Just like all important projects, bringing an aspirational culture to life takes concerted effort, focused action, and of course, time. Achieving the results you desire won’t happen overnight, which means losing that critical momentum as the implementation project moves forward is a very real possibility. And as with any change, you’ll face resistance.
So, what can you do to keep things moving and continue to help employees adopt the behaviors and mindset your organization needs to be successful? Here are some ideas.
Let’s talk resistance
Resisting change is part of being human. It comes from our oldest, deepest instincts to protect what we have in order to survive—that good-old “fight or flight” intuitive mechanism that kicked in back when our ancestors were hunting wild game and living in caves. But the workplace isn’t a cave and we don’t have to spear our own wild boar for today’s working lunch, so shouldn’t our fight or flight mechanism be at ease? Perhaps.
But if you connect the dots between your job, your financial situation, and your ability to pay the mortgage and put food on the table now and in the future, it really does get down to the basics of human survival. You’re not going to change the fact that the present situation is known and secure, and the future is unknown and scary. But you can change how you react to change and the unknown.
Think of resistance as a gift
Resistance is a gift. Really. Resistance is a blessing, an opening, an invitation to engage. When people resist, it’s often because they haven’t emotionally aligned to the vision, they aren’t connecting the dots between objectives and actions, they are concerned about losing some sense of self, or they are fearful about how they’ll be affected and whether they can or want to live with it.
In my experience, this resistance often comes from a lack of information—the employee doesn’t have all of her questions answered yet. So the solution is pretty simple: find out what the questions are and answer them candidly, truthfully, and genuinely. Once you get those questions answered and have support for the change, you need to help folks make the transition.
Here are some things I recommend for my clients when they are at this point:
- carry around the document that describes your culture— that will let employees see its importance
- kick-off recurring meetings with a 90-second “culture moment”— let everyone participate by sharing stories about how they’ve witnessed the culture live and in action
- create spot awards to recognize and reinforce desired behaviors—they don’t need to be expensive, just timely and publicly awarded
- prominently include culture information on your intranet site—give it its own page and find ways to make the page enticing and engaging
- identify and equip culture ambassadors—your high potential pool is a great place to start
- make sure managers understand how to develop to the culture—use idps to establish goals around desired behaviors.
Culture develops over time
As I’ve said before, defining, cultivating, and reinforcing the desired culture is the role of leadership, with much-needed support from the human capital team. As you’re going through the process, remember that cultures develop over time. Therefore, people transition over time.
Successful change takes stamina and continued focus. But eventually you’ll see the desired behaviors exhibited, and those behaviors will ultimately change the mindset about how the individuals and organization are successful.
One day, you’ll realize your desired culture is your present culture. Be brilliant!
