Mike and Mark discuss a friend’s stalled technical career. What’s the secret to reinvigorating his career?

Despite manifold examples of failed corporate culture change efforts, there is an example I learned years ago that resonates with me.

In the 70’s, the US Army was having a terribly difficult time with race relations in Germany. We had forces stationed there, and there were many black soldiers, and significant black-white tensions. While I don’ t know what the experts would/did say regarding the reasons, the fact is, there were many incidents of assault and some homicides relating to race among soldiers. The Army was QUITE concerned, obviously - this was the Cold War, and our forces in Germany played a crucial role in helping Europe feel that Soviet bloc tanks weren’t going to come racing through the Fulda Gap and conquer Europe.

The Army did all sorts of training, helping soldiers learn about each other, and to build bridges, and to address soldiers’ root cause feelings of bigotry and hatred and ignorance. LOTS of classes, awareness sessions, sensitivity work. Lots of Organizational Effectiveness specialists working with unit commanders, trying to communicate a different way of thinking about soldiers who were “different” than they were.

It failed miserably. Race relations did not improve appreciably. Assaults, altercations, homicides, etc. all continued. No decline.

You can argue that they didn’t do it right, that if they had done the training “better”, things would have changed. I won’t disagree, but would say that what they tried is notoriously hard, witness modern diversity training you have attended.

Leaving that debate aside, the Army knew what it had tried HAD NOT worked. So, (I believe the impetus for this was a new commander), they changed their approach. Essentially, the Army said, “we’ve tried to change the way you think. We’ve tried the hearts and minds thing. It is not working. We’re going to try something different.”

The Army said, “we may not be able to change what you’re thinking, but we sure know EXACTLY how to change your behavior.” The command in Germany instituted DRACONIAN (relative to previous standards) punishments for ANYTHING even REMOTELY related to poor race relations. Inter-rascial fights were punished SEVERELY. Verbal abuse based on race was punished with loss of rank and courts martial, though no other speech was punished so harshly. Race-related punishments were publicized and repeatedly communicated.

The message was simple: regardless of how you think, we can’t see or change that. We can, however, change waht you do. And we have made it so painful to do these things that you’ll think twice about it.

And almost overnight, the behaviors - which many had seen as the symptom to begin with, stopped.

This story is an example of my beliefs about organizational change. Feel free to knock yourself out trying to change people’s minds. About the only person who has a better than even chance of doing that is someone’s boss, and even then it takes noteworthy communication (persuasion) skills. My recommendation is to not bother with their hearts and minds.

Change their behavior. PERIOD.

In prepping for a presentation I am supposed to give next year, I started thinking about my approach to consulting within large orgs, culture, and manager behavior. So far:

Much has been written corporate cultures and how to change them. There are theories about structural factors (flat or vertical? team-based or individually driven?), and leadership (heroic or quiet, analytical or inspirational), to name just two. And yet, there are always plenty of examples of organizations which attempt to model themselves on these concepts and whose cultures bear no resemblance to what the model proposes.

This is because the culture of an organization is almost exclusively a function of the behaviors of the employees and stakeholders in that organization. These models do create one of many potential pre-requisites for a successful culture, but then they fail. Why? Because they do not change a significant enough percentage of the behaviors in the organization. Most practitioners would agree that even with the best corporate/organizational roll-out of “a new and innovative change program”, if no one changes their day to day behaviors, the “program” will fail (and reduce the chances that the next one will succeed.) Conversely, your employees and stakeholders will know - and perhaps more importantly say out loud - that the culture has changed when people change their behaviors.

This makes the goal of the change agent obvious. THE ONLY WAY to change an organization’s culture is by changing the behaviors of the employees in the organization.

Therefore, managers need a toolbox of skills and activities that will specifically change the behaviors of their teams, whether those “managers are executive leaders, middle managers, or first line supervisors.

More soon…