Mapping a through route to culture change

Whether it’s fre­quent rebrand­ing exer­cis­es or com­pul­so­ry sign­ing in and out, well-mean­ing busi­ness ini­tia­tives dreamed up by man­age­ment on a Fri­day all too often bomb at the coal­face the fol­low­ing week.

Yet despite wide­spread accep­tance that cul­tur­al mis­match is invari­ably a fac­tor when busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions fail, the dam­ag­ing divi­sions remain. 

Under­stand­ing why change may instinc­tive­ly get the thumbs down requires emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, as well as the abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy who in the team is an influ­encer or a road block­er. Stake­hold­er map­ping could be part of the answer.

In help­ing launch Stan­dard Chartered’s Min­istry of Com­mon Sense, an ini­tia­tive to rid the bank of sti­fling red tape, trans­for­ma­tion con­sul­tant Mar­tin Lind­strom used map­ping to pin­point his secret weapon.

“Every organ­i­sa­tion has an immune sys­tem, a defence mech­a­nism against change that is often linked to indi­vid­ual agen­das, con­flict­ing key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors or unclear instruc­tions and this cre­ates a sec­ond, invis­i­ble lay­er with­in the busi­ness,” he says.

“Stake­hold­er map­ping sets out to under­stand this unseen ‘ice­berg’ and the influ­ence that indi­vid­u­als with­in it have on the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole.” 

In the case of Stan­dard Char­tered, it showed that head of gov­er­nance and con­trol Gail Ursell, then a senior leader in the human resources team, was both a key influ­encer and a “doer”, among the “small num­ber of peo­ple who actu­al­ly make things hap­pen”.

One of her ideas was to pre­tend she was a doc­u­ment and to “trav­el” around the bank to under­stand why the stan­dard autho­ri­sa­tion process took up to eight days. It was even­tu­al­ly cut to six hours.

“In releas­ing the bank from its immune sys­tem, Gail, who had been at the bank for ages and had the respect of col­leagues, not only came up with the Min­istry idea, but was a key ele­ment in its cre­ation,” says Lind­strom. 

Fol­low­ing its 2016 launch, the scheme proved “a ground­break­ing ini­tia­tive, vac­u­um­ing one stu­pid­i­ty out of the bank at a time and trans­form­ing the over­all cul­ture”, he adds.

Emotional attunement

Chart­ing who a business’s real movers and shak­ers are – and they are rarely con­fined to the exec­u­tive floor – doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly require high-tech solu­tions. Far more fun­da­men­tal than the choice between soft­ware or pen and paper is empa­thy. 

Soft­ware devel­op­ment com­pa­ny Sopra Ste­ria, which has trans­ferred 6,000 employ­ees to home work­ing dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, is using a peo­ple-first approach to make it a per­ma­nent fea­ture, says HR direc­tor Karen Finn.

“Stake­hold­er map­ping is both stan­dard prac­tice and fun­da­men­tal for any trans­for­ma­tion project we deliv­er and has proven invalu­able in sup­port­ing our com­mu­ni­ties and over­all busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity as we have shift­ed our ways of work­ing,” she says.

Trans­for­ma­tion is as much about emo­tion­al engage­ment as map­ping, she believes. “Gath­er­ing work­force insight shouldn’t be trans­ac­tion­al. It’s vital to talk to the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, lis­ten to their con­cerns and tai­lor com­mu­ni­ca­tions, poli­cies and work­ing strate­gies around the find­ings,” says Finn. 

“By encour­ag­ing a cul­ture of open­ness and inclu­siv­i­ty, organ­i­sa­tions not only open up con­ver­sa­tions and chan­nels to bet­ter under­stand employ­ees’ moti­va­tions, but can also cre­ate a will­ing­ness to go the extra mile.”

Cre­at­ing a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of influ­encers and block­ers can be use­ful in deliv­er­ing or man­ag­ing a rou­tine project, but when it comes to cul­ture change, it may not be enough, accord­ing to change man­age­ment con­sul­tant Andy Brett. 

“When we are look­ing to impact a cul­tur­al shift, what we’re real­ly talk­ing about is influ­enc­ing how all those involved go about their dai­ly inter­ac­tions, some­thing which is beyond the con­trol of any­one but them them­selves,” he says.

“While stake­hold­er maps can some­times be too lin­ear to cap­ture the com­plex­i­ties involved, more use­ful are social net­work maps, which rather than track­ing rela­tion­ships look for points of social influ­ence.”

Brett believes this approach can iden­ti­fy indi­vid­u­als who may not fit into a stan­dard stake­hold­er map, per­haps because of the nature of their job role, yet who can have a marked impact on how work gets done.

Mapping for transformation

One exam­ple he gives is of a large finan­cial ser­vices organ­i­sa­tion, which was look­ing to car­ry out a fun­da­men­tal redesign of process­es in a cen­tral depart­ment, a change that impact­ed the whole organ­i­sa­tion.

“If a stan­dard approach to map­ping had been used, those involved would large­ly have been drawn from the area con­trol­ling the process, when it was appar­ent it was the end-users who need­ed to adapt,” says Brett.

By agree­ing the behav­iour change required with this group before the alter­ation, “change was wel­comed and adopt­ed smooth­ly, rather than being imposed and then sub­tly resist­ed”, he adds.

For Lind­strom, the major­i­ty of deep insights into a firm’s cul­ture come not from for­mal meet­ings, but from the “winks, hints and nudges” that will often be con­veyed in after-hours con­ver­sa­tions.

Asked by a client to solve the prob­lem of an unpop­u­lar automa­tion pro­gramme, which had failed to deliv­er via a top-down approach, he began work­ing from the bot­tom up or what he calls “the back door”.

“Halfway up the sys­tem we hit the frozen mid­dle, peo­ple who were angry at being squeezed for time and resources,” says Lind­strom.

One of them, who had been at the firm for 35 years and had been iden­ti­fied by stake­hold­er map­ping as a key influ­encer, shared her frus­tra­tion one evening about her sec­tion nev­er being con­sult­ed when change was pro­posed. 

“We made her our chief of change and sud­den­ly the immune sys­tem broke down,” says Lind­strom. “Her col­leagues decid­ed that if this indi­vid­ual was on board, there were good rea­sons to back the automa­tion and, after just 36 days, the mis­sion was com­plet­ed.”