Here is an excerpt from an article written by Alexander DiLeonardo, David Mendelsohn, Nikil Selvam, and Alexandra Wood for the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, check out others, learn more about the firm, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.
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Get focused
For a few years, the manufacturer had tried with limited success to implement cultural changes across a key region’s 7,000-strong workforce—for example, by promoting behaviors it hoped would break down silos, empower and motivate frontline workers, and bolster performance. Now the CEO wanted a fresh start. An assessment highlighted places where the company’s organizational health was poor or needed strengthening. From these areas, senior leaders focused on three management practices: operational discipline, inspirational forms of leadership, and the use of rewards and recognition to better motivate employees.
Undifferentiated approaches to change that don’t consider employees’ mindsets will fall flat and may even breed cynicism.
The company then formed a team to translate these broad cultural goals into specific mindsets and behaviors that would both generate the desired organizational outcomes and also help employees better understand how they personally contributed to the improvement. For example, the manufacturer wanted employees to think of operational discipline as everyone’s job. One tangible way to promote this would be to encourage shop-floor operators and supervisors to consciously review the company’s “golden rules of safety” before every shift. Likewise, the company sought to instill a mindset of valuing continuous improvement and celebrating small victories. One way of doing this would be to encourage people to speak up immediately when they saw a colleague do something positive (a motivational take on the mantra “if you see something, say something”).
Clear the roadblocks
The team now had a discrete set of behaviors they wanted to encourage. But they knew that to do so effectively, they needed to meet people where they were—they couldn’t simply tell people to change. The team needed to address any mindsets or beliefs that could act as barriers. Lessons from organizational psychology and behavioral science helped identify a range of potential roadblocks, and an assessment survey of employees and subsequent analysis to spot patterns in the data helped the manufacturer isolate the most prevalent roadblocks to tackle. While the roadblocks themselves touched upon several factors (for example, employees’ beliefs about whether a given behavior is part of their job or conflicts with their personal values) the roadblocks broadly fell into three types (exhibit): “I’m not allowed,” “I can’t,” and “I won’t.”
Company leaders quickly saw how roadblocks could prevent employees from adopting beneficial behaviors. For example, the manufacturer had long encouraged supervisors to take “gemba walks”—visits to the shop floor that help spot production issues and encourage useful conversations with frontline workers. Yet the analysis showed that many supervisors didn’t prioritize the walks or make time for them, in part because they thought the culture didn’t truly support them using their time this way and also because they worried they’d be bombarded during the walks by new problems they couldn’t handle.
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Change is hard, and change is intensely personal. When we know what’s expected of us, see how our unique efforts contribute to the whole, and are encouraged to treat change as a personal journey, we are more likely to be energized by the prospect of change than fearful of it. As the manufacturer’s experience suggests, smart combinations of technology, analytics, and behavioral science can help catalyze change at scale in ways that aren’t possible otherwise.