Jennifer Frahm Collaborations

The word has come down from on-high. The CEO wishes to blog, s/he wants a more collaborative and communicatively oriented organisation (their words, not mine). Command and control is sooo last decade. This decade it’s about dialogue, listening, agility, flexibility, responsiveness, being in touch with each other and the customer, it’s about engagement.

Snowballs chance in hell huh? Probably, but maybe not…

The scenario described above is fairly typical of one of the major culture change initiatives we see today. It’s perhaps a bit more popular at the moment because web 2.0 technology has provided the tools to enable the change in culture. Yet, it is also common knowledge that culture change takes a long time to occur, with some questioning whether you really ever change a culture.

Some argue that culture change initiatives are like multiple layers of corporate wallpaper, scratch the surface and you will see residue of past cultural imprints. The original wall is the ‘culture’ of the organisation. If you really want to change the culture you need structural reform, not the overlaying of more attractive values and behaviours.

The collaborative movement is not new – think Margaret Wheatley,  think Peter Senge, think Chris Argyris and the organisational learning movement. What’s changed is the technology, particularly anything 2.0 is now simple enough, and accessible enough for people to get it.  Before, people needed to have a really high interpersonal competence to achieve this goal of collective dialogue. Now, the norms of social communities online have introduced sharing and providing content as a given.

Bit as evidenced by the  increase in blogs, and discussion groups on the topic of why is it so hard to introduce a collaborative culture, why introducing enterprise software is fraught with challenge, why internal comms teams are struggling with uptake on collaborative tools, it can be argued that this really is just a pretty standard culture change challenge.

To determine the success of the aspiring CEO mentioned in the first paragraph, there’s some questions that need answering.

1) What’s your cultural gap analysis like? How big a leap is it for your organisation to move to its current behaviours to one that acts in a collaborative fashion.

Do a simple test.  Ask each division what the other divisions do. Score the answers on accuracy (eg shared knowledge) and the tone with which the answer is delivered (affective relational issues).

If you are looking at a significant transformation, as opposed to a relatively minor adaptation, then you are going to need to throw a lot of resources at developing a collaborative culture, and there’s a high probability that as CEO, you won’t recognise the benefits within your tenure. Are you up for that? Having said that, never undestimate the power of leveraging small wins.

2) How long as the previous culture thrived or survived?

History matters, and may be attributed to the success of the company. That’s a pretty compelling argument against changing the culture of the organisation.  If the external environment has remained relatively static, managers may need to check in with whether the preferred change is a fad, or ego driven, as opposed to a competitive advantage and aligned with strategy.

3)  What is the technological knowledge like - are your employees comfortable with existing technology?

Companies who have enabled employees to have social networking sites at work are actually in a better position than those who have put up the firewalls. They give non technological minded staff the opportunity to learn new skills and the fundamentals of posting, commenting and sharing in a web 2.0 world

4) What are the HR reward systems – if I share something with another will it be to my detriment or is this recognised in the Performance reviews? 

An interesting example of this came from one of my PhD case studies. The new CEO was intent in introducing a dialogue driven, continuously changing organisation of the Peter Senge type. One of his senior staff made a very expensive mistake with a client. The rest of the employees bayed for the mistake making senior staff members blood, and dismissal. The CEO wouldn’t hear of it, employees needed to be rewarded for taking risks, and acknowledge that mistakes happen. That episode became a very powerful symbol of transformational change.

5) What’s your communication plan for introducing the new culture?

The irony implicit in this, is that you will still require a communications 1.0 approach to introducing a web 2.0 world.  You need to do research on the current attitudes and abilities towards collaborative work? Collaboration means different things to different people (eg cooperation, connection, transactional exchange, or synergy )

6) Have you got an e-change agent?

An e-change agent  is some-one who’s role is to nurture online interactions, support the use of enterprise tools, seed conversations, encourage those who do use the tools and connect with those who don’t. They’ve probably got a lot of experience in change management and can provide content like tools and templates to support the initiatives. Traditionally they have operated out of programme offices, or as community managers.

So how does your organisation stack up?  Curious to know…