What is an organic culture? One that changes naturally, using the energy of the people to choose, commit, and follow through on change. In organic cultures, cultural change is woven into daily activities. Responsibility for growing, modeling, and teaching the company’s culture belongs to everyone. In organic cultures, leadership creates the space for it to root, provides nurturing resources to strengthen it, and ensures it receives frequent sunlight, visibility, and importance.

Below are the 10 steps to a Culture Tune Up^TM that can lead to creating an organic culture. In the future, I will provide more detail about each one.

1.Commit to the Journey

A leader, at any level in an organization, can jumpstart cultural change, if he or she chooses. It isn’t particularly hard, but it does take courage. For 99% of leaders, this is new territory. Although the general direction isn’t hard to visualize and the process is straight forward, the journey itself will require letting go of control, to create power. One must trust in the process and in the hidden talents of people. (BTW, at another time, I will post what the non-leader can do to plant seeds and cultivate miniature plots of blossoming change.)

2. Plan

Neither individuals nor groups can make intelligent decisions without a foundation of facts. There are many variables of culture that affect revenue, costs, profits, employee loyalty, customer satisfaction, rate of return, and shareholders’ value. The idea is to collect data within your organization (team, group, division, function, enterprise) on these cultural variables to form a baseline, a starting point, for initiating improvement (more on the variables later).

3. Gather Facts

Initially, trust is an issue. Leaders have both the ability to reward and punish. No matter how pure your intentions, some people will be cautious with their answers unless you safeguard their anonymity. The best way to do this is through a third party, like Engaging Change^TM, who will conduct the survey and will conceal individual identities.

4. Accept, without Judgment, the Results

Typically, people higher up in the organization have a more favorable view of the culture than others, and equally so, the higher ups are unconscious of the difference. I call it the halo effect, because it affects those up in the clouds. There are many reasons for this phenomenon, but they don’t matter much. What does matter is your willingness to be open and honest with the results. It’s a sign of character to receive less-than-excellent news, without taking it personally. Culture is shared values and beliefs. You are just one person, at one moment in time. You are not the numbers. You will be greatly admired for moving forward with a positive attitude, and will never be trusted again if you choose to cover up what you don’t like to hear.

5. Slice and Dice for Insight

Cultural variables are interdependent, because an organization is a fruit salad of beliefs, systems, structures, attitudes, capabilities, etc. You yourself or with the help of your survey company will find interesting relationships in the data. The previously mentioned phenomenon: the halo effect for those in the clouds is one such insight. Looking at what’s strong, what’s weak, the aggregates and details, what track together and what don’t, all are useful patterns and relationships. Of course, be careful, it’s only one moment in time. Future surveys and changes over time will add knowledge and understanding.

6. Reflect and Maintain Perspective

There’s a saying, “if you want to know what you use to think, look around yourself now.” Past decisions and events have much to do with where you are now. In addition, how industries formed and firms competed may no longer be effective, and your culture reflects what was, and gives you an opportunity to imagine what your customers will want you to be in the future, how you will compete, and what cultural attributes will best support the future. For example, most companies didn’t become successful by being creative and flexible, but most need those cultures if they are going to survive. So keep this in mind, your company wouldn’t exist today if your culture didn’t support how you did work and competed in the past. It made sense, now it makes sense to be different.

7. Share

In organically changing cultures, everyone has responsibility for making things better. To make intelligent decisions, everyone needs the data. Before distributing the data, it doesn’t hurt to frame the discussion for everyone: be open, it is what it is, it must have worked in the past or we wouldn’t be here, we own it, the data is feedback for us to grow and make things better.

8. Trust Group Wisdom

As a leader, you don’t get to choose what’s most important to change in an organic culture. (You are responsible, however, for some areas such as vision.) Remember “giving up control to gain power”? Here is where the rubber hits the road. You have to go with people’s energy. What really annoys or excites people? Most likely their choice isn’t your choice, because you live in different neighborhoods. Don’t worry, your top priority will become their top priority after they pick a few low hanging fruit. After tasting the sweetness of success, their confidence and capabilities will expand, and tackling the harder, bigger stuff will bear more fruit for everyone.

9. Allocate Resources

Change won’t happen unless you treat cultural change like a project. People will need resources (time mostly) to accomplish activities. Tap into people’s energy and excitement about making the company better and organize them with a plan. Assign tasks and dates, track progress weekly, add resources to bottle necks…Do what it takes to make significant, sustainable change. Don’t cover problems with drop cloths and hope they go away (hope is not a strategy). Resolve the problem permanently. Here’s why. One less problem that sucks people’s time and energy is more time and energy available for fixing the next problem. This becomes a capacity and process improvement machine. The self-improvement machine is the power that comes from the giving up of control.

10. Celebrate!!!

There’s a saying, “water what you want to grow.” All successes, large and small, deserve appreciation, celebration. Feel good about doing good, and more good things will happen.

11. ...Keep Going, and Going, and Going…

I bet you math lovers noticed that I said 10 Steps, but now I’m at number 11. The 10 steps are for jumpstarting cultural change. A naturally changing organization never stops evolving. Once everyone learns to identify strengths and weakness, prioritize what to improve, and enjoys the fruits of success, there’s next season, and the next, and so on. Organic cultures are inquisitive, creative, adaptive, self-directed, personally- responsible organisms. The process to jumpstart the process, teaches the process, and everyone changes themselves and the nature of the organization in the process.

Keywords: corporate culture, business culture, engaging change, transformational leadership, change leadership, culture tune up^tm

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com