Changing your Company Culture

 It is more difficult to change the culture of an existing organization than to create a culture in a brand new organization or team. When an organizational culture is already established, people must unlearn the old values, assumptions, and behaviors before they can learn the new ones.

The two most important elements for creating organizational cultural change are executive support and training.

• Executive support: Executives in the organization must support the cultural change, and in ways beyond verbal support. They must show behavioral support for the cultural change. Executives must lead the change by changing their own behaviors. It is extremely important for executives to consistently support the change.
• Training: Culture change depends on behavior change. Members of the organization must clearly understand what is expected of them and must know how to actually do the new behaviors, once they have been defined. Training can be very useful in both communicating expectations and in teaching new behaviors.