How to change a culture?

As mentioned in previous postings, we have quite a flat management structure across the Africa division but this mainly relates to our Country Manager posts and our Leadership team. We have also done a lot of work over the last few years to build a culture of trust, empowerment and mutual accountability.

While I feel quite confident that we have made significant progress with these managers. The next step is to make sure that this culture permeates through all of our teams in Africa. I truly believe that as an organisation that promotes values of justice and empowerment, we need to practice what we preach.

It makes good business sense too. We are a relatively small organisation with a massive vision. We will only succeed in making this happen if we have self directed indviduals who are making excellent decisions on a day-to-day basis. We need managers to enable this and not squash it.

So as the person charged with leading this change, how do I become the catalyst? How can I use my limited time and abilities to lead a culture change that reaches across our teams in Africa and hopefully beyond?

Most of the change I am interested in is behavioural. While systems such as appraisals and reviews support good line management, they are not what makes the difference. The real potential for change lies in the attitude and approach of our managers to the people they manage.

We are getting closer to articulating on paper what good line managment looks like through a management charter and a clear articulation of the line management deal (i.e. what kind of line management should you expect to see within our organisaton).

Once these are in place, I want to see how we develop these behaviours across our teams but behaviours are almost always based on beliefs. If we just run a whole load of training courses that look at shaping behaviour, we run the risk of changing that behaviour only for a short time. After a few weeks slip by, the person is likely to slip back into the old patterns of behaviour based on their old beliefs.

So the real question is how do we appropriaitely shape and challenge beliefs?

My main idea at the moment is to identify a smaller group of change makers, people who are not my usual allies, and work with them to shape their thinking. By introducing them to practical situations and presenting them with new ways of thinking, I can challenge them to change their own status quo. And they can go on to challenge those around them.

Ultimately change only happens one individual at a time.