Booz & Company has just released the results of a study of culture’s role in enabling organizational change. The co-authors of the report are DeAnne Aguirre, Rutger von Post, and Micah Alpern. To read and/or download the complete report, please click here.
To learn more about Booz & Company, please click here.
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Culture is critically important to business success, according to 84 percent of the more than 2,200 global participants in the 2013 Culture and Change Management Survey. Findings also suggest strong correlations between the success of change programs and whether culture was leveraged in the change process—pointing to the need for a more culture-oriented approach to change. However, there is a clear disparity between the way companies view culture and the way they treat it. Less than half of participants saw their companies effectively managing culture, and more than half said a major cultural overhaul was needed. How can leaders take steps to enrich and more effectively leverage their culture?
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For all the money and effort that go into corporate change initiatives, they have a decidedly mixed success rate. Only about half of transformation initiatives accomplish and sustain their goals, according to a survey on culture and change management by the Katzenbach Center at Booz & Company.
Among the biggest obstacles to successful change are “change fatigue” (which occurs when workers are asked to follow through on too many changes at once) and a lack of the capabilities needed to make major changes last.
Sixty-five percent of survey respondents cited change fatigue, and only about half felt their organization had the capabilities to deliver change. Another problem is the tendency for management to exclude lower- level employees in developing and executing the change plan. The role of culture was a particular focus of the survey. Although 84 percent of all respondents think culture is critically important, a far smaller percentage (less than half) believe their companies do a good job of managing culture. The same respondents who see their companies’ change programs as falling short tend to say that culture isn’t a priority in their companies’ transformation initiatives. The survey points to the need for companies to take a more holistic approach to change and to find ways to work with and within the organization’s culture during change initiatives. This is not to say that culture-enabled transformation removes the need for formal change management processes or techniques. It doesn’t. But it does mean that leaders need to rethink how to drive and sustain change if they want to materially increase the success of their transformation programs.
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Here’s a direct link to the white paper.
DeAnne Aguirre is a San Francisco-based Senior Partner and one of Booz & Company’s foremost organization effectiveness and change leadership experts. In addition to San Francisco, she has been based in the firm’s New York and Sao Paulo, Brazil, offices.
Rutger von Post is a Partner in our New York office and a member of the Organization, Change & Leadership practice, where he has built a differentiated business platform around culture transformation and organizational design and effectiveness in the financial services industry. As head of the Katzenbach Center in North America, Rutger leads our efforts to commercialize intellectual capital on culture and organization across industry practices, as well as authoring his own content, including the strategy+business magazine article Eat Your Peas: A Recipe for Culture Change.
Micah Alpern is a senior associate with Booz & Company based in Chicago and is a member of the Katzenbach Center’s operating team, as well as a contributor to Booz Digital. He is an expert in culture transformation and change management.