Culture is a pressing necessity for many organizations, yet it is the one business strategy that often gets stuck in a quagmire of bureaucratic hurdles and stakeholder disengagement.
Most business leaders are familiar with the statistic that 70% of change initiatives fail (McKinsey). We think there’s an even more alarming fact out there – most culture initiatives never even get started.
For Brooke Clarke, who has worked in leadership communications positions across different organizations – including building and leading the global communications and corporate affairs function at FTSE100 pharmaceutical Hikma plc – this challenge is close to her heart.
“In many organizations, there is a familiarity and understanding of change management and often what that entails – a high rate of failure, high costs, and considerable time involvement,” says Clarke.
Why is this?
Businesses often see culture as something that is too nebulous and that lacks tangibility, sitting invisible in an ether outside of business.
“A big barrier right from the beginning is that there isn't alignment on what necessarily needs to change and why,” explains Clarke.
By not clearly articulating the purpose behind the initiative, it can be seen as change for change’s sake and culture leaders will struggle to get buy-in to even get started. And on the other end of the scale, culture leads could be trying to change too much at once, making the task seem daunting and not rooted in reality.
Without full support of the leadership team, these change initiatives can fall apart quickly. In order to get everyone aligned, change initiatives must have clarity, purpose, and be achievable.
“Leadership alignment is crucial. They need to talk the talk and walk the walk if any change is to be successful.”
Breaking the stalemate
This highlights a prevalent issue in business: despite the recognition of the need for cultural transformation, many initiatives fail to gain traction due to their perceived difficulty and slow progress.
Leadership alignment is crucial. They need to talk the talk and walk the walk if any change is to be successful.Brooke Clarke
Communications Leader
But what if culture was treated like a product and innovated often through achievable iterations?
“It's far less difficult to identify a small behavior or policy to change, and trial the success of this first. For example, something like not sending emails to employees on the weekend to improve work life balance,” says Clarke.
Co-creating a small change like this can have massive impact organization-wide..
“Packaging change into smaller, tangible initiatives that you can implement, monitor, tweak and adjust is far less daunting than tackling too much at once. Those big programs tend to have a low success rate but they’re also incredibly difficult to measure in terms of impact.”
By implementing small cultural interventions, often, businesses can address specific challenges within teams or departments, which, if they’re successful, can be scaled elsewhere in the business. But Clarke stressed these interventions must be meaningful and clear: “You have to have the right narrative and messaging; leaders need to be able to articulate what they are aiming for and why. At the same time, culture change isn't something that can be talked into reality; it requires actions that people can see and feel. Without these tangible efforts, the best communication in the world won’t build lasting change..”
The path to cultural innovation
By embracing cultural interventions as experiments and promoting a culture of agility and risk-taking, organizations can bypass bureaucratic barriers and drive change at a grassroots level.
“Identify one small thing you could change and put that in place for a couple of months. If it works, think about what change could be introduced next.”
For Clarke, failure should be embraced as a path to innovation and not something to be punished.
Packaging change into smaller, tangible initiatives that you can implement, monitor, tweak and adjust is far less daunting than tackling too much at once.
By empowering leaders and employees to experiment, adapt, and innovate culture, organizations can catalyze meaningful change from within – and even start seeing cultural initiatives as fun, rather than cumbersome.
Clarke’s parting words for a successful cultural innovation?
“Make sure the initiative is tied to a specific business objective. And, importantly, you must make an emotional case for initiating the change – this is often overlooked. With culture, particularly, what’s going to make change a success is internal.”
For those who embrace the spirit of cultural innovation, the business rewards are immense. To find out more about a new approach to culture, head here.
