Culture

In clarifying how change is undertaken, the culture of an organization needs to be understood. Culture can stall and kill a project with hardly the blink of an eye. All of the professional and passionate planning initiated by a consultant will be ruined if the change and outcomes do not align with the culture. You must clarify three things: what is the cultural make-up of the target audience?; what personal cultural bias do you have?; and what is the degree of cultural diversity within the group?

Cultural audit

A cultural audit is designed to offer a clearer view of the culture you are dealing with. This knowledge is used to aid the diagnostics process, ensure that an appropriate change methodology is applied and test the viability of any solutions. This is clearly an art as opposed to a science. An organization's culture is simply an approximate description of the preferred style that the people choose to use. As you deconstruct the organization, so the approximation becomes less accurate because individual personalities and tendencies will emerge. At best, the outcome of any audit must be treated with some scepticism and at worse treated on a par with a horoscope. However, it is fair to say that, in general, it is possible to get a feel for a culture even if it cannot be specifically calibrated. A simple test is to walk into the foyer of three different hotels. There is every chance that within a few minutes, you will have an intuitive grasp of the culture of the organization. You will be able to guess what is acceptable to the staff, who wields the power and the extent to which the hotel has verve and energy. Although you would not invest your money on the strength of this, it can offer enough data on which to make a number of broad suppositions about an organization's operating style.

It can help to think of an organization as an empty canvass that has been painted with a varied mix of different attributes. Like the artist who slowly builds up a picture, often not knowing quite how it will end up, as an organization grows it adopts a range of different cultural attributes. When investigating the make-up of the picture, the consultant's role is to deconstruct the colour base and understand how the way they have been mixed contributes to the end picture. Just consider what a varied mix of pictures an artist can create from a simple range of colours. In the same way, although each organization will be unique, it is essentially made up from the same set of cultural attributes:

• Artefacts: Physical evidence left in the wake of human interaction that can help to indicate a particular cultural bias. This can include rituals, behavioural norms, shared language, reward systems, logos and office design.

• Beliefs: What does the organization value and regard as being important? This is seen in the moral and ethical codes offered by the business. The difficulty is that beliefs are deeply personal things, so in trying to define them at a global level, averaging or levelling will occur and some degree of compromise can take place.

• Control: Is power based around the structure of the organization or capability of the individual? To what extent does this leverage negative or positive political action?

• Discourse: What is the balance between the open and hidden elements within the business? To what extent will people open up and talk about issues in a shared environment and to what extent are issues held for debate in private, closed and secure groups? This gap between the open and hidden levels of discourse can be used to understand the difference between the espoused and actual cultural factors.

• Energy: Where is the energy expended? Is it on issues that are concerned with internal processes or is it externally-orientated, where the primary focus is on the customers, suppliers and stakeholders?

• Flow: How do people move in, out and within the organization? What is the accepted churn rate, what is the balance between formal and informal recruitment processes and why do people leave the business?

• Generative: To what extent does the organization understand and drive its capability to innovate and learn? Do individuals feel that they are empowered to develop themselves? To what extent is knowledge shared between individuals and what infrastructure exists to facilitate the sharing of knowledge?

One danger in this type of culture model is that it might be viewed as a prescriptive paradigm. This in itself runs counter to the underlying idea of cultural definition and analysis. Culture is dynamic and unpredictable, hence dissecting an organization at any time, region or level will produce a range of varying ideas and themes, some of which align while others conflict. Any cultural analysis can only offer a subjective snapshot and should never be treated as the definitive model of an organization's style of interaction.

However, the purpose of the analysis is not just to understand the culture but to develop a multi-perspective map and to understand how the culture is perceived by the various elements within a business.

Table 7.4. Culture audit matrix

Cultural factor	Directors	Senior managers	Line managers	Process operators
Artefacts
Beliefs
Control
Discourse
Energy
Flow
Generative

Table 7.4 shows the cultural model mapped against the hierarchical levels within an organization. In this case, the matrix might highlight potential issues:

• To what extent is there culture blindness between the various layers within the business? Does one layer believe that certain behaviours are natural while another group feels that an alternative set of norms is in place? One example might be that the directors and seniors managers believe that learning is encouraged at all levels while line managers and process operators feel they do not get the opportunity to develop their competencies.

• The extent to which there is a cultural paradox. For example, directors advocate cross-team migration to encourage knowledge flow across the business. However, from a control perspective, they operate a highly centralized system where all internal transfer must be signed off at senior management level. This creates a "gate" that inhibits internal movement because people are wary of requesting a transfer in case their current manager sees it as a reflection on their ability to retain staff.

Trying to gather information on culture is difficult because it is intangible and subjective. If the goal is to gather descriptive information then that is relatively easy. All the respondent needs to do is outline the world as they see it. You can then undertake a comparative analysis to identify potential mismatches or inconsistencies.

However, it becomes harder if you are trying to encourage participants to offer an evaluative comment on the culture. It will be difficult for people to say if anything is good or bad because the response will be biased by the culture in which they exist. And they will often be least able to diagnose the culture in which they operate. However, it is possible to draw objective data from a subjective position through comparative measures. It is difficult to ask someone to describe a sound or picture. However, asking them to describe it in relation to another sound or colour will make life easier.

Personal bias

As part of any diagnosis process, it is important to map your own cultural bias. All people have schema, or maps, that drive both the thoughts they have and the actions they take. In understanding this, you must try to calibrate your own cultural schema. You do this by calibrating your schematic view against a range of alternative views. For example, you might ask yourself the question: When are organizations most effective? When financial control is: (1) held at the most senior level; (2) devolved to the lowest level.

Once your cultural bias has been mapped (Fig. 7.7), then you can take it into account when developing the client's map. For example, if you naturally orientated towards the individualistic style of control then some organizations might appear to be excessively autocratic and vice versa. This can never be calibrated in a truly scientific way as it is built upon a subjective precept. However, if you have a clear view of your schematic map, then it can help to temper how your opinions are formed about the client organization.

Cultural diversity

In any change, the level of cultural diversity within an organization will be significant. What seems natural to a white Anglo-Saxon male might appear as rude to an Asian female; what might appear to be a natural action for a Japanese businessman might feel uncomfortable to an American. Cultural diversity is an everyday issue as cultural differences are found in coffee rooms around the world. Whereas culture was once broken simply into blue- or white-collar, now no two cultures will be the same since all organizations are made up from a complex mix of people from different backgrounds. This can emerge as a significant problem when companies try to effect large-scale change. Consider the following example of problems associated with a global merger:

A potentially damaging clash of cultures is brewing among executives at the newly merged oil giant BP Amoco just a month after the deal was approved. British executives fear their new US counterparts do not share their concern about corporate expenses, according to a senior source at the conglomerate. Attention has focused on the retention of a corporate jet by the American chairman, the costs of last month's board meeting in London, and the use of Concorde by US executives. There is increasing irritation at every level in the company and a feeling that this is totally inconsistent with the culture of BP.

—(Cracknell, 1999)

Cultural diversity can cause major problems within a company that has an inherent and embedded dislike for change and variety. However, an organization that welcomes the richness of diversity can build on this variety to enhance its ability to sell and operate in diverse global markets.

Your challenge is first of all to understand the make-up of the cultural mix within the client organization and second to manage the engagement within this bias. In trying to understand these issues, there are two main areas to consider, the "intra" and "inter" cultural factors.

An intra-cultural mix is where an organization is constructed using people from different geographical, religious or ethnic backgrounds. As this internal mix changes so the overt and covert rules that drive and underpin the organization are constantly being challenged, sometimes in horrific ways. Consider the case of the US oil company that set up a drilling operation on an island in the Pacific using local labour. Within a week all the foremen were found lined up on the floor with their throats cut. It turned out that hiring younger people as foremen to supervise older workers was not acceptable in a society where age indicated status (Economist, 1984). The absorption of people from different cultural backgrounds is fraught with problems and you must be alert to two things: the mix ratio and the extent to which the diversity is openly accepted. If the mix ratio is one where there is a predominance of one cultural group and the others are in the minority then there are issues held in check by the majority group. This leads to the second point, the extent to which the diversity of cultural drivers is discussible within the business. Is it OK to talk about the different cultural beliefs and ideas or are they repressed by the dominant cultural force? Unless you are able to map and manage the intra-cultural dynamics, there is a risk that they will be wasting both your and your client's time and money.

The inter-cultural mix is considered at the point of inter-connection between the business units. This may be at the level of a long-term international relationship, the development of a joint venture or teams within the same company operating from different continents. When two culturally diverse groups meet and work together, the shear difference in values, beliefs and accepted work practices can cause chaos and in some cases result in the cancellation of a multi-million pound contract. Consider the case of the American firm that purchased a textile machinery company in the UK as a bridgehead into Europe. The American management team was unhappy with the idea that tea breaks in the UK could take up to half an hour as each worker brewed his or her own tea. To cut down the waste time, the American team installed a tea machine. As a result, the local workers boycotted the company and it finally went out of business (Stessin, 1979). This highlights the problem of one group attempting to work with another. Although the ideal approach is always focused on a collaborative model, often the relationship becomes embedded in competitive game playing as each side tries to assert its own cultural schema over the other.

The inter and intra cultural mix and degree of openness must be mapped before attempting any type of change. If the idea that all change involves people is accepted and all people are critically influenced by their cultural upbringing then clearly, the "total" cultural source of the target audience must be understood in relation to the desired outcome and the delivery process. So in using the cultural model outlined above it might make sense to undertake the same diagnostic process but using the cultural groups as the comparitor. The first step will be to identify the major cultural groups that make up the organization. This might be by gender, religion, race, etc. Once understood, each of these groups is mapped against the six cultural factors (artefacts, beliefs, control, discourse, flow and generative). The result will start to indicate what cultural disruption might occur as a result of the change and where any barriers might surface.

Only the foolish consultant ignores the impact of culture. Just consider the spate of corporate mergers that go through trauma or indeed fail simply because their different cultures are deemed to be incompatible; the way that an entrenched culture will resist any form of action by people from outside the organization; and the significant differences that exist between profit and not-for-profit sectors. As the consultant managing any type of change, you must ensure that you take sufficient time and space to understand your client's culture.

Back pocket question Do I understand the deep cultural factors that might affect the engagement?