Challenges to Cultural Change, Velocity 2012. For more on the DICE framework, see "The Hard Side of Change Management" in HBR's 10 Must-Reads in Change Management. http://hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-on-change-management-with-feat/an/12599-PBK-ENG?Ntt=change%2520the%2520hard%2520way
3. What is Culture?
“Visible” aspects of culture:
the arts: music, drama, literature, dance
history and religion
“Invisible” aspects of culture:
kinship, gender roles, social rules, gestures
decision making, work ethic
4. Where Does Culture Come From?
National culture
Deeply held values
Organizational Culture
Differences in practices
http://www.flickr.com/photos/borkurdotnet/691053039/
5. National Culture: Geert Hofstede
Power Distance
Individualism vs collectivism
Masculinity vs femininity
Uncertainty avoidance
Long term orientation
Indulgence vs restraint
6. National Culture Example: the USA
Power Distance: low
Individuality: VERY high
Masculinity: high
Uncertainty Avoidance: low
LTO: very low
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bdcoen/6787653117/
7. Organizational Culture
Means vs Goal Oriented
Internally vs Externally Driven
Easy-going vs Strict Work Discipline
Local vs Professional
Open vs Closed System
Employee vs Work Oriented
Degree of Acceptance of Leadership Style
Identification with the Organization
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/100695
9. Columbia Disaster
NASA’s “can-do” attitude
Near-misses were successes, not near-failures
Misplaced confidence in some systems
Relaxing of the safety culture
Reinterpretation of evidence
Reorganizations focusing on efficiency
Optimistic organizational thinking
Resistance to the free exchange of information
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonythemisfit/3741900934/sizes/z/in/photostream/
15. Setting Change Goals
Establishing urgency
Setting scope
Presenting the value
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wurz/364901263/sizes/z/in/photostream/
16. An Example: DICE Method
Catchy acronym!
Fortunately has some concrete tasks
Doesn’t focus on setting the actual change goals
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmbellman/2513527732/sizes/z/in/photostream/
17. DICE: Duration
How long between reviews?
How long for the project to be completed?
Taking stock of effects
http://www.flickr.com/photos/archaicwarrior/3992002490/sizes/z/in/photostream/
18. DICE: Integrity
Skills and personnel resources
Competition for talent
Prioritization
Key players
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matsuyuki/201651074/sizes/z/in/photostream/
19. DICE: Commitment
Visible support from influential people
Enthusiasm for the new processes
Straight talk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myvegas/3238707225/sizes/z/in/photostream/
20. DICE: Effort
Don’t forget the day jobs
Limiting duplication of efforts
Showing improvements
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artbystevejohnson/7029850453/
21. DICE Summary
D: checkpoint and keep an eye on things
I: keep skill sets in mind
C: make sure your message is always on point
E: don’t burn people out
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mkamp/2478311790/
23. Dissent
Consensus takes time
Change what people do, give them time to do it
Reassigning or firing
24. Functional Fanaticism
These are the folks who will freak out
Their entire concept of their role and responsibilities is built around
their processes
26. You Say You Want a Revolution
Let’s say you go back to the office from Velocity
You are excited about new methods to improve mobile performance
You want your group to improve the performance of your company’s
mobile app
Your company culture isn’t focused on performance
What do we need to do?
27. Goal: Improve Mobile Performance
Be specific: “improve mobile site load time by 10% by Q4”
This is a talk i am giving with my MBA hat on. we’re going to drop some social science in here today. if you heard jesse’s talk this morning, his journey was incredibly tactical, and not everyone has the sorts of super powers he has to go into burning buildings. why this talk? my mba was through a program developed as a partnership among schools in the us, nl, mx, br, and hk, and culture was emphasized as a source of both a source of stress but also as a source of new ideas and opportunities. we struggle with wanting things to change and not having the right tools or frameworks to translate our desires into language that the rest of the org understands and can relate to.\n
The term “culture” is a soft concept, but embodies a number of aspects of our lives. It effects how we think and feel, how we learn and teach, what we consider to be beautiful or unappealing. Culture is hard to think about without making a comparison to another culture.\n\nNot each of these aspects affect how people act at work, but some are very important to the work environment. Decision making and work ethic in particular are obviously important. things like kinship and gender roles are also important as they impact hiring practices and team composition. for example, in some areas of the world companies are more likely to be run by members of the same family. the number of women working outside the home also varies greatly between regions of the world.\n
National culture has been extensively studied. Various difference between countries are well documented. national culture is about “how we think”.\n\nThe origin of organizational culture is harder to pin down, coming from various pressures placed on the organization. Organizational culture is more about “what we do”.\n\nWhen considering a change in your organization’s culture, you have to take into consideration the origins of the characteristics you want to change. So let’s take a look at what sorts of things are considered to be national culture vs organizational culture\n
Geert Hofstede’s seminal research in national and organizational culture is organized into the first four dimensions and provides comparisons across dozens of countries. michael bond added LTO in 1991. the final dimension was added in 2010 based on research by Michael Minkov.\n\nSo what do these dimensions represent?\nPower distance: in countries with high power distance, social organization is highly hierarchical. People find themselves in a particular strata of the population, and they accept that. In countries with lower power distance, individuals strive to equalize inequalities and demand justification. \n\nIndividualism: the degree to which a society expects its members to take care of themselves versus a more widely collected framework\n\nMasculinity: the importance of achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material reward (competition) vs cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak, and quality of life (consensus-oriented)\n\nUncertainty: comfort level with uncertainty and ambiguity. how much does a society try to control the future, how open are they to new ideas?\n\nLTO: how much does society plan for the future? do people expect quick results?\n\nIndulgence: to what extent does the society expect people to restrain gratification of needs, or have strict social norms \n\nthese characteristics are averages or tendencies, and are most apparent when countries are compared to each other. Different regions of a country may have differences in these characteristics, and so may different socio-economic groups. \n\nIt is rare for these characteristics to change over short periods of time without a revolution. these values evolve. inter-generational differences in these values cause conflicts in people’s personal lives, and are a source of strain and stress in the workplace. \n
PDI: in the US, power distance is expected to be low. members of our society expect to be able to move up based on their achievements and not be constrained to a stratum of society based on their heritage\n\nIndividuality: americans are driven to be the best they can be, and society is more loosely organized than in other countries. they also expect people to take care of themselves. americans expect to be promoted or rewarded based on their own achievements.\n\nmasculinity: americans are seen, as a society, to be a “live to work” culture. the goal is to win.\n\nuncertainty: relatively large degree of acceptance of new products and ideas\n\nlto: quick wins, quick results, quick turnarounds, quick quick quick. Americans are less likely to save money than people in other similarly developed countries. even if the west coast is a little more relaxed than the east coast, core tendencies are toward short-term orientation.\n\nThese aspects of national culture are critical for organizations to be aware of. how they are evolving in society is also crucial. \n\n
“what people do”\n\nIt’s not unusual to find organizations who are completely wrapped up in how work must be done. every step is explicitly prescribed, and deviation from the methods is discouraged or punished. Goal oriented organizations focus much less on *how* things get done and more on what is to be accomplished. \n\nInternally driven companies believe they know what is best for the customer, regardless of what the customer thinks they want. Externally driven companies focus on what the customer wants.\n\nEasy going cultures generally have a loose internal structure and few explicit processes. Strict cultures are much more rigorous and tied down. Start ups may suffer at the inflection point when they reach a need for more process; tying down a loose culture is incredibly difficult and can damage morale. Strict cultures can make employees feel like they aren’t free to focus on doing their jobs well.\n\nIn an organization that identifies as “local”, the employees identify with their boss, business unit or specific team; these teams are often also very internally driven. employees in professional organizations identify themselves by their profession or the content of their job. getting a feel for how your organization identifies can lend some insight into how people will react to things like reorganizations or changes in upper management, particularly around founding CEOs and other executives. it also gives you an idea of how people will feel about integrating with other teams, for example if your goal is to integrate development and operations.\n\nopen organizations embrace new employees, value insiders and outsiders, and generally believe that almost anyone could work in the company. closed organizations are the opposite, and can make things very difficult for newcomers, or newly integrated teammates from reorganizations\n\nEmployee oriented organizations realize that employees are people, with all of the messy things that people have in their lives. work oriented organizations expect that the job will come first, regardless of the impact on the employees. We see this appear as “work/life balance”, and has gained a lot of attention in recent years. it is also an aspect of organizational culture that is most difficult for people in Operations to deal with, to feel like you are allowed to take a moment for yourself instead of always giving your time to the job.\n\nacceptance of leadership style: is the current management practice in-line with what the employees currently want? dissatisfied employees may be more open to change that is more in keeping with their own preferences, you have to find out what they are.\n\nEmployees that identify strongly with the organization agree with the internal goals, the needs of the customers, with their local group, and with the organization as a whole. many people are positive about some aspects of the company and identify strongly with those aspects. in very large organizations, however, it is likely to find people who don’t particularly identify or care about any aspect of the company.\n\n
Korean Air, as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, had a devastatingly bad run of air disasters. The airline was notorious for crashes and problems. Its loss rate, lost planes per departures, was nearly 20 times higher than averages for American-based airlines.\n\nInvestigations into practices at Korean Air uncovered conflicts in the cockpit: South Korean culture is rigidly hierarchical, and it is generally not accepted for “junior” staff to question the actions of more senior staff. In a two-pilot team, if the co-pilot had made a comment about dangerous conditions that the pilot did not heed, the co-pilot would not re-state the issue.\n\nIn what is now a famous cultural case study, David Greenberg of Delta Airlines helped Korean fix their culture. His first action was to replace the Korean language in the cockpit with English, creating a bubble of non-korean culture and establishing a work culture that is less hierarchical. \n\ncreating organizational culture that is contrary to the dominant norms in the society at large is incredibly difficult.\n
Columbia Accident Investigation Board found numerous problems in NASA’s culture that led had direct impact on the Columbia failure.\n\n“can-do” attitude discouraged individuals from stepping forward and suggesting “Can’t Do.” or significant concern about issues.\nViewing near-misses as successes rather than near-failures.\nManagement relied on past successes rather than engineering data to make decisions. \nNASA’s safety culture no longer asked hard enough questions about risk.\nEvidence that the design was not performing as expected was reinterpreted as acceptable and non-deviant, which diminished perceptions of risk.\nThe premium placed on maintaining an operational schedule, combined with ever-decreasing resources, gradually led Shuttle managers and engineers to miss signals of potential danger.\nDespite periodic attempts to emphasize safety, NASA’s frequent reorganizations in the drive to become more efficient reduced the budget for safety, sending employees conflicting messages.\nNASA’s strong cultural bias and optimistic organizational thinking undermined effective decision-making.\nThe free exchange of information was discouraged and new information was resisted.\n\nNASA’s internal culture and external pressures ended in tragedy. When a large man-made disaster happens, the first reports are almost always that it was a non-predictable fault of some hardware system or an operator error. as these incidents are researched, it’s not unusual to find systemic cultural problems in the organization that contributed to the fault condition. disasters like Chernobyl and Deepwater Horizon also exposed cultural issues that led to tragedy.\n
over the course of our five conferences, you’ve heard about how some companies are able to achieve success through collaborative environments, blameless post mortems, and other practices. Creating organizational culture that values characteristics that are contrary to society’s underlying values is incredibly challenging. \n\nWe see young companies strive to maintain their cultures in the face of societal pressures. We see folks like Mark Zuckerberg who are publicly chastised by the media for not following along with what our society considers the correct behavior (or dress) for executives. \n\nIf you think about the US in particular, and the values that are most prevalent with regards to cultural mechanisms like collaboration and power distance, America’s high propensity for individual achievement is a hurdle for many teams seeking to create more collaborative culture. \n\nwe also see more established companies that already have organizational cultures that are somewhat contrary to society at large. many of us have worked at companies with strict hierarchies or deep nepotism that are frustrating for the exact reason that they are contrary to what we expect because of values ingrained in us from our larger culture.\n
employees listening to executives describing plans for change in an organization often jump to conclusions as to what will happen and how they will be effected.\n\nchange is met with fear: will there be layoffs? will my job be terminated? will it be changed to require skills i don’t have? will my manager be different? will my team be different? Broad statements of change create emotional and psychological churn and often paralyze employees during initiatives. they may spend more of their time prepping their resumes and networking for a new position than signing on to do their part in the changes.\n\nSuccess metrics are important, and the team being engaged in the change process needs to agree on what must be changed and how to measure that success. part of the first phase of a change process is establishing why the organization should change and what the outcomes are to be. you need to have goals, and a way to decide if those goals have been appropriately reached.\n\nmany change initiatives fail because change is a commitment: it requires time, effort, resources, often diverted from other existing projects. \n
Making modifications in day-to-day processes and procedures is a path to starting a wave of change. \n\nChanging tasks and responsibilities to better meet specific goals gives team members an explicit place to focus efforts and see the impact of changes, rather than feeling that they are being forced to change simply for the sake of changing.\n\nsmall changes around pain points and bad processes encourage employees and make them feel comfortable with change. examining the “sacred cows” in the organizational culture is important too, but often needs to be driven from the top down, or have more executive sponsorship. Smaller changes around a teams workflows are a good place to start gaining successes and spreading new ideas.\n
In large organizations you often find change initiatives which focus on the “hearts and minds” of the employees. These types of efforts include posters with catchy slogans, big all hands meetings with lots of cheering and music, and company-branded swag. after the big meeting, employees go back to their desks, and discover that nothing has changed. these efforts breed cynicism and skepticism. \n\nisolated efforts within a specific department that don’t take into account how changes affect relationships with other groups also face more challenges and are more likely to fail. finding an influential champion for your effort, whether your manager or someone who is well respected in the org will generate enthusiasm and build support.\n\nDissent is a whole topic unto itself which we’ll talk about later. :D\n
\nBusiness process researchers and organizational psychologists have a lot to say about change, change management, and culture. It’s challenging just to pick through the information for methods that might work in your organization. New methods are put forth almost monthly based on case study research.\n\nwhat this demonstrates is just how different organizations really are, because they are comprised of people and people are messy. \n
establishing urgency for change when things are “good enough” is difficult. presenting quantitative value for change is key in many organizations. collecting metrics about your product is key. lots of the folks you’ve heard here at velocity have presented some amazing information about getting all kinds of metrics about running systems. there’s also lots of case work from the manufacturing industry about collecting and using metrics for improvements.\n\nkeeping the scope of your change project within a sphere where you have influence, for middle level managers, often makes goal setting easier. however, change efforts that require cross-functional or cross-team cooperation have the greatest potential for cultural improvement.\n\nYou want people to understand the value of the extra efforts they’re going to be expected to participate in. there is research that establishes that most people will accept a 10% increase in the work they’re assigned as long as they understand and agree with the goals and their value to the themselves.\n\npart of your goal setting process is also to frame your customers and their needs, particularly in organizations where that is not the norm. \n
Agreeing on and setting the end product of your change process is often an incredibly difficult task in and of itself. But let’s say the changes we want to make are limited in scope to the teams we manage, so there is less debate.\n
You are looking for milestones, not minutiae, but you need to keep an eye on things. you can’t tell people they need to change X, Y, or Z and then just expect that they’ll do it.\n\nadditionally, you want as many people involved in the effort as possible, even if their tasks are small, like providing input or feedback for new processes.\n\ncheckpointing change efforts keeps people on track, but you can’t micromanage them. however, having meetings at regular intervals allows you to establish whether or not a new process is actually moving towards the goals. It’s not unheard of for a new process that was designed to make group X’s job easier, to actually make it worse because of conflicting goals. Short circuiting these errors wastes less time and focuses on moving forward.\n
Team integrity plays a key part in your change effort. you may need to start with a training plan to make sure you have a critical mass of people who can actually perform the new tasks. \n\nIt is common in large organizations for teams to compete for internal talent. change-related projects are no different. everyone wants the person with the reputation for being the best at X, and if the value of your change effort isn’t apparent to competing projects, you lose out.\n\nEffective managers of the status quo aren’t necessarily the best people for leading change-oriented teams\n
People have a tendency to coalesce around influential people with charismatic personalities. part of establishing the value of a change and the goals that have been set, you should stop to take stock of people’s enthusiasm for the ongoing process. do this during your checkpoint reviews, to make sure your efforts are moving along and people are staying engaged.\n\nYou need straight talk and consistent message, particularly around bad news. there is a difference between “we do not expect to lay anyone off at this time” vs “there will be no layoffs”. equivocating or hedging starts to sound like lying.\n
The employees you are tapping for your efforts already have jobs, that’s why they’re there. keep in mind what their current workloads are and how tasks can still be completed without burning people out\n\nBig system changes might require duplication of effort, which feels Sisyphean. Keep Duration in mind while judging the length of beta periods or migrations so people aren’t working forever on two systems. The road to change is littered with half-migrated projects and incomplete efforts that leave people over taxed.\n\n\n
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Dissent happens. Sometimes it is vocal, sometimes it is more passive aggressive. You want your group to be free to speak, and encourage all discourse to take place in real time, with all parties included. Discussion should not start after the meetings end. \n\nBuilding consensus for the goals of a change takes time. there will be a group of people who want to see results before they buy in. you have to battle embedded PTSD and history. Too many failed change efforts in the past poisons the well.\n\nYour change efforts focused on changing tasks have to include time for people to learn new skills and make improvements. You have to be able to judge if someone is making an effort or not. \n\nChaotic neutrals, who won’t make a commitment to join the effort or voice cohesive dissent, are also a problem. some of them will spend all of their time trying to figure out how to go back to doing things the old way, just out of contrariness. \n\nIt’s human nature to want to get rid of people who aren’t engaging in the project. reassigning people to a new team seems appealing, but may be just putting of harder decisions. firing dissenters, however, undermines trust and presents an image of discouraging discussion. Management simulations love to take points away for firing certain people in the sim. :D\n
functional fanatics are difficult to deal with in change initiatives that require people to learn new skills and master new tasks. they are wrapped completely around their current tasks and have a hard time growing and learning. you can try to find them new tasks that fit them better or make them more comfortable. i have seen developers move to testing or maintenance roles because the did not feel up to learning the new language their project was moving to. this can work in the short-term, but work with HR to keep an eye on them \n
Cultural change creates opportunities to fix alignment issues within the organization. fixing actual problems or perceived injustices during change initiatives shows commitment to listen to employees and address their concerns.\n\nwhile it is taboo in many places to discuss salaries, rumors get started or someone leaves a form on the copier. \n\nnew initiatives allow for changes in process ownership and reestablishing people’s ownership of their roles.\n\nYou also need to keep discussion pathways open and safe. Feedback is important for the change process, both positive and negative. you want people to be able to talk about what is working and what is not working.\n\n\n
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There’s lots of stuff out there about setting attainable goals. some of the best writing on this topic is actually from sports and personal improvement fields. \n
Use what you learned from folks here at velocity to establish the value proposition of the work that will be required. collect metrics on your existing product to compare with competing products, create some urgency, get customer feedback about your current product to start telling the story about how to improve.\n
it’s easy to say that performance is a frontend problem, and to allow the frontend gurus to cope with all the improvements. to really be successful with an effort like this, though, you need a cross functional team available.\n\nHow about we involve backend engineering? they could be looking at caching layers, data optimizations, streamlining requests for user data and customizations\n\nInclude the ops team. they know about the performance of your systems and how that can be improved in the right direction for your goal. they might have ideas about new data stores or other cool products.\n\nYou get rolling, start trying things out, and product management steps in and demands you implement their product features. instead of battling, persuade them, include them, get them engaged in your goals. this is part of building consensus, it needs to reach everyone.\n\nGive marketing a heads up! they can plan campaigns to your customers about the improvements that are coming\n
it’s easy to say that performance is a frontend problem, and to allow the frontend gurus to cope with all the improvements. to really be successful with an effort like this, though, you need a cross functional team available.\n\nHow about we involve backend engineering? they could be looking at caching layers, data optimizations, streamlining requests for user data and customizations\n\nInclude the ops team. they know about the performance of your systems and how that can be improved in the right direction for your goal. they might have ideas about new data stores or other cool products.\n\nYou get rolling, start trying things out, and product management steps in and demands you implement their product features. instead of battling, persuade them, include them, get them engaged in your goals. this is part of building consensus, it needs to reach everyone.\n\nGive marketing a heads up! they can plan campaigns to your customers about the improvements that are coming\n
it’s easy to say that performance is a frontend problem, and to allow the frontend gurus to cope with all the improvements. to really be successful with an effort like this, though, you need a cross functional team available.\n\nHow about we involve backend engineering? they could be looking at caching layers, data optimizations, streamlining requests for user data and customizations\n\nInclude the ops team. they know about the performance of your systems and how that can be improved in the right direction for your goal. they might have ideas about new data stores or other cool products.\n\nYou get rolling, start trying things out, and product management steps in and demands you implement their product features. instead of battling, persuade them, include them, get them engaged in your goals. this is part of building consensus, it needs to reach everyone.\n\nGive marketing a heads up! they can plan campaigns to your customers about the improvements that are coming\n
it’s easy to say that performance is a frontend problem, and to allow the frontend gurus to cope with all the improvements. to really be successful with an effort like this, though, you need a cross functional team available.\n\nHow about we involve backend engineering? they could be looking at caching layers, data optimizations, streamlining requests for user data and customizations\n\nInclude the ops team. they know about the performance of your systems and how that can be improved in the right direction for your goal. they might have ideas about new data stores or other cool products.\n\nYou get rolling, start trying things out, and product management steps in and demands you implement their product features. instead of battling, persuade them, include them, get them engaged in your goals. this is part of building consensus, it needs to reach everyone.\n\nGive marketing a heads up! they can plan campaigns to your customers about the improvements that are coming\n
it’s easy to say that performance is a frontend problem, and to allow the frontend gurus to cope with all the improvements. to really be successful with an effort like this, though, you need a cross functional team available.\n\nHow about we involve backend engineering? they could be looking at caching layers, data optimizations, streamlining requests for user data and customizations\n\nInclude the ops team. they know about the performance of your systems and how that can be improved in the right direction for your goal. they might have ideas about new data stores or other cool products.\n\nYou get rolling, start trying things out, and product management steps in and demands you implement their product features. instead of battling, persuade them, include them, get them engaged in your goals. this is part of building consensus, it needs to reach everyone.\n\nGive marketing a heads up! they can plan campaigns to your customers about the improvements that are coming\n
Your gurus in every department need to be dedicated to your goal. they should really *be* gurus, be the people who other engineers or product managers can talk to about how to go about completing tasks or gaining skills.\n\nSet your checkpoint schedule. give everyone tasks to be responsible for, a venue for sharing what they’ve found, and an opportunity to get feedback about what they’re learning. make it easy to evaluate how the process is meeting the goal. make it ok to reconsider paths that might not be working out. keep people on task and moving forward.\n
You’ve got all those metrics you started with, as they start moving towards the goal, show people! at this point, your guru team should be able to articulate what they are working on to their peers, through internal talks, external talks, or whatever venue you have at your organization. you’re ready to build momentum external to your core team and push these improvements through the use of your metrics and the story that the team has written.\n