When Leaders Walk Their Talk

With mergers and acquisitions being the recent highlight in the channel
industry, maintaining the company culture is important and challenging too. It
can be done when organisation leaders practice different aspects like mission,
vision and strategy statements. Company values, guiding principles and
relationships between employee and the employer are also necessary to have a
well-balanced place to work.

Employees and leaders to day are a worried lot. In a fast changing
business environment, how do they keep pace while trying to understand
constantly the changing company culture?

Things have now boiled down to acquiring another company, undertaking
another merger, masterminding exponential growth and recruiting more personal.
So what happens to the culture built painstakingly over several years? That
will surely take a beating. So how do we overcome these challenges? What should
our desired culture be? 

It is imperative to understand what work culture the company has built in the
first place and it should be nurtured. A definition coined by management
gurus to understand work culture is "a set of shared values and beliefs,
developed in response to internal and external stimuli that drives the behavior
of a group of people within an organisation."

Three-pronged culture

Culture provides people with a common sense of identity and helps them make
sense of their work experiences. It can be understood at three levels. The first
is artifacts - aspects of culture that can be observed in the daily work
environment. Values are the second level, where the conscious rules and norms
guide day-to-day behavior. The third is underlying basic beliefs, which
are shared assumptions at a sub-conscious level.

Embracing
an adaptive culture is a must if one has to survive today's competitive
environment. Leaders must engage everyone in the change process, set role
expectations in participating in and leading change.  They must gain
commitment from employees to align themselves to a desired company culture.

Many things may force an organisation to embrace an adaptive culture, which
includes external factors like increased competition, the economy and increased
opportunities. Internal factors could include changing strategy to adapt to
newer challenges.

Articulating different aspects

A guiding post for leaders to start would be to look at the
hard aspects about corporate culture. These generally include company
Vision, Mission and Strategy. The soft aspects are generally company values,
guiding principles and relationships between employee and the employer. Both the
hard as well as the soft aspects have to co-exist.

Hard to imagine a company thriving and sustaining itself today if it does not
live by its guiding principles? Leaders have to 'walk the talk' to play a
key role in leading cultural transformation. The 'talk' part equates with
company vision, mission and its strategy. Articulating these is the easier
part for today's leaders. It's more difficult to 'walk' by
practicing and living our values and principles that guide our every
day behavior at work.

Leaders can partner with HR folks who can act as gatekeepers, however leaders
must lead culture transformation efforts themselves. One may well ask that isn't
hiring, motivating and retaining great people the key to success? You may
hire and retain extremely competent, high performing people with great
attitude and passion, but if they have poor integrity (values), that for
sure will sink your chances of building an adaptive culture.

Examples of adaptive Vs non-adaptive culture are several. Non-adaptive
cultures include an environment where there is lack of trust, businesses are
risk averse, no accountability, individuals rule and people play to the gallery.

Now reverse that and you have honesty and integrity, an environment where
risk is better managed, everyone is accountable, great team work and the boss is
not king, but just another customer - a fine example of what adaptive culture is
all about.

Advantages of adaptive culture 

Adaptive cultures celebrate success all the time, never tolerate poor
performers, are proactive in their approach and are paranoid about being
customer driven. They also let go and empower people, rather than closely
monitoring and controlling actions all the time.

Our culture teaches us to respect elders when common sense tells us that its
behavior that needs to be respected. Adaptive culture is all this and much more.
'Follow the leader' is definitely not practiced. No parent/ child
relationship but a more mature adult-to-adult relationship where everyone has
equal respect. A leader thinks from within his field of meaning. In an adaptive
culture, every one is a leader and contributes to arrive at a more meaningful
solution.

All
these softer areas are challenging to manage as they at most
times become difficult to quantify. As a result, lesser attention is paid
to these aspects. Do not get bogged down or fall into a trap trying to
quantify/ explain what scientifically cannot be measured. However do so at
your own peril.

A good practice would be to try out and change many things and keep
what works. Focus on these things and move forward. Work along with people
who are willing to ride the bus, rather than expend energies trying to explain
to those who are skeptical. Let them be. The good ones will turn around as you
gain momentum and experience success. The others may not be worth it and will
literally find a way out!

Remember, in an adaptive culture, causing change is more important than
waiting for change to happen. Finally every one has shared responsibility to be
involved, drive and cause change - don't wait for someone else to do it.

It's vital to remember that culture change is a journey that requires
ongoing commitment from all over long periods of time to achieve, in which
leaders play a key role. They build an adaptive culture, where every one
speaks a common language. Simply put, just walk the talk and you'll be on
your way to building a world-class organisation, it's that simple
really! 

The author is Director Human Resources - Indian Subcontinent with Onward
Novell Software (India), a joint venture company between the Onward Group and
Novell Inc. He can be reached at anoronha@novell.com