By Vincent Marsicano
A culture-led approach to change can increase the speed and success of any change effort. Culture in organizational Change Management is a great supporter for your strategies.
The need for globally-oriented cultural awareness
Change practitioners are now working more than ever across the globe, getting familiar with delocalized organizational models.
This has urged them to study and incorporate culture in organizational Change Management. However, before starting with your strategy, you must be aware of how cultures vary and how they impact the way people work and react to change.
The field of cultural studies was developed by academics in the late 1950s, 60s and 70s, to investigate the forces that participate in the construction of the everyday lives of socially organized people.
Culture shapes our values, power relationships and the way we relate to others in everyday life. Since we live in multicultural societies, knowing what influences other people’s decisions and behaviors and what cultural dimension they belong to can be a game changer in our Change Management strategies.
The three dominating studies on cultural dimensions
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory – 1980
Geert Hofstede’s study is based on empirical evidence and represent the best scheme for comparing cultures, which are classified based on four dimensions, each one with an impact on any Change Management effort:
• Power distance
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Masculinity/femininity
• Individualist/collectivist
GLOBE
The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness knowns as GLOBE Research Program was conceived in 1991.
Project GLOBE describes culture as follows: “Shared motives, values, beliefs, identities, and interpretations or meanings of significant events that result from common experiences of members of collectives that are transmitted across generations”. The nine cultural dimensions that emerged from their study are:
• Performance Orientation
• Assertiveness
• Future Orientation
• Humane Orientation
• Institutional Collectivism
• In-Group Collectivism
• Gender Egalitarianism
• Power Distance
• Uncertainty Avoidance
Trompenaar’s typology
Trompenaar’s model differentiates cultures based on their preferences:
• Universalism vs Particularism
• Individualism vs Communitarianism
• Neutral vs Emotional
• Specific vs Diffuse
• Achievement vs Ascription
• Sequential vs Synchronic
• Internal vs External control
Culture in organizational Change Management to create a customized strategy
Like Change Management, culture is often seen as a luxury among management tools. However, culture is critical to business success, because — as already said in our previous Change Diary — it binds the organization together and permeates every small decision making process, both external and internal.
According to Prosci® and in our own experience, Change Management is most effective when you understand and acknowledge the cultural context of the people impacted by change. The first challenge when we work with different cultures is to recognize their impact; we can’t really see how immersed we are in our own culture until we don’t understand it. The cultural landscape therefore is the canvas on which the change management plans are painted. This is ignored at the practitioners peril.
Understanding culture to deploy organizational Change Management
In its 2016 benchmark report, Prosci® has identified the 6 cultural dimensions that have an impact on Change Management:
• Assertiveness
• Individualism vs Collectivism
• Emotional Expressiveness
• Power Distance
• Performance Orientation
• Uncertainty Avoidance
Know the landscape and assess your cultural spectrum
Before starting with your change initiative, understand the cultural dimension of your impacted people. If your effort is impacting people from different cultures, then take time to understand how they differ and how you can tailor your approach to each one of them. For example, you may need to adapt training and communications to the different cultural settings.
A culture-led approach to change can help increase the speed and success opportunities of any change initiative, because a Change Management strategy tailored to your organization’s culture builds upon rather than works against the cultural background and norms of the people impacted.
What about your spectrum? And how is it different from the one/s you’re managing? Understanding it will help you interact with the impacted groups, knowing how your culture influences your work.
*Dr. Vincent Marsicano serves as a Chief Executive Officer of and Change. He holds Prosci’s Change Management and Train-the-Trainer program certifications. Since joining and Change fifteen years ago, he has been involved in financial and operations management, as well as strategy and innovation. Vincent’s expertise lies in providing clients with change management modelling to improve the measurable impacts in the change process. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) and an MBA at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).
