this only touches the surface of that hidden force known as culture. You can implement the soft skills and even have them fail to properly function due to negative cultural influence.
Figure 2-1 Hard Skill / Soft Skill Pyramid
The seriousness of this issue is why people in the change business, senior managers or consultants, always are referring to the need to change the culture.
Years ago I was involved with the implementation of a Quality Program. It was one of those initiatives sold by a consultant that promised to improve the quality of everything we did in the plant. It had a strong soft skill component and this was followed by the introduction of the hard skills built on the soft skill foundation. The program lasted several years, but in the end it failed. We had attempted to change many things, but we failed to understand and change the culture. In the end, the culture worked invisibly behind the scenes to restore status quo to the organization.
The point is that many claim they understand organizational culture, but when you observe the initiatives being implemented and the failure of a majority of them, it should be clear that culture is not so easily understood nor do most organizations work to alter the culture to achieve success in their change programs. The real model we need to consider has culture as the sub-foundation of soft skills. If we can successfully alter the culture, then we can then build soft skill and later hard skill initiatives on top of it.
Now that we know where culture belongs in the change scheme, we need to get a clearer picture of what it is and how it interacts with the soft skills it needs to support. If we can achieve this picture, then we can successfully build the hard skills on top of the soft skills that are built on top of the cultural change. It is only then that we can achieve the level of change and improvement we seek.
Figure 2-2 Pyramid with culture as a foundation
The starting point of our discussion is to define organizational culture in a way that is understandable. From this we can dissect the definition into its component parts and reach a clearer understanding of each. This should provide us with the starting point we need to discuss why it is important, the types of culture we need to learn to deal with, and how the work culture impacts the soft skills that we need to employ to make positive business change.
In his book Organizational Culture and Leadership, E. Schein defines organizational culture as follows:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.
If you think about this definition, it clearly describes that sub-foundation upon which an organization’s soft and hard skills are built. It also paints a clear picture of how ingrained these basic assumptions are; this picture allows you to understand how difficult they can be to change. Let’s look at the component parts:
“A pattern of shared basic assumptions”
The operative word here is that the culture is constructed upon shared basic assumptions. Because they are shared, when you try to change the assumptions you need to change them in everyone.
“The group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration”
The next part of the definition explains that these assumptions are not new creations. They have been tested over time as the organization learned how to solve both the internal and external problems that quite often were serious threats to their very existence.
“That has worked well enough to be considered valid”
Furthermore, these assumptions worked well for the organization, which has collectively considered them valid. Think about the problems you will face trying to implement change where the new initiative is in conflict with a basic assumption that has been validated over time.
“Taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”
This last part locks the assumption into the culture because it is taught to all new members as the “way we work around here if you want to succeed.”
This is a very powerful definition if you think about its far-reaching impact on new change initiatives. It essentially says that if a new initiative conflicts with a basic assumption that was learned over time, has worked well enough to be held as valid, and is taught to the new members so that everyone believes it as true, then changing things is going to be a very difficult task.
One of the most difficult changes to make in the area of reliability is to change a work culture from reactive to proactive. Let’s examine some of the reasons that this change is so difficult in light of the definition.
Suppose our change initiative was aimed at implementing a planning and scheduling process that brought with it reliability-based repairs for every job. This implies that in our planning and scheduling process work is not scheduled until planned and ready. It further implies that equipment won’t simply be repaired by throwing manpower and materials at it. Instead, the maintenance organization will take time to understand the reason for the failure, then execute reliability-based repairs so that the equipment doesn’t fail again.
However, our new planning, scheduling, and reliability-based repair initiative is working against a culture that holds the following basics assumptions:
• Maintaining production is what is important
• Maintenance exists to serve production’s needs
• When equipment breaks down it needs to be repaired as quickly as possible
• The maintenance crews need to be available to make repairs, not to do non-value-added work such as preventive maintenance.
How well do you think a reliability initiative would succeed in an organization with these basic assumptions? The answer should clearly be that it would not succeed at all. The new initiative is in direct conflict with what the organization believes to be true about maintenance work. Because they are still in business (at least for now), these assumptions have been validated and taught to new members. They exist as the sub-foundation of the business as described in Figure 2-2.
It should be clear to you at this point that change is very difficult to accomplish when it runs in conflict with an organization’s culture. Yet it can be accomplished.
2.3 Why Is This Definition Important?
In Successfully Managing Change in Organizations: A Users Guide, I mentioned the three elements needed for successful change – a vision of the future, the next steps to get there, and dissatisfaction with the current state. The third element of these requirements for change indicates how you can overcome the resistance to change imposed by an organization’s culture. Although I will explain this in detail in the balance of this book, an example will provide clarity.
Suppose
