By Vishal Bandi Ratan, Culture coach at CODEX
It is fact that achieving success in organizational culture transformation is a difficult process for the involved stakeholders as many organizations have failed in this aspect. Codex proposes a 3-Phase Framework that helps data leaders and C-suite leaders to achieve successful culture transformation in organizations. This framework focuses on winning over the HiPPOs (Highest earning persons’ opinion) in the organization, who in turn can help in furthering the transformation process.
Most organizations believe that “Data is the new oil.” Still, many of them struggle to create a data-first culture at their workplace. W. Edwards Deming says, “Without data, you are just a person with an opinion”. In present TUNA (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, and Ambiguous) world, opinions cannot help organizations make the right decisions.
Culture — a word that has its own definition according to the organization. Culture starts with “what people do and how they do it.” What people do may not differ dramatically, but high-performing organizations distinguish themselves in how they do it. So, it is essential to have a ‘strong culture’ aligned with organization values and mission. In simple words, culture is an assimilation of behaviors (what and how), the shared mindsets and beliefs that influence how people in an organization behave. A recent survey of Chief Data Officers by Gartner outlines that data leaders often face a major roadblock while enabling data-driven culture. People show sheer resistance to adopt a data-first approach for solving real-time business problems from a data perspective lens like acclimatizing to data literacy, opening their minds for data democratization & data monetization.
McKinsey says that 1 out of 3 culture transformations fail due to a lack of awareness on “how to handle culture change.” The primary focus of this article is how can a data leader plan, approach, and carry through culture transformation. To simplify culture transformation, we divided it into three phases: 1) Culture Discovery; 2) Culture Change; and 3) Culture Alignment in CODEX way (Map-Measure-Build-Monitor).
Culture Discovery
In this phase, the data leaders will assess their team and people across the organization who undergo a culture transformation. This phase assists leaders to understand and have a clear idea of what is going on across the organization in terms of people mindsets and their readiness to change. Based on the findings from the initial assessment, the leaders can come up with a roadmap of leading people from current state to the desired state.
Pro Tip: The data leaders must have an open mind set during the assessment process. This behavior helps them to capture maximum findings from the assessment. From the CODEX lens, Map & Measure the current state and plan for the desired state.
Culture Change
This is the most critical phase of the culture transformation journey. Most of the change initiative fails at this state. The data leader must be vigilant, while having an eagle-eye view of the change process.
In this phase, the data leaders must identify ‘Highfliers’ or ‘HiPPOs’ (highest paid person’s opinion) going through the change process. HiPPOs are usually from the upper echelons of the management hierarchy, are highly opinionated and can influence considerable number of people in the organization. Hence, identifying them early on is critical for a successful culture transformation.
Identify them, train them, coach them with best practices of data literacy and then make them achieve a successful transformation. Also, reward them for their dedication to achieving the change. These initial wins are highly crucial as the HiPPOs can easily influence people in the organization. Winning over the HiPPOs can boost confidence among the change impactors and help leaders drill down the change resistances.
Pro Tip: After finding the Highfliers or HiPPOs, a data leader can create few small groups to measure the change impact and effectiveness. From the CODEX lens, Build the substantial culture change with HIPPOs by training and coaching and slowly implementing them across the organization.
Culture Alignment
This phase is all about attaining the desired state. The data leaders can start to accelerate their communication internally and externally about the culture change initiative. These communications will maximize the crew strength for the change process. On the other hand, data leaders can start data democratization and data monetization with the help of HiPPOs and standardize them as a best practice in the organization. Despite all these efforts, resistance can exist in some pockets and may crop up from few people. To address this, leaders must organize motivation meetups, explain the real achieved benefits from the change process, and show them the urgency to change.
Pro Tip: During this change process, data leaders should monitor the organization’s performance with the support of project managers and human resources team. From the CODEX lens, Monitor the change transformation and organization health and find out the impediments to solve and create a high performing organization.
Key Notes
1. Patience and consistency are key for successful transformation. There is no successful change initiative that is achieved overnight.
2. A leader should empathize with all the people, while collaborating and communicating actively during the transformation process. Even well-planned change initiatives fail if a leader does not have these attributes.
3. Match the strategy with culture. A strategy that is at odds with a company’s culture is doomed. Culture trumps strategy every time.
4. Focus on a few critical shifts in behaviors
5. Glorify the strengths of your existing culture and use them to achieve the desired culture.
6. Monitor cultural evolution, business process, critical behaviors, and milestones
Finally, any successful culture transformation can be achieved with the combined efforts of C-Suite leaders, senior & mid-level managers and most importantly, people across the organization. Using this 3-Phase Framework, data leaders can organize, plan, and execute the culture transformation without any hassles.
