Book Review: High-Velocity Culture Change – A Handbook for Managers

This handbook is written by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound. I received it from President Michael Crow’s office, as part of the key references that his office usually distributes so Arizona State University (ASU) leadership understands the ‘why,’, ‘what,’ ‘who,’ ‘how’ and ‘when’ associated to the vision that ASU deploys as a public enterprise.

The book included a note from President Crow explaining that this is a teaser he has sent around for over 20 years to help with thinking through what ASU does. ASU is designing a new kind of university and, to do that, change is necessary but also hard, very hard.

The handbook presents helpful, easy to understand change concepts. The 13 main takeaways that I got out of it are presented below:

• Changing corporate culture is heavy-duty stuff – this isn’t the sort of challenge you take on simply because it sounds good. Or because it’s the “in thing” to do these days. You do it because you have to in a desperate attempt to survive. Or if you’re lucky—and smart enough— you do it before you have to, knowing you must if the organization is going to maintain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly changing marketplace. Most organizations don’t have the foresight to change their culture before the world forces it on them. Some start, then don’t have enough determination to see the effort through. Others keep tinkering with their culture, but the world of change outruns them. These companies lose control over their destiny. Some that recognize the need to change deceive them-selves, thinking they can achieve a cultural transformation without pain and chaos. But it just doesn’t work that way. As this handbook points out, overhauling the culture is an agonizing process. Still, if you carry out culture change correctly, the payoff is worth the price of admission. It’s also a lot less painful than having the marketplace slowly drive a stake into the heart of the organization.
• Don’t let the existing culture dictate your approach – our approach to changing the culture should be highly out of character for the organization. Choose methods that stand in stark contrast to standard operating procedures. From the very outset you must free yourself from the existing culture and conceive a plan of action that starts to liberate the organization from its past. Culture change moves at a slow crawl if the existing culture gets to call the shots on methodology. Or to put it another way, you’ll have trouble creating a new culture if you insist on doing it in ways that are consistent with the old one. Remember, the old culture is designed to protect itself, not to bring about its own demise. This sounds obvious. You’d think people would see the logic for deliberately violating the culture that’s in place. After all, not following the rules is a good way to signal that the rules are being changed.
• Deliberately destabilize your group and care harder – If you think you can pull off major culture change without a serious shake-up, you’re kidding yourself. Don’t even consider culture change unless you’re willing to hit hard, go fast, and follow through… Your behavior may not look compassionate or humanistic at close range. But a long-term perspective, and respect for the big picture, can reveal that high-velocity culture change is the most caring move you could make. We’ve entered an era where the organization must adopt a “do what works” mentality instead of trying to live out a “do what feels good” philosophy. Companies are faced with more uncontrollables these days. The management options aren’t the same as before. We used to have easier alternatives to choose from, and in times past it was acceptable to settle for gradually evolving culture change.
• Change the reward system – culture change is hard to come by unless people can see a big payoff for behaving in different ways. Sticking with the old culture must start to hurt. Buying in to the new culture must bring pleasure. Then you have a decent chance of actually changing things. If you don’t make significant changes in the reward system, you’ll actually reward resistance. Remember, the existing culture developed, and is now sustained, by the present setup. Don’t expect employees to change their behavior significantly unless you make it worth their while.
• Promote the vision – understand that culture change is terribly jarring to people. They get disoriented. Demoralized. Dispirited. The tendency is to drift, confused and aimless, unless there is an aiming point that captures their imagination. There must be a vision that holds their attention and hooks their hearts. The change effort needs to become a cause, a crusade, and your job is to champion the vision. Strong advocacy is called for all up and down the chain of command.
• Crank up the communication effort – you need a tremendous amount of high-quality communication to sustain a culture change. Managers typically underestimate the effort that is required. They rely on the normal communication practices and patterns, failing to consider that those methods were never designed for times like this. Standard communication procedures simply won’t cut it. Consider the situation at hand. First, people need to hear the logic, the rationale, behind the decision to change the culture. Give them an airtight case, based on hard facts about the marketplace and the firm’s competitive position. Next, they want to know what’s coming, and how they’ll be affected personally. You must give them a clear understanding of what’s expected regarding new ways of work. You need to sell people on the purpose, preach hope, and explain the part they’re expected to play in the change strategy. The vision must be articulated. Then promoted with the zeal of a O crusading evangelist… And it doesn’t stop there. You can’t afford to let up. Don’t relax.
• Expect casualties – watching a corporate culture change is like waking through a war zone. You see misery; Wreckage. Trauma. Are casualties. The upheaval will enormous, and some people won’t make the cut. If it does so happen that you hang on to all your people, it’s either a near miracle or a sure sign of bad management… Ordinarily you can expect the breakout to look something like this. A good 20% of the people will buy in to the culture change immediately. They’ll embrace the idea enjoy the challenge, and help drive the effort. Another 50% of the group will be undecided … on the fence. slow to commit themselves one way or the other. The remaining 30% will be anti-change, pure and simple, and that attitude isn’t likely to go away… So you have some tough decisions to make. First you have to figure out which group to spend.
• Demonstrate unwavering commitment – culture change does not occur unless it’s driven by deep convictions. The new culture must be pursued with a raw and burning passion. Relentlessly. Culture transformation requires a unique chemistry of determination, courage, audacity, and fierce spirit. Success doesn’t come if the leaders approach this as a purely intellectual exercise… The effort must be fired with emotion. There must be an investment of heart and soul-that’s where commitment draws its power… The second gut check comes when trouble hits. Somewhere in the course of events there’ll be setbacks, and they will be blamed on culture change. You’ll begin to doubt the wisdom of it all, second-guess your approach, and lose sleep worrying that the organization could crash and burn. You will have many critics and few people cheering you on. This is when the effort must be sustained through sheer force of will.
• Involve everyone – many people would prefer not to be bothered with the idea of changing the corporate culture. I’s not that they re against the idea per se. They simply don’t want to worry with it. Sounds like more work. Or maybe they just don’t give a hoot about this new pet program higher management has dreamed up. They’d rather delegate responsibility upward for making it work. Often employees don’t make any personal connection with the culture change initiative, and just want to be left alone to follow their normal work routines… But people who aren’t for change will be against it— inadvertently, perhaps, but their intent is not the issue. What matters is whether they are behaving in ways that help transform the culture, or doing things that cause the old culture to persist… Your job is to give everyone in your group personal accountability for transforming the culture. Make it perfectly clear that they, too, must play a constructive role in this process. If you don’t specifically assign your people the responsibility for culture change, many of them will not treat it as their responsibility… You must insist on involvement. Mobilize everyone. The rallying call should cut across every sector of the company. Top to bottom. And the entire organization should start to vibrate.
• Make structural and administrative changes – you can break the rhythm of the bureaucracy and strip away much of its power… You can interrupt old work patterns to further loosen the grip of the existing culture. But then what? Breaking worn-out habits and fighting bureaucratic practices are empty acts if you don’t offer employees something better. You need to come up with dynamic reforms. Make changes that focus people’s attention on the vision. Channel their energy into activities that persistently nudge the culture in the right direction… Without fresh, potent strategies that push toward the new cultural objectives, the ghosts of the old culture will quickly return to haunt the halls. There must be structural changes to reflect the new values. To institutionalize the vision. Administrative processes and procedures must be altered to mirror the changes you seek in peoples attitudes and action. The new cultural ideas must be embodied in new practices that clearly improve operating effectiveness.
• Achieve hard results in a hurry – the importance of quick wins cannot be overstated. Culture change net to produce a tangible payoff in short order. l’s crucial that you obtain early proof that the effort is well conceived and is, in fact, working… Count on it- the first symptoms of culture change aren’t going to make you Sep any better at night. Negative effects will precede the positive. People usually misconstrue the situation, failing to remember that problems are the number one byproduct of progress… Everybody will be watching, worrying that the situation might spin out of con-trol. Some will firmly believe the idea was doomed from the start. The anti-change crowd will roll their eyes and point to all kinds of trouble, insisting that this is a dumb plan that’s being poorly implemented. The longer you go without good evidence that the benefits will exceed the costs, the easier it is for them to argue that the effort should be aborted… The commercial argument convinces best. It’s hard for the critics to argue with success when you can measure it in hard dollars. This means you must manage the business such that you engineer some quick financial victories. It’s absolutely essential that you come up with ways to wring more money out of the operation. For now, financial successes are like giving blood plasma to a trauma victim. Come up with more money, and give culture change the credit. Ultimately, culture change lives or dies by dollar signs. I’s a language everyone understands.
• Build a power base – you can’t take on the old culture and win unless you surround yourself with a one group of strong supporters. You need talented, tough-minded flankers you can count on to help you launch the effort. Fill the key slots with allies. Create a coalition of like-minded people so you have a base of power that enables you to carry out big changes… The right kinds of moves are guaranteed to cause stiff opposition. Your popularity rating will go into free fall. But you can develop a reputation as public enemy #1 and still prevail if you have a good supporting cast… Give your best people the big jobs. As for the others who wield power but want you to fail, deal with them such that they are disconnected from their main constituencies. Reassign them. Fire them. Or neutralize them somehow. Remember that money is power. The more you make your adversaries dependent on you for funding their financial needs, the more you gain control.
• Encourage eccentricity – setting out to change the culture is like taking on an army of secret police. You know the enemy is everywhere, ready to crack down on the people who don’t con-form. Cold-blooded and forever watchful, culture cannot tolerate the unconventional… The more eccentric or out of the ordinary someone behaves relative to existing cultural standards, the more ruthless the response… Sometimes the rebuke is mild—a mere slap on the wrist to get the offender’s attention. But sometimes the reprisal is swift and vicious. Either way, the end result is the same. People whose behavior ranges beyond the traditional cultural boundaries are forced to comply, exiled to the fringes of the organization, or rejected outright… Only a few-usually the strong ones with enough talent to make them precious-are indulged and allowed to remain in the mainstream of the organization. The culture tolerates them out of its own selfish interests, yet still considers them misfits… Born of the status quo and committed to its defense, culture has many weapons at its disposal. It is engineered to protect itself through various mechanisms that develop over the years-bureaucracy, hiring and promotion practices, the reward system, and plain old peer pressure. The existing culture never hesitates to use its mighty arsenal, even against the innocents who inadvertently step out of line… Your job is to help break the culture’s stranglehold on behavior. You must legitimize unconventional acts. Encourage employees to operate “outside the dots.” Run interference for the mavericks and renegades, protecting these cultural outlaws from the retaliation that is sure to come. Give them enough running room to prove what a powerful contribution they can make.