Cultural Transformation

What is Cultural Transformation?

Organizational culture refers to the shared set of values, norms, beliefs, and behaviors that inform the way employees make decisions, interact, and approach their work. It’s the attitudes and behaviors that characterize your organization’s identity and impact its operations.

Cultural transformation involves developing an awareness of your organization’s core values, identifying instances where your business’s strategic goals are not aligned with these values, and crafting actionable steps to communicate and implement change where necessary. In other words, it facilitates a fundamental shift in your workforce’s values and behaviors, aligning these behaviors with your business goals and enhancing overall performance.

Many think cultural transformation requires radical organizational change, but this is not necessarily the case. Cultural transformation is a complex process that needs to be carefully managed for it to succeed. More often, it involves making incremental adjustments to deeply-ingrained work habits, such as leadership approaches, communication styles, and collaboration methods. Habits that, if left unchecked, could result in a misaligned or toxic workplace with disengaged employees, high turnover, and poor financial outcomes.

The Benefits of Cultural Transformation

Cultural transformation, when successful, helps create a more inclusive and innovative environment that increases operational efficiency. It also puts businesses in a better position to navigate challenges such as evolving employee expectations or digital disruption. Successful cultural transformation also has many other benefits for organizations that we will discuss below.

1. Aligns Business Strategy and Execution

Employees who have a clear understanding of why their work matters are more inclined to successfully execute strategic plans for business growth. A strong organizational culture brings the kind of stability that helps businesses withstand crises, adapt to change, and stay relevant in today’s volatile market conditions.

2. Helps to Attract and Retain Top Talent

Workers who feel connected to their organization’s culture are less likely to seek employment elsewhere. Having a vibrant and inclusive workplace culture is, therefore, as important as offering competitive salaries and benefits for attracting and retaining top talent.

3. Improves Flexibility

Cultural change can make an organization more flexible, allowing it to pivot in response to sudden challenges, technological advances, or market disruptions. Building a company culture that values continuous improvement also helps employees accept change more readily and find solutions to problems.

4. Encourages Creativity and Innovation

Taking calculated risks and cultivating a culture of psychological safety go hand in hand with innovation. It allows team members to take risks without the fear of negative consequences. By removing the barriers to an organization’s innovation, employees’ creative potential can be unlocked. This empowers them to voice groundbreaking ideas that can lead to improved processes and a competitive advantage.

5. Increases Employee Engagement

A transformed culture can create a positive work environment that makes employees feel valued, empowered, and heard. It can also promote transparency and inclusivity, which can boost employee morale and engagement. More engaged employees tend to be more motivated and productive, making them eager to contribute to organizational success.

6. Improves Collaboration

Cultural transformation can foster a sense of community by breaking down silos. This new workplace design can make employees more willing to support each other, share knowledge, and drive better overall business outcomes.

7. Boosts Customer Satisfaction

A positive workplace culture often has a knock-on effect. It creates more engaged employees who often deliver higher-quality services. This increases customer loyalty and trust, which, in turn, leads to better customer experiences.

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Keller's Approach to Cultural Transformation

Cultural transformation isn’t a one-time effort. It’s an iterative process that requires careful planning, implementation, and consistent reinforcement—the success of which hinges on how well change is aligned with strategic objectives. At Keller, we work closely alongside your team to develop a detailed plan to do just that.

Below is a breakdown of how Keller approaches cultural transformation.

Step 1: Assessing the Current Culture

We start the culture transformation journey by gaining insights into your organization’s current state. This involves evaluating existing core values to discern competencies, misalignments, and potential bottlenecks with your organizational goals.

We gather feedback and information on the characteristics of your company culture using employee surveys, interviews, and focus groups. To ensure the information we get is accurate, we help your organization implement communication strategies that help employees understand their feedback will drive meaningful improvements. We also analyze metrics such as employee engagement, turnover rates, and customer satisfaction data.

This information allows us to measure your culture against competitors and industry standards, helping us identify gaps.

Step 2: Defining the Desired Culture

During this step, Keller’s change practitioners collaborate with your leadership team to understand the kind of corporate culture you want to create. We then help align it with your organization’s mission, direction, and strategic objectives.

We also assist your senior leaders and other key stakeholders in understanding their role in the transition and developing a shared interpretation of success. This interpretation includes the reason for changing the corporate culture and the benefits and objectives of the new culture. By defining these aspects, we create a vision of the ideal state that complements your business strategy.

Step 3: Securing Leadership Support

Getting your leaders on board with the culture transformation initiative is vital to its success. Leaders model the desired behaviors and attitudes, setting an example that encourages others to follow suit. They also allocate resources and funding, laying the groundwork for a successful organizational culture transformation.

We’ve consistently found that effective sponsorship for change is one of the biggest contributors to achieving long-term success. We, therefore, help your leaders understand and fulfill their roles as advocates for change through change management activities, turning them into champions for the cultural transformation. This equips them to make crucial decisions and communicate effectively with their teams to ensure alignment throughout the transformation process.

Step 4: Crafting a Change Management Strategy

As mentioned, cultural transformation is a long-term process that requires a structured approach to ensure change initiatives stay on track. A well-defined change management strategy ensures you allocate sufficient time and resources to important tasks. It also allows you to uncover and address gaps throughout the culture project’s lifecycle.

Keller’s comprehensive approach helps manage the people side of change, creating a detailed plan for culture change at the organizational level. We map out every step in the cultural transformation process, help business leaders delegate roles and responsibilities, and proactively identify and address challenges to create a smooth transition.

Step 5: Adjusting Communication Strategies

This step involves developing a clear, consistent communication plan to convey the purpose of the cultural change, what’s changing, and how it will affect teams. This is necessary because cultural elements are often deeply embedded in employee habits and behaviors. Effective communications can showcase the benefits of implementing the change, which can convince employees to make adjustments.

Therefore, the goal of designing effective communication strategies for cultural transformation is to create informed, engaged employees who understand why the cultural shift is happening and see pathways to participate.

To actively involve employees in the transformation process, we help your organization establish forums such as workshops, cross-functional groups, and town halls that encourage feedback. This builds inclusivity and trust as it gives employees a platform to openly voice their concerns and ask questions.

Step 6: Capability Building and Training

A successful transformation requires equipping your employees and leadership team with the necessary tools, resources, and knowledge to adjust their attitudes, mindsets, and behaviors.

At Keller, we introduce training programs and workshops for employees to help them develop the skills they need to carry forward the cultural change. We also provide executive coaching to ensure leaders are prepared for making decisions, communicating effectively, and providing feedback to their peers.

Step 7: Integrating Systems and Processes

Organizational processes and systems influence the way people work and are impacted during a cultural transformation. These elements must, therefore, be aligned with the desired culture to support the new behaviors and values, otherwise they can undermine progress and create resistance.

To help overhaul your organization’s systems, Keller performs an audit of existing business and HR practices such as hiring and onboarding processes, recognition programs, and performance reviews. We also evaluate whether your current tech platforms (e.g., internal social networks, collaboration tools) support cultural goals. Finally, we help make structural adjustments to support the new way of working.

Step 8: Measuring Success

For culture transformation to take effect, change practitioners must regularly measure progress and make course corrections to achieve the desired results. They should also celebrate teams and individual employees who exemplify the desired culture to motivate others and embed lasting behavior changes.

One way Keller does this is through data tracking, which allows us to monitor cultural progress against baseline metrics that we identify at the outset of the engagement. These metrics fall under three levels of performance—individual performance, organizational performance, and change management performance. This allows us to easily identify risks and opportunities throughout the change process and adapt our approach to increase the likelihood of success at these levels.

Another way is by conducting regular feedback assessments to acquire valuable insights into employee sentiment and gather new ideas for continuous improvement.

9. Reinforcing the Change

The last step in the transformation process is to ensure the new culture becomes permanently ingrained in your organization. This requires consistent effort to reinforce the change and realize its full intended benefits over time. Without this reinforcement, HR teams and other employees might only focus on certain aspects of the change initiative or forget about the new practices entirely.

To ensure we create a resilient, adaptable culture that can evolve with market dynamics, strategic shifts, and leadership changes over time, Keller offers ongoing support to your company through long-term coaching and counsel. This ensures you maintain momentum and helps address challenges as they arise. We also identify and appoint champions throughout your organization who can keep the new cultural ethos alive, even after we conclude the formal transformation program. Finally, we introduce cultural values into the executive onboarding process, ensuring continuity during leadership transitions.

Successful Cultural Transformation with Keller

A culture transformation can have many benefits, including fostering innovation, empowering employees, and aligning the workforce with business goals. However, changing the core values, attitudes, and habits of an entire organization is no easy task. To ensure a successful implementation, you need commitment and a structured approach to change management that can address human behaviors effectively.

Keller’s research-based methodology and continued study of the field have earned us a lasting reputation as frontrunners in change success. With our structured and repeatable change strategy, we can support and guide your organization through a culture transformation and succeed with organizational change.

Contact Keller today and allow us to assist you on your culture transformation journey.