[Peetwo]

#reformcasa

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Via Phil Hurst on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilHurst62/status/1...8500544512

Tony Kern has been to Australia several times including to speak at AAAA’s Convention. What a great initiative it would be to have Tony and Convergent Performance leading the deep, essential reform of CASA.
@M_McCormackMP @SenMcDonald #reformcasa #ausav

ref: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cultural-...ublished=t

Cultural Threat Detection: Business Intelligence for the 21st Century

    Published on May 14, 2020

Tony Kern
Tony Kern
CEO at Convergent Performance, LLC
13 articles

> Winning the Culture Battle
>
> Organizations talk about culture quite a bit, and good organizations care deeply about it. But even the best organizations consistently struggle to fully understand it or even more importantly, harness and control it for their use.
>
> A short trip down the information highway courtesy of our friends (or overseers) at Google provides a taste of the current viewpoint on this topic. Type in “culture trumps…” and hit the search key. In the latest example, it took 0.06 seconds for 1,100,000 results to appear. A few of the highlights:
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> Culture trumps strategy
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> Culture trumps policy
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> Culture trumps leadership
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> Culture trumps training
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> Culture trumps technology
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> Culture trumps everything
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> Seriously? Culture trumps everything. That almost sounds like a Chuck Norris joke. While we don’t believe that culture is the proverbial unstoppable force against which organizational leaders are the opposite of an immovable object, there is little doubt that whatever it is—it’s powerful.
>
> Whatever wars are being waged in your organization between your strategic objectives and your actual outcomes, your culture tips the scales for the winning side.
>
> A McKinsey survey of some 3,000 executives found that two out of three organizational change efforts fail—the majority due to cultural resistance. Recognizing this threat, some organizations seek to first move the culture into alignment with the planned organizational change strategy. These fare somewhat better, but still fail more than 50% of the time. This isn’t because something else trumped culture in these situations. Rather, it’s likely due to the organization being unable to successfully change the culture to align with their new objectives—so they quit trying.
>
> Organizational culture remains one of the most complex and studied issues in modern business and government. There are literally hundreds of studies, journal articles, and books on the subject. It is not our intent to analyze or even review this vast expanse in this short white paper, but one thing is clear. If organizations are able to shape and harness their culture, they will leap miles ahead of their competition to a position where goals that were once thought as BHAG’s—big hairy audacious goals—become achievable.
>
> Dr. Tony Kern and his colleagues at Convergent Performance—a small veteran owned company specializing in human reliability—have worked for over 30 years with private and public organizations, both large and small, to successfully shift and sustain cultural changes. Along the way, they have discovered some new ways to shape this force of nature.
> A Force of (Human) Nature: Wind and Water
>
> To get a full grasp of how culture works inside organizations, we first need to understand the key difference between two terms: organizational climate and organizational culture.
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> Organizational climates are usually temporary (but if they exist for too long, they can become a part of the permanent culture). I like to use wind as a metaphor for climate. The speed and directions change frequently based on many factors like the mood of the boss, new personnel, or even a special demand from a customer. It’s possible, even likely, that you may have multiple climate wind shifts going on inside various parts of your organization at any point in time.
>
> Culture, on the other hand, runs much deeper and is far more powerful, more like a flowing river whose hydraulics pull everything it touches along with its currents. Viewed in this manner, you can clearly see why it is so vital to both understand its flow patterns as well as how you can influence it to change.
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> Both climate and culture are forces of nature—human nature. A human nature that includes resistance to change and suspicion over the personal impact of any potential change. Organizational leaders who understand this and account for it are far more effective with nearly everything they seek to achieve.
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> These wind and water currents blow even the most well intended business strategies and change initiatives off course, but unlike in the physical world where the directions and speeds are obvious, changes in the cultural speed or direction are nearly impossible to detect without the right set of tools and observation techniques. This is what our company specializes in, along with the proven techniques to shift the direction of the currents and harness the power they create. We have documented evidence of the effectiveness of this approach (see attachment) and would be delighted to discuss these with you at your convenience.
>
> Now let’s look at this phenomenon from a slightly different angle and turn to military science to draw some parallels.
> Inside Moves
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> In his seminal essay Principles of War, Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz speaks of two critical needs for victory in battle. The first is economy of effort, which is simply the “judicious exploitation of manpower, materiel and time in relation to the achievement of objectives.” In today’s economic climate, a lean approach is a part of most smart business strategies. Clausewitz’s second principle of relevance is the concentration of force at a decisive point, meaning the application of resources at the point and time of greatest leverage. Unlike his contemporary Jomini, who espoused an “if-then” prescriptive approach, Clausewitz was adamant about preparing front line leaders to operate within the friction and fog of war, a topic every time-stressed organizational leader can relate to. From his perspective, the fluidity of battle requires that the best decisions are made closest to the action by intelligent and situationally aware leaders on the front lines. The parallels for modern organizational culture are obvious. If you don’t know where or when the decisive points of your culture are, you cannot leverage them to your advantage.
>
> The establishment of cultural change and threat detection (CCTD) leverages both Clausewitizian principles. It represents economy of effort through better business intelligence, as well as concentration of force by allowing focus on areas of greatest leverage as identified from within the organization by those closest to the battle. More on this technique in a moment.
> From Here to Where?
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> One of the most difficult questions that arise in any culture change initiative is from what to what?
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> Typically answering the first half of this question requires consultants armed with culture surveys and other instruments to come in and tell you what you probably already have a good feel for. “From what?” is a tough question, but the current state of your organizational culture may be less relevant than you have been led to believe. Truth be told, most culture change efforts are driven by one or more bad events or missed opportunities in your organization’s recent past. Why spend time, energy, and money to study where you no longer want to be? Why expend resources to build data around a past or present you wish to leave behind?
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> When resources are limited (when aren’t they?), you have a choice between studying your current situation or putting your time and energy into the change initiative. If you’ve already made the call for change and you’ve identified a desired end state, put your resources into the change effort. Employing Clausewitz’s economy of effort principle allows organizational leaders to bypass concerns about the past and present and regain a future orientation.
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> How you start this journey is where you can make your first critical mistake.
> What’s the First Rule of Fight Club?
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> Those who have seen the classic Brad Pitt movie from 1999 know the answer to this one is, “Don’t talk about Fight Club.” The same wisdom holds true for any culture change effort. Bobby Kennedy once said that “everyone is for progress, but progress requires change—and change has many enemies.” People naturally resist change. Culture change announcements often result in the old guard grabbing their pitchforks and torches with chants of “kill the outlanders.” So rather than packaging the effort as culture change, which probably mandates overcoming considerable resistance, consider undertaking the change initiative under the flag of continuous improvement or professional development. It’s a subtle but critical difference. So, what’s the first rule of culture change? Don’t talk about culture change.
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> This branding shift from culture change to development/improvement is possible because, typically, continuous improvement and professional development are standard parts of most organizational structures and budgets already. Senior executives will often have these tasks as a part of their formal job descriptions and are more likely to support a less controversial approach.
>
> Now let’s go back to the concepts of wind and water, but for simplification we will just use wind to speak about the movements of both culture and climate.
> Cultural Winds
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> Detecting your present culture directions and speeds are vital to any and all improvement efforts. Towards this end, lets describe a few indicators you should be aware of.
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> Cultural Tailwinds. Culture is aligned with your strategy or change effort. The time is right.
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> Cultural Headwinds. Culture is resisting your strategy or change effort. There is an immediate need to work the culture prior to any significant change initiatives or negative outcomes occur.
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> Cultural Crosswinds. Cultural misalignment between levels or functional areas of your organization are inhibiting your strategy. Further investigation is needed on what is inhibiting smooth cross-functional collaboration.
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> Cultural Wind Shear. Opposing cultures are active in your organization causing negative disruption and impacting performance.
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> Cultural Microburst. There is a dangerous development within your culture that demands immediate attention.
> How it Works
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> A combination of data-driven analysis has been developed to allow organizational leaders to identify and utilize cultural direction to their benefit.
> Three Primary Sources of Culture Data
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> Three sources of data are used to identify changes in the organizational climate and culture. They are woven into an analytical tool that detects significant shifts.
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>    Numbers – financial data, safety and quality statistics, HR data on engagement, missed work, sick days, retention. There is a need to rack, stack, track, and assign values to these datasets. What represents a significant shift in each?
>    Cultural Archetypes – specifically identified, tasked, and trained to look at cultural changes with granularity. Their observations and insights receive a special weighting factor, dependent upon several variables.
>    Entire workforce on a routine basis – single question responses tied to training or any other mandatory update or requirement. Best done utilizing a mobile app. No one argues with a sample size of 100%.
>
> Archetypes – Windows into the Day-to-Day Culture
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> Ten separate archetypes common to most organizations and with special insights on culture have been identified. Not every organization will possess all ten, but most will be able to quickly put a face and name to each of the following.
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>    Mom – caregiver for the organizational masses. Empath.
>    Maven – hub of communication, trusted with information by the line.
>    Skeptic – natural doubter who pays close attention to change initiatives.
>    Leader of the Resistance – potential cynic who tends to resist management actions.
>    Wise Owl – the sage who has been there, done that, and can analyze things through the long lens of organizational history.
>    Maverick – the likeable rule breaker who has the has the right intentions but takes shortcuts ahead of organizational changes and isn’t willing to do the work to get the official rules caught up to his or her way of doing things. Might be an organization’s best innovator, but colors outside the lines. Senses how far he/she can go without getting hammered by management. “Dances on the edge of acceptable.” By watching where they dance, you can sense the organizational tolerance level.
>    Truth Teller – the courageous conscience of the organization.
>    Newb – impressionable baby duckling who will follow cultural trends and indicate where the organizational culture is moving.
>    The “Fixer” or Organizational Troubleshooter – the go-to management person who gets the tough jobs of cleaning up problems. Sees a lot of stuff other execs do not see—and prefer not to see (or in some cases, to even know about).
>    Culture Pros – hold formal culture-related positions, might be in HR, Safety, Quality, etc. These people are consciously looking for cultural indicators as a part of their job description (we will likely have to provide training for this). Their inputs should be tagged and matched to the numerical data sets, i.e., “In your professional opinion, why are quality escapes going up in manufacturing?”
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> The analysis techniques for combining these Archetype data into specific recommendations are proprietary and the core of our value proposition.
> Summary
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> Developing a culture of strong and continuously improving professionalism is no longer a vague concept. It is a viable and achievable choice. In our highly-competitive global marketplace, it has never been more critical. The path to higher levels of performance is not an easy one, but it is a predictable, viable, and achievable alternative to the diseases of sloppiness, apathy, and cultural stalemate that has infected many of our organizations. It is available to anyone and everyone with a will to improve with little more than the application of the principles contained here.
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> In the words of George Eliot, “it is never too late to be what you might have been.”
>
> If you are intrigued by this approach, we look forward to a deeper discussion at a time and place of your convenience.

MTF...P2