Soft Skills

When leaders walk the talk

Anil Noronha writes on the way leaders can embrace adaptive ultures and help lead cultural transformation.

Employees and leaders in the present day are a worried lot. In the fast changing business environment, one may wonder how they keep pace trying to understand the constantly changing company culture.

Another company acquired, another merger, more new hiring and much more. What happens to our culture built painstakingly over several years? That will surely take a beating. So how do we overcome these challenges and what should our desired culture be? 

It is important to understand what culture is in the first place and why companies must care about it. A definition commonly used to understand culture is: ‘Culture is a set of shared values and beliefs, developed in response to internal and external stimuli that drive the behaviour of a group of people within an organisation.’ Culture provides people with a common sense of identity and helps them make sense of their work experiences.

Culture can be understood at three levels:

• Artifacts: aspects of culture that can be observed in the daily work environment
• Values: the conscious rules and norms that guide day-to-day behaviour
• Underlying basic beliefs: these are shared assumptions at a sub-conscious level.

A matter of culture

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

Several things may force an organisation to embrace an adaptive culture: external factors such as increased competition, the economy and a range of opportunities; internal factors could include changing strategy to adapt to newer challenges.

A guiding post for leaders to start would be to look at the ‘hard’ aspects of 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 and soft aspects have to co-exist in an organisation.

Guiding principles

It is 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 strategy. Articulating these is the easier part for today’s leaders. It is more difficult to ‘walk’ by practising and living our values and principles that guide our everyday behaviour at work.

Leaders can partner with HR folk who act as gatekeepers; however, the former must lead culture transformation attempts themselves.

One may well ask: 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 or values that for sure will sink your chances of building an adaptive culture.

Adaptive vs. non-adaptive culture

There are several examples of adaptive vs. non- adaptive culture. Non- adaptive cultures include an environment where there is a lack of trust, unaccountability, individual’s rule and playing to the gallery.

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

Adaptive culture celebrates success all the time. It never tolerates poor performance, is proactive in its approach, and is paranoid about being customer-driven. Such a culture empowers people rather than closely monitoring and controlling actions all the time.

Indian culture teaches us to respect elders, and common sense tells us that this is behaviour that needs to be respected. Adaptive culture is all this and much more. The trend of following the leader is definitely not practised, and an atmosphere where everyone is treated with equal respect prevails. A leader then thinks from within his field of meaning. It is a culture in which everyone is a leader and contributes to arrive at a more meaningful solution.

All these softer areas are challenging to manage as they often become difficult to quantify; in fact, this is a reason why lesser attention is paid to these aspects. However, this change management is a risk. Do not get bogged down or fall into the trap of trying to quantify or explain what cannot be measured scientifically.

A good practice will be to try out and change the problem areas and retain what works. Focus on these things and move forward. Work with people who are willing to ride the bus rather than expending energy in trying to explain to those who are sceptical. 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 the change to happen. Finally, everyone has a shared responsibility to get involved, drive and cause change...do not wait for someone else to do it.

It’s vital to remember that culture change is a journey that requires an ongoing commitment. Leaders play the key role in building an adaptive culture where everyone 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, Onward Novell Software (India).

E-mail: anoronha@novell.com