If the original executives are needed to ensure cultural change, that change won’t last.
As a leader you want it to leave a lasting mark, not one that disappears.
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A genuine culture transformation extends beyond a single CEO or executive group. It encompasses the organization and its people as a whole. This is the only way to ensure that a culture is self-sustaining and sustainable.
Culture Transformation: Water Spot or India Ink Stain?
If you spill a glass of water on the carpet, a wet mark will appear. However, by the next morning, that wet mark will have evaporated and disappeared. In contrast, if you spill a bottle of India ink on the carpet, it will leave a permanent stain.
A culture transformation should be like India ink: you want it to leave a lasting mark, not one that will disappear a few months later.
Imagine you have a CEO who is committed to customer service—who talks often about the importance of the customer, shares customer-related metrics, and urges others to pay attention to customer feedback.
However, once that CEO moves on, the focus on the customer fades and ultimately becomes just another company statistic. In this case, the organization’s attentiveness to the customer wasn’t really cultural—it was only responding to the CEO making it a priority.
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On the other hand, if that CEO were to leave, and the entire organization remained passionately concerned about the customer, their needs, and their expectations, then the organization can easily be seen to have a genuine culture of customer-centricity. The customer-focused mindset is part of the company’s DNA, “stained” in place and not dependent on the influence of a single senior executive, easily “evaporated.”
The Key to Implementing Change That Lasts
The ultimate measure of the success of a culture transformation is whether it remains after the people who initiated it have left the organization. Yes, the executives will help drive the culture change. However, the change must be implemented in a way that allows it to outlast any one executive’s influence.
This thought can help shape the strategy underpinning a culture transformation, guiding you on what to do and what not to do. With each measure you consider implementing, ask, “Will it contribute to sustaining what we are trying to achieve?”
For example, consider wanting to establish a workplace culture where safety is a priority. Executives need to reinforce that priority at every opportunity. Employees need more than training on policies and procedures; they also need the conviction that they are personally responsible for safety.
Frontline leaders must model safe behaviors, coach their teams on how to contribute to safety and make every decision with a safety priority in mind. Communication initiatives and recognition programs need to be aligned to the safety priority, and personal initiatives to improve safety need to be celebrated.
In this way, you’re creating a process that is going to outlive the management that put the safety priority in place. You’ve created a culture transformation that lasts.
