I just finished a strategic planning meeting with one of my client organizations. They wanted to know if it is possible to change corporate culture. Interesting question, since I always thought theirs was one that worked for them. Apparently I was wrong because they wanted, as part of their strategic plan, to figure out how to change corporate culture at their company.
We started by exploring how they defined their current corporate culture. I heard words like fast-paced, entrepreneurial, creative…and wondered again why they wanted to change. Then we explored what about this current culture didn’t work. Phrases such as we move too fast, we don’t analyze enough, we make too many mistakes, we band-aid problems came up.
Now I understood. They were attributing the challenges they saw to culture and thus wanted to change it. More on this in future posts, but as a final thought: If you want to figure out how to change corporate culture at your company, first define your current culture. It may be that your corporate culture does not need an overhaul at all.
