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Shelter Chieza Change Management
Recently the micro-sensor of the gate at my) house malfunctioned and I rushed to the closest hardware shop to get a new one. I was in a bit of a hurry and when I entered I was greeted by a shop assistant who seemed to have had a very late night. He took his time to locate the shelf with the sensors, had no clue of the serial numbers and had to confirm with his other colleagues.

By the time he found and took the sensor to the till I had already left due to frustration. I decided to drive a few more kilometres to another hardware.

This time the shop assistant was very helpful, however the till operator was also still learning the ropes of the trade and it took a bit of time to make the purchase.

This experience made me look back to the number of times that I have visited many shops and received this type of service where there is no sense of urgency in the people manning the shops.

It seems that this laid-back culture is becoming the norm. This is a big problem because in my opinion the corporate culture of any organisation is set by its employees, from the shop floor employee right through to management.

Corporate culture is born out of inter-employee interactions and with outsiders. Management have a role to play in setting the psychological tone.

In most instances, poor management will always affect this culture negatively. The best way to enhance a business is to create a positive culture.

Every organisation, despite its area of expertise has its unique set of indigenous cultural norms and values.

These behavioural patterns or expectations consist of an unwritten set of rules that have an immense impact on operations.

Many times, a good manager experiences a lot of challenges in keeping one’s perspective and personal beliefs in a sustained group. There are times when negative effects such as abuse take a toll on individuals.

Restoring proper perspectives and rationale thinking takes understanding and introspection.

Managers ought to strive to get the most from their subordinates.

A positive culture is key to ensuring productivity.

When you focus your energies on chastising individuals or groups for past mistakes, you are unlikely to get results needed in your change of culture.

Transforming a bad corporate culture to a positive one requires a switched on and dedicated manager.

This is critical because a culture shift that is determined and instituted by management is more effective in terms of implementation.

I have seen middle managers sweat it out in efforts to try changing the organisational culture; most of these are often looking for promotions than anything else.

Bad corporate culture can be corrected. It is within the power of each of us to do self introspection. Clear, consistent and constant communication is also a hallmark of maintaining a positive culture.

Everyone should be encouraged to speak up, and ask questions and seek clarification of issues to avoid misunderstandings.

In this kind of environment, employees must have a sense of belonging and involvement. I personally have an open door policy, it makes things easier for those I work with, we achieve more due to these clear cut lines.

However there are some organisations that thrive on a bureaucratic corporate culture. Managers in these organisations create incoherent bureaucratic management actions that end up creating an unhealthy and unhappy work environment that consistently destroys corporate value and disrespects the worth of the individual. Centralising decision making is bad enough.

In most cases bureaucratic managers lack the ability or experience to recognise or understand an entrepreneurial culture.

As a result, their actions tend to destroy not only the culture, but the future of the company as well.

As long as these managers have a say in bureaucratic organisations, they stifle everyone else around them.

Even smartest management practice will fail if the culture isn’t healthy, and the only way to fix a damaged culture is to adopt a habit of listening and responding to employee concerns.

There are times when an organisation finds itself mixed up in a major crisis that spins out of control to a point of revealing a series of events leading up to a mistake.

If you find yourselves in recurring product design defects, a major strategic misreading of a market, then it’s time to wake up and find ways of correcting it.

Major crises don’t just happen, most are the result of multiple mistakes cause by poor corporate culture.

You must now set up ways of detecting mistakes at an early stage.

If you go back in history, there are specific high-profile mistakes that were all different.

In the Enron situation, we can relate accounting illegalities. Kodak also committed strategic market blunders at some point; Ford was involved in design flaws that compromised customer safety.

Mistakes happen, but there must be a culture of dealing with them quickly so they do not cause extensive damage.

Till next week.

May God richly bless you

She can be contacted at [email protected]