How To Change Organizational Culture

How do you change organizational culture? Welcome to Hero TV today. I’m Nate Woodbury this is Sydne Jacques, she’s definitely the hero of this episode. She’s going to teach us all about that. Hey everybody it’s Sydne Jacques. Today we are going to talk about how to change an organizational culture. It’s a big job but you can do it. The first thing is, you have to be able to have a pulse on the people to be able to know when things need to change. So hopefully, as a leader, you have established what you want your culture to be like. You need to be intentional and think about what I want it to feel like? what I want people to be like? how do I really want people to work together? and represent our company. So you have to be intentional, and you have to think about that and then you have to have different ways to really keep a pulse on what’s going on. Maybe it’s through interviewing your employees, maybe it’s through interviewing your client to see what culture your employees are taking out to the clients that they work with. Sometimes we use online surveys. It’s real simple for people to just fill out an online survey and they can be anonymous. There’s different things that you can do. One of my favorites is we have a two-question survey and actually today, it’s fascinating. We passed out a piece of paper, has two questions on it. The first question is, what is working really well right now? And the second question is, what should we be doing different? And it’s an opportunity for employees to not have to talk in front of everybody. I have to put their name on it but to just pull it out and tell us, what’s working really well right now? But what do they think needs to change? And so as we get that feedback then we begin to understand, okay these are some of the things that we should focus on and maybe these are areas where we should, be changing our culture. So I grew up on a farm in Montana and every year we like to take our kids back to Montana. Just beautiful up there. So one year we were up there. My son was about five years old so we’re driving on the country roads, I’m close to where I grew up and so my five-year-old, my son, he says, hey how come dad is usually the driver of the van except when we’re in Montana? and then mom drives everywhere. So my husband just said to him, well because mom grew up on the farm she knows all of these country roads it just makes more sense for her to drive because this is where she grew up with Grandma and Grandpa. And it was one of those times when it clicks and he can just almost hear the gears in his brain going and he’s like, wait a minute Grandma and Grandpa are her mom and dad? And he said yeah and we kind of laughed because the connection was made. But that’s not the end of it. His next phrase was even funnier. After that he said, hey wait that’s not fair! She got way better parents than we did. So unfortunately for my kids that’s true. I got way better parents than they did. But I like to share that story because there are a few things in life that we don’t get to choose. Who our parents are, who gives birth to us, that’s one of them. But ultimately, there’s so many things that we can choose and as a leader of an organization, you get to choose what your culture is. So I’ve put together a way that I can share with you how to do this. I really like to create models from the experiences that I have so that I can put them step by step, being an engineer to help you be able to take this and have a better organization. In this case by changing your culture. So let’s look at the model. You want to change your culture these are the steps that we need to take. The first thing is, you do need to be intentional about it. You have to figure out what kind of, what kind of a culture do you want to have at your company? and if it’s not exactly the way you want it, then you need to identify what is it that’s not quite right that you want to change? And in doing that, you have to have a really clear message about what it is. Is it that people are to wax and they’re coming and going and you want that a little bit tighter? or is it that you want more open communication and you want to find new ways to do that? You have to figure out what is the message that you want to share with your employees in orders to start the change in your culture. After you do that, then you have to be really clear, why do I want to change this? Is this going to just benefit me? will it benefit everyone? will it benefit our customers? You have to be clear about why you’re doing this because that helps you to bring the passion to it. Who do you want to share this with? is this a message that you want to share maybe just with your management team? maybe with all of your supervisors? or is this a message that you’re going to share to all of your employees? Those are the things that you need to figure out before you can put this model into place. After you figure out what your message is, why it’s important, and who you’re going to share it with, the next step is you need to figure out how to spend time with them. So probably the first thing that you think of is let’s call a meeting then we can spend time together. Well, that is one way that we can spend time together but we can also send our messages out through our newsletters . Again the same principles apply whether you’re trying to influence internally within your team, your culture, or externally the culture you create with your clients. So you can use your newsletter to share this important message that’s very clear. You could also use emails. You could use your website, you could use a blog, you could use social media to spend time in two different ways to share this message. So spending time is so important and you’re going to need to share it more than once just like the old adage that you know, as consumers and they say that it takes seven exposures before we’re willing to buy a product or a service. You’re going to have to have multiple ways that you spend time in order to really get your clear message across. And then you have to remember to ask. This stands for, what’s in it for me? So if I’m an employee and you’re asking me to change something in order to change the culture, I’m going to be asking that consciously or subconsciously, I want to now, what’s in this for me? So you need to think far enough ahead that you’re sharing that with them. And then what you’re going to do is you’re literally going to teach them how to think. How do you want them to think about this message? and what is a specific challenge that you want them to take? So as we look at this and try and figure out, how to change our culture I just want to share with you where this model came from because the same principles apply, we can use it externally with our clients that we can change the culture that we have with our clients we can also use the same principles internally. So I have worked for many years as a consultant. I have an engineering firm and I decided that I really wanted to start to provide training. Well nobody knew me as a trainer or a speaker they knew me as this person with an engineering firm. So what I did was, I developed a very clear message. My clear message was that we provide training and that we have a four-hour workshop called bridging the gaps where we focus on the gaps of communication, engagement, and generations. So I have these clients many that I’ve worked with for multiple years and I thought I worked with them long enough that I know that this should be a good fit for them. So what I did was, I set up some appointments to go visit with some of my clients. So I went to visit the public works director of one of the cities that I’ve done a lot of work for and he was nice enough to accommodate my appointment and we sat down and I had one of my project managers with me and we just chatted about the work that we’ve done for him that year and what work was coming up next year that you know we might be eligible to go after. And then I just said to him, I said, now you know our company for the work that we do for our engineering firm and we really enjoyed the relationship that we’ve had with you in the past but one thing you probably don’t know is that we’ve launched a new division in our company. Okay so I have to tell you, my project manager who is sitting next to me kind of looked at me like, what we launched a new division? And yeah I launched it right now when I had the idea. We launched a new division in our company specifically to provide training for our clients. And in our training, we focus on communication skills and we have a four hour training called bridging the gaps, where we focus on communication engagement and generation gaps. And so I showed him the flier and he looked at it and he asked some questions and I just said, you know we have this workshop coming up in Salt Lake I’d love it if you wanted to just send a few of your people to attend our workshop. So he looked at it and then he said to me, well I had 35 people on my staff so why would I want to just send a few people to your workshop? I want you to come in and train everyone. Well, this is fantastic news. This is great. So we got our calendars out we set up the date and I went to about two weeks later I went to that office and I had the opportunity to train all of his staff. This is the important part. He stood up in front of his whole staff and this is what he said, now all of you know, most of you know Sydne. She’s done a lot of work for us and her firm has done a lot of work for us over the years and we really enjoyed that but what you probably don’t know is they have launched a new division in their company to provide training, specifically communications training and training on bridging the gap. As I was driving home that day I thought, how cool is that? I literally taught him how I wanted him to think about me and about our company. So look at the steps. I was very intentional, I had a very clear message that I wanted to share, I knew why because I wanted to launch this new division, I knew who I wanted to talk to. He was a client, we had a trust and a good relationship and I knew he had people that could probably use training. To spend time with him in that situation I had the opportunity to be face to face. And the what’s in it for me, I know having worked with these technical people all these years, that almost all of them could use a little help in their communications training. And if they were better communicators and they were more engaged that would help him as the public works director to have more efficiency on his staff. And so then the next part teach them how to think, this is what really clicked in this situation is I was able to literally teach him how to think that he knew and he trusted our services in the past but now we have a new division. I taught him how to think that, he stood up and said that to all of his employees. And then I gave him a specific challenge that this is the training and it would be a great training and he accepted that challenge. So as you think about how to change culture whether it’s in your organization or the culture that you have with your clients, think about this model and think about the ways that it can be applied. The very last piece of this is that, I believe that you can change your personal brand. Are you even intentional about it? As I’ve given speeches and I’ve talked to people, I have so many people especially my engineers and contractors that, say I never thought about that I have a personal brand but yes you do and the way that I like to challenge you to do this is to think of three words that you would like people to use to describe you. My words are happy, high energy, and value adder. Okay, more than three words. But you get the meaning. Everywhere I go, I want people to know that I’m happy, I love what I’m doing, I love life, I love meeting new people, I’m high energy, I will never be the one in the room the dregs the energy that people don’t want to be around. I’m going to bring the positive energy, I’m going to bring joy to your team, to your project, your event. And then the third one is I add value in any way I can. Whether you’re paying for me are not paying for it I’m going to bring you content and bring you value that will help you to be better. So what are your three words? how do you want people to describe you? I was having lunch with the client one day and he told me about two different project managers that he was working with. They were contractors. He described one as a bulldog. He said, he just is always in my face meeting things it just literally won’t ever let me go. I just feel like he’s a bulldog that’s just attached to me. And he said the other project manner that were working with on a different project he said, I would call him the problem-solver. I was so excited to know he was coming to our job because whenever there’s a problem I know he can figure it out. He just has a way of working with people, working with solutions and I drove home that day thinking Bulldog? problem solver. How would he describe me? Hopefully he would describe me as happy, high-energy, and a value adder. Think of your three words and figure out how you can change your culture today. Thanks so much for watching Hero TV today and thanks to Sydne for everything you shared in this video. Got a lot of details and information about Sydney and other things in the description below. Be sure to subscribe, likes always help us out. And remember to live on purpose, make a difference, and be the hero!