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Home » Business And Finance Articles » Organizational Culture Change Is It Really Worth The Effort

Organizational Culture Change: Is It Really Worth the Effort?

Much has been written about changing organizational culture. It's an exciting topic because of the enormous potential benefits derived from changing an organization's culture. While exciting because of its enormous potential, attempting to change organizational culture can lead to enormous frustration.

It is important to understand how deeply the roots of organizational culture go. Organizational culture is rooted in the shared tacit assumptions of the organization. These tacit beliefs drive behavior throughout the organization.

Edgar Schein believes organizational culture provides members of the organization "stability, consistency, and meaning." The change agent who threatens those three things will surely meet strong resistance.

Schreyoegg, Oechsler, and Waechter (three German researchers) believe organizational culture provides members with a worldview: how to perceive, how to conceptualize, and how to make decisions.

In my book, "Strategic Organizational Change," I offered six reasons for organizational culture's stubborn resistance to change:

1. it is implicit rather than explicit
2. it is woven into everyday practice
3. it leads to uniform thinking and behavior
4. it is historically rooted
5. it guides all decision making
6. it is used to socialize newcomers

The main reason changing organizational culture is so difficult is that it resides in the dark, unexamined recesses of the corporate mind. The unexamined assumptions that make up the organizational culture have not been questioned in years.

We know that most organizational culture change efforts fail. We know that organizational culture changes that succeed only do so after a frustrating uphill-battle against the status quo. We know that powerful organizational members have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

So, my question to you is this: Should an organization spend its limited resources (time, energy, and money) to change the organization's culture? My answer is "yes." Let me explain.

Organizational culture change is necessary to support almost all organizational change efforts (strategic, structural, or process). Organizational change efforts will fail if organizational culture remains fundamentally the same. The effectiveness of organizational change efforts requires embedding improvement strategies in the organizational culture.

Changes in procedures remain superficial and short-lived unless there are fundamental changes in values, ways of thinking, and approaches to problem solving. The resisting forces will simply renew their efforts to re-establish the old status quo.

Cameron and Quinn bluntly state, "The status quo will prevail. We repeat! Without culture change, there is little hope of enduring improvement in organizational performance."

Cameron and Quinn offer the following hints for change agents:

1. Find something easy to change first.
2. Build coalitions of supporters.
3. Set targets for incremental completions.
4. Share information/reduce rumors.
5. Define how results will be measured.
6. Reward desired behaviors.

Organizational cultural change can be slow and frustrating, but the benefits can include dramatically improved organizational performance.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

MLM Training - When to Develop Multiple Streams of Income

I've made millions in network marketing, I've made millions through investments, and I've also lost a lot of money too. Profit from my mistakes and learn how to best invest the money you make in your MLM business.

Network Marketing professionals often ask me how to manage the profits earned from their MLM income.

Can you make more money by diversifying into investments such as stocks, bonds, real estate, etc., and have your money working for you in other areas besides an MLM business? Or would you make more money by really focusing and investing your money back into your MLM business?

There are three items to think about when answering this question for yourself.

A. What else would you do with your time?

B. What else would you do with your money?

C. What else would you do with your attention (definition: the ability or power to concentrate mentally)?

Every investment (stocks, bonds, real estate, your sister's business) requires that you learn about it. And just the learning costs time and attention. And it is the using up of your attention that rarely gets factored into the "diversify your money" advice.

Probably what's most important here is, the greatest amount of money you will ever lose, is that amount you will never make because of misuse of A, B, and C from above.

I was listening to a radio talk show about 10 years ago and the advice given was to "Select the top three stock market sectors based on trends. Put one-third of your investment capital in each. Wait 10 years and you should be wealthy off your passive investments." I was making about 50 thousand dollars a month above my expenses - so I thought, "Why not?"

I chose the following sectors: Health Care, Technology, and Telecommunications. After losing about half of my money I changed to three different sectors. I looked at my portfolio today and I have lost another $11,848.78.

Don't get me wrong; there have been times I've made over $50,000 dollars in the stock market in a day. Fun! And there have been times I've lost $150,000 dollars in a day. Not fun.

In addition to that, I've spent an enormous amount of time on my "passive" investments. Many hours (per week) have gone into "pondering" (wasting item C from above) what the stock market is going to do next. Reading newsletters, magazines, newspapers, watching the stock market news and commentaries on TV. And still my return has been negative.

The only thing that has remained very stable and predictable is my network marketing income. Had I taken the same amount of money, roughly $500,000 and invested it into promoting my MLM home-based business would I have had a greater return? Yes.

So what about the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" philosophy of "Buy assets that produce more income?" Or the more common way it's stated, "Create multiple streams of income?"

As you may know, I created a prospecting tool based on that philosophy where I explain to prospects how wealth is created by investing in assets. (www.mlmbrilliance.com) So I'm very close to this subject.

However, if you listen closely to the way I stated it in the online movie, I say, "So what are assets? Well the most obvious ones are: stocks, bonds, real estate..." Then I say, "...education and businesses." And to that I'm referring to educating yourself about businesses. Whether that be your MLM home-based business or your pinball machine business.

Two common mistakes in making decisions on A, B,and C from above are:

1. Making decisions based on now vs. decisions based on future. Of course you need to pay your bills now. They're screaming at you! But keep in mind what I talk about in Brilliant Compensation - it's not faster (in the long run) to tie your young son's shoes than teaching him how to do it himself. If you tie his shoes for him you silence the screaming urgency, but you're still stuck with the job UNTIL you teach him to tie his own shoes. When you make financial decisions make sure you're looking at the long-term. Residual income that can be generated from an MLM business is sweet.

2. Making decisions based on "could you" instead of what you "will you" do with your time, money or attention. Example: A guy determines that it's a poor use of his time and attention to mow his own yard, so he hires the boy down the street to cut his grass. Now, what does he do with that extra time (A), and the extra attention (B)? He watches TV. Bad choice. When he was making the decision to hire the lawn boy he thought, "It's a waste of my time to mow the grass when I could be doing more important things like building my MLM business." Make sure when you free up any of the three resources you use them wisely.

Summary: My personal opinion is invest your time, money and attention into KNOWING your MLM home-based business and getting really good and profitable at it. Find and study MLM training that is proven and effective, and master it.

Continually reinvest your profits back into your network marketing business by promoting it more, that's where the high return is. When you have a surplus of income, buy a secure investment like Treasury Bills http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/of/ofbasics.htm until you're ready to learn another business FULLY. By business I'm including all investment activities as well. Then focus your time, money and attention (from the surplus only) on knowing THAT business.

From my experience, diversifying my money has done nothing more than dissipated my focus, which has in turn lost a lot of money, time, and attention.