultural type can be portrayed by a quad diagram – a diagram that compares two factors in a matrix format. In this case the x-axis is how the organization acts towards change. The two types are closed and open. A closed organization is slow to change and, in some cases, reluctant or even adverse to change. It believes that what has worked in the past will continue to work in the future. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the open organization. It is very open to change because it knows that to remain static is unacceptable if one wants to optimize or even stay in business.
On the y-axis is feedback. If you remember the definition of culture, it addressed the issue of organizations validating their group assumptions. It is through the validation of feedback process that the organization learns that its behavior is correct and appropriate. It learns this through feedback resulting from its collective behavior. The y-axis shows two types of feedback – slow and fast. Some process changes provide instant feedback. For example, a maintenance organization reacts to a plant problem, fixes the equipment, and receives instant praise from production for rapidly correcting the problem. Other changes, such as seeing the results of a preventive maintenance program, are associated with slow feedback. In these cases, you implement a preventive maintenance (PM) program and often do not see the results for a year or more when your failure-tracking metrics show a steady decline in the failure rate.
Taking these two factors – change acceptance (closed or open) and change feedback (slow or fast), I have developed a quad diagram depicting the various types of organizational culture – Figure 2-3
Let us examine the four types as identified by the numbering scheme in the figure.
1. Closed – Slow Feedback
This box represents change adverse organizations. They are highly conservative. As a result, everything that they do is overly analyzed. This process takes a long time and results in slow feedback regarding success of their change efforts. Coupled with slow feedback on any changes they introduce, they get caught up in analysis of the situation to the point that changes are never undertaken. Essentially these groups are in denial. They believe that what they have is what is best. Organizational progress is slow or non-existent, and failure is often the end result.
2. Open – Slow Feedback
These organizations are open to change and successfully deal with the fact that feedback from their change initiatives is slow. They set a vision, develop goals, initiatives and activities, and stay the course over the long haul. An example of this type of firm is one that institutes a preventive or proactive maintenance program, then works hard over an extended time to make it work.
Figure 2-3 Cultural mode
3. Closed – Fast Feedback
In this part of the quad diagram are the companies that are conservative in their approach to change, but when they do undertake initiatives, they seek rapid feedback. These companies need hard evidence that a change program will work before they are willing to attempt it. These are the “show me” firms. However, they do not wait to acquire 100% of the feedback from their efforts. They believe that once value is clearly demonstrated, they can safely proceed. Often this issue can be addressed by pilot programs to test a new idea and gain acceptance. The other aspect of this quad is that the feedback is quick. What this means for the change agents is that they will need to spend a lot of time convincing the company of the need for change. Once the effort has started, however, the rapid feedback will allow for rapid deployment.
4. Open – Fast Feedback
The last part of the quad diagram covers companies that are open to change and seek rapid feedback on the success from their efforts. These organizations recognize that change is sometime accompanied by failure. They are willing to accept that failure is a way of learning and are always open to attempting new things. An example would be a company that moves from a reactive work environment to one of planning and scheduling of the work. In this case, feedback as to the success of the planning effort would be rapid – the plans had value or they did not. In a “learn-by-doing culture” the successful parts of the process would be retained; those that were not successful would be discarded and new ideas tried out.
In their book Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life, authors T. Deal and A. Kennedy describe the four components of a corporate culture – values, heroes, rites and rituals, and the cultural network. Their concept that organizational culture is composed of four key parts is a valid one; with some alterations, I will use the four-part model in my discussion of culture and how you can change culture in order to implement reliability-focused change in your organization.
Figure 2-4 below shows how each of these four components are a part of a larger whole which we refer to as our organizational culture. Each of these components plays a key role both independently and dependently as part of the cultural system.
Values
Values are the beliefs and assumptions that an organization believes to be true and uses as a set of guiding principles for managing its everyday business. They are what collectively drive decision making within a company. For instance, an organizational value may be that production is the only thing of importance and, when things break, they need rapid response in order to return them to service. Another example of an organizational value is that equipment should never fail where the failure was not anticipated through proactive maintenance work initiatives. Although these two examples are very different, in each case, the value described drives the collective decision making process for the organization.
Figure 2-4 Four types of culture
Role Models
Role models are people within the company who perform in a fashion that the organization can and wants to emulate. They are successful individuals who stand out in the organization by performing in line with the corporate value system. They exist throughout the organizational hierarchy, from the reliability/maintenance manager through the highly-skilled mechanics. Role models show people that if you wish
