The Culture Matrix

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

I finally got around to talking with a colleague-once-removed of mine, Marc Chouinard, about his process for effecting cultural and organizational change. I think his approach has a great deal of merit, precisely because it targets uncovering the subconscious “frames of reference” that drive individual actions, decisions, and interpretations during any change effort. I think this “in the trenches” approach is a critical component of any change strategy. So let me try to give you a summary of Marc’s process, The Culture-Matrix.

From Marc’s perspective, there are two main factors that, most of the time, leaders overlook in any change initiative, but that make all the difference in the success and sustainability of the change initiative. These factors are:

• Revealing and understanding the real “living” culture of the organization;
• Revealing and understanding the forces that will support or hinder the change initiative, called Performance-Drivers and Performance-Drains.

This blog will focus on the first point. I will cover the second point in a subsequent blog.

Revealing and Understanding the Living Culture of an organization

Let’s start by defining what the real “living” culture of an organization is. It is the coming together of what people believe they need to be and do to be successful in the particular context of their organization. In other words, it is the coming together of the workforce’s conscious and unconscious drivers of their behaviors.

One of Marc’s clients, in a moment of personal epiphany, does a great job describing the “living” versus “assessed” culture of an organization -- “there’s a big difference between having an opinion on something and being driven by something.”

“Having an opinion on something” refers to culture assessment questionnaires which ask a series of “opinions” to the members of an organization in order to define the culture of the organization. Marc’s client continues:

It’s okay to have an opinion about the presence or absence of a culture element, but it doesn’t tell you if this culture element dictates day-in and day-out your perceptions, decisions, behaviors, judgments and the ways you react to your environment. If you would have asked my employees if customer satisfaction is important for our organization, they would have answered a resounding YES! Yet, when you look at what motivates a great proportion of them on a daily basis, you find what is critical in their mind to be successful in their role in our organization is to solve problems.

As we all have experienced when talking to a customer support organization when experiencing problems with a product or service (computer, insurance plan, car problem, etc.), the solving of our problem is only one factor that influences our satisfaction as a customer. Other factors can be, based on our personal preference, the friendliness and helpfulness of the representative, being clearly explained the steps that will happen to solve the problem and identifying who are responsible for each step.

In the case of the organization of Marc’s client, the customer support personnel focus on “solving problems” because they believe that is what will make them successful within their organization. So their interpretation of what it means to “make the customer satisfied” (the assessed culture) is “solving the customer’s problem” (the real living culture of the organization). Having the assessed culture of your organization tells you nothing about the “living” culture or your organization.

It is important to know the living culture of an organization because it:

• tells you what your employee and managers focus on to realize the objectives of your organization;
• defines the code of conduct (both formal and informal) that your employees are following.
  
  

The Culture-Matrix reveals the living culture of your organization. It is a guided individual interview process that takes place in groups of ten employees where each individual works individually and privately. Contrary to culture assessment questionnaires, the Culture-Matrix does not suggest specific culture elements: it reveals the culture elements that are present and in the words of the employees. This process takes between two to three hours per group of ten employees.

No questionnaire, no personality instruments, just good, hard investigative work “in the trenches.” I don’t know about you but I like getting my hands dirty when it comes to cultural and organizational change.

Coming up next, Performance Drivers and Performance Drains.