6-Step Culture Transformation Roadmap
The road to a strong culture needs a change management roadmap that carries the leadership’s resolve toward it. Transforming an organization’s culture can be a daunting task; where to start, what to do, and how to track the process?
Questions like this can be answered by a good organizational culture change roadmap for a successful journey. As the saying goes.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
In my experience of leading change roadmaps for corporations, I developed a step-by-step culture change program that began by helping organizations understand what transformation mapping is, why have a plan, and how to navigate their journey.
Hence, in this article, I will outline the six steps to give an overview of such a roadmap for organizational change to corporate leaders. However, it is important to notice that culture transformation is always an ongoing process that requires consistent attention also beyond implementation.
Just like maintaining and nurturing a flourishing environment, a strong culture needs continuous reinforcement through the right behaviors and organizational markers described in the following change roadmap.
The Transformation Roadmap
Step 1: Commitment to the Change Journey
The first step is to ensure that top management is on board with the change journey without exceptions. This step involves
a deep dive into the ‘reason why’ for embarking on the transformation journey
identifying high-level current cultural issues
defining the expected outcomes
setting a rough outline of the journey
In this step, management has to commit to the required engagement as sponsors and role models for this cultural transformation.
Step 2: Create the Company’s Purpose, Goals, Strategies, and Desired Behaviors
The second step is to define or confirm the company's purpose, clearly defined and measurable goals, and the strategies to achieve those goals.
Within this step, the top leadership team should define the desired and required behaviors that will help bring the company’s purpose alive and achieve the strategic goals.
It is important to operationalize behaviors, and make them tangible and observable, e.g.:
We take clear and timely decisions inclusively, in the best interest of the total company. Clear means in writing, making sure the audience has understood. Timely means adhering to the set due dates. Total company means enterprise over silo.
In conflict situations, we pause and reflect.
We nurture stakeholder relationships through at least one 1-on-1 meeting per month.
Step 3: Assessing the Culture Gap
In assessing the need for organizational change, the gap between the current and desired culture needs to be examined and made visible for the organization to create urgency for action.
Closing this gap is in service of achieving the company’s strategic goals which needs to be communicated.
Using culture diagnostics such as the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI), the organization can make culture tangible and accessible because these tools provide a common language to talk about something that was blurry and intangible before.
Identifying and working on the cultural gap thus becomes normalized as an important business issue to tackle.
This step provides an objective analysis of the organization’s areas of improvement, such as systems and processes as well as behavioral and interactional patterns, cultural proponents, cues, metaphors, language, and communication.
Knowledge of what has to change helps in designing the culture change program, roadmap, and roll-out plan.
Step 4: Business Plan and Culture Transformation Roadmap Must Go Hand in Hand
In this step, the organization should plan the implementation of the cultural journey alongside its business goals.
For example, the organization needs to map out strategic priorities, hot spots (areas of concern), or high-impact divisions, where cultural work will be most impactful and should be applied first or later in the journey (transformation mapping).
Here, both strategic and tactical decisions have to be made to prioritize the implementation sequence, team composition, pace, and development of internal resources to secure sustainable success.
It is essential to closely align the culture transformation roadmap with the business’ purpose and goals to ensure the successful implementation of the program.
Step 5: Measure Success and Communicate Continuously
Communication is critical throughout the culture transformation journey. It is an ongoing change management and continuous improvement best practice that should take place at every level of the organization.
This is not the task of the communication department, even though they can greatly support the effort, but of every leader and employee involved in the journey.
Communication goes beyond words and includes non-verbal communication. It also includes congruence between what is communicated and what is actually done which is an important trust-building element.
Measuring the success of the transformation is essential. Tools like the Organizational Culture Inventory and Leadership Work Styles can be used as collective and individual culture change metrics to start with.
In the long run, it is highly recommended to implement the desired behaviors into the company’s performance review system. This typically represents quite some effort but is ultimately a key measure of how culture is actualized and therefore a success factor.
Step 6: Culture is an Ongoing Effort
Finally, it is crucial to understand that the transformation of cultures cannot be simply executed by any off-the-shelf ‘culture change plans or template’, rather, like any change management and continuous improvement initiative, it is an ongoing effort that requires attention day in and day out, also after the initial implementation phase.
I have noticed that companies are quick to pay for such culture change templates and plans, which only guide an initial implementation, but are limited when it comes to ensuring an ongoing effort. Without continuous commitment, all roadmaps will fail.
When starting a new transformation initiative, the time to reach critical mass depends on the size of the company, the depth and levels of the organization that need to be included, and the breadth of simultaneous implementation efforts committed.
Critical mass means that about thirty percent of the company has been reached by the culture transformation program, and this typically takes around 18 months. I have covered this concept in my article ‘The 30% Rule of Business Culture Change’.
However, having reached critical mass does not mean that all efforts can be stopped, on the contrary, transforming a culture is not a one-time project that can be checked off a to-do list.
The organization needs to continuously reinforce the new culture through role-modeling behaviors, values, communication, training, and recognition, in simple terms Live It!
One excellent tool to stabilize this ongoing effort is to install culture transformation champions whose role is to foster and reinforce the established culture.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this culture roadmap template provides a clear and structured approach to embarking on a culture transformation journey.
It is not the magic wand, however, with the right support, tools, and commitment, organizations can achieve their culture transformation goals and create a magnifying exponential impact on their overall business results as well as their people.