10 Keys Remove Association Culture Change Mystery

10 Keys Remove Association Culture Change Mystery

Association Culture change has long been the stuff of hocus pocus and black magic. Many people talk about it, but it seems difficult to find real success stories because the levers of success are less than obvious.

What is known is that a direct assault on Association culture doesn’t work; you don’t alter behavior by publishing new values and running workshops on the new expected behaviors. It’s been tried and it never works.

Association Culture

Association Culture is not the result of new talk. Association Cultural change is the result of new actions, routines, roles, and expectations for specific and defined actions. The structures and processes of an organization’s management system is what shapes these factors more than anything else, and so when the management system is changed, the culture changes. This assumes the leaders of the organization are serious about the changes they are making, and work hard to be models of the new ways.

Here are 10 things to remember as you think about Association culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed:

1. Culture is the great lever of Association change

2. Culture determines if a given change will be accepted or rejected

3. Today’s economic world demands Associations move quickly

4. The speed of an Association is governed by the speed of decision making

5. Your management system defines your decision making strategy and quality

6. A culture that moves decisions to where the knowledge is greatest, which is the front line, will make the fastest and best decisions

7. To set people up for success in their decision making, management has a lot of work to do in advance

8. Leaders have to accept that change is now the constant, and the only way to keep people is to let go of centralized control

9. Culture change is much more readily accepted when people gain control not lose it

10. More than any other thing, changing the management system causes the biggest shift in Association culture

10 Keys Remove Association Culture Change Mystery

Association culture

John. M Bernard, Chairman & Founder, Mass Ingenuity

One of the biggest surprises for me in learning about organization development has been understanding the relationship between the complex nature of human beings, and the work they do. What I have learned is that mechanical things such a strong, healthy, and structured business reviews can have profound impact on cultural components such as human beliefs, behaviors, and trust.

The better we understand the interplay between structured management processes and human behavior, the more control we have in shaping Association culture.

Association Culture does not have to be the accident accumulation of unspoken norms and behaviors. It can and should be intentional.

Thanks for joining me in this series on Association culture.

Changing Your Association Management Changes Your Culture

This is the ninth in a series on Association culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed.

Changing Your Association Management Changes Your Culture

 As you likely know, the concept of “management as a system” is not commonly talked about even among experienced Association leaders and academics. However, if you understand that a process is a collection of activities that target a specific output, and that a system is a collection of processes that target a larger aggregated output, then buying the concept of a management system isn’t much of a leap.

Why does this matter?

association managementWhen we understand that management itself is in fact a collection of specific processes, it allows us to apply process thinking and tools to the work of management. So, like any other process, the management process can be understood, assessed, measured, and improved.

It took a long time for me to understand the connection between an Association’s  management system and its culture. In fact, I learn something new about that relationship almost every day as I interact with customers and discover things I had not seen.

What is clear is that as an Association moves from an informal management system to an intentional and effective one, such as the Now Management System®, the leaders start to actually gain control over their results. This happens because process improvement is all about transparency (seeing where things are breaking down), accountability (measuring results and making it clear who has the responsibility to fix problems), problem solving (ensuring that process owners know how to fix processes), and the elimination of fear (which creates the safety to risk taking action on the problems).

NOW Management System

While the Now Management System systematically creates clarity, it shifts culture by establishing clear norms of accountability, new routines for transparency, and standard disciplines for solving problems. Our system achieves its maximum return on investment by shifting culture at the heart of these dimensions.

Changing Your Association Management Changes Your Culture

Association Management

John M. Bernard, Founder & Chairman, Mass Ingenuity

Culture is all about patterns, roles, routines, language, and expected behaviors. A good management system addresses every one of those dimensions of organizational functioning. As an example, one of our clients recently held their Quarterly Target Review and reported improvement in 46% of their processes measures quarter over quarter.  This organization has dramatically shifted its culture to one of transparency, accountability, problem solving, and shared success.

All in all, I have never seen anything change culture as effectively and as positively as changing an Association’s management system.

Next week, the final post on this 10-part series on Association culture.

What Accelerates Association Cultural Change?

This is the seventh in a series on Association culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed.

What Accelerates Association Cultural Change?

No single leadership factor is a more essential prerequisite to successful change than trust. Every new change raises the underlying question that Association leaders must answer which is “Why?” People who will be impacted by a given change, need and deserve to understand the answer to that question. If trust is not present, much time and energy will be lost trying to figure out the real reason for the cultural shift.

If a change at an Association is well reasoned, it shouldn’t be that hard to explain the why behind it. But the test that determines how quickly the change gets underway is whether or not people believe the answer is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The Association Staff Trust Challenge

Employees may have good reasons not to trust their leaders. The trust challenge you face may have little or nothing to do with you. It may be based upon past experiences either inside or outside your organization.

We humans are often skeptical, and life sometimes has a way of giving us good reason to be so. So, as a leader you have to talk straight. Then, we have to demonstrate the truth through our actions.

The Why Opportunity

Cultural ChangeEven if the reason for change is delicate, leaders who want their culture to change cannot ignore the reason for change. People will trust leaders who explain why the organization needs to get its costs down in order to stay competitive, or the fact that the budget is not growing as fast as the demand for services requiring cost control.

What Accelerates Association Cultural Change?

Our people need and deserve the truth, and in my experience they’ll support the change if they understand it is the right and/or necessary thing to do.

With the truth on the table, people will likely find the change is for the better. And if it’s better, acceptance will help it move faster.

Next week I’ll explore the question, “What does it take to create a culture that actively supports Association change?”

What’s Culture’s Affect on Association Change?

This is the sixth in a series on organizational culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed.

 What’s Culture’s Affect on Association Change?

As a leader setting out to sponsor change, it is important to understand what that change will bump into in the Association’s culture. The more conscious the potential collisions are made, the more they can be avoided.

Professor Edgar Schein, a former MIT professor, identified 10 factors that transmit and embed culture. They are:

Formal statements of organizational philosophy (mission, values, imperatives, goals, etc.).

Design for physical spaces.

Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching by leaders.

Explicit reward and status system, and promotion criteria.

Stories, legends, myths and parables about key people and events.

What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control.

Leader reactions to critical incidents or organizational crisis.

Organization design and structure.

Organizational systems and procedures (such as its management system).

Criteria used for recruitment, selection, and promotion.

Association Leaders

As a leader, this checklist is useful in assessing the gap between where the Association is, how it got there, and where it wants to go. By walking through these potential collisions, an Association leader can significantly improve the odds of success.What’s important in these assessments and subsequent communications about them is to not cast judgment on the past. The past just is what it is – we can never understand the motives of people nor fully appreciate the circumstance in which things happened. If we offer criticism we set a judgmental tone – even condemnation. That approach does nothing to increase the sense that the coming change will be safe to embrace and that related struggles will not be subject to the same criticism.

What’s culture’s affect on Association change?

Association ChangeAs we work with customers on the Now Management System® we directly and overtly address items 1, 3, 6, and 9. But we encourage, advise and support addressing every single item in order to ensure their culture change sticks and that it delivers the business results that led to the desired change in the first place.

What are the attributes that allow an Association to make changes quickly? I’ll share some thoughts on that next week.

 

 

Can Association cultures change quickly?

This is the fourth in a series on Association culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed.

Can Association cultures change quickly?

Association Culture is changed when expectations and roles are changed. This is especially applicable to the role decision-making plays in a culture.

association culturesFor example, if a team is having problems meeting expected work output, and an employee has an idea for how to solve that problem, in a hierarchical culture the team would not be able to make any changes without discussing it with their manager first. And their manager may need to discuss it with her manager. This cultural norm significantly slows down decisions and hampers (if not prevents) solving the problem even when viable solutions exist.

When you slow down decision making an unintended consequence is that you reduce the number of decisions that are made.

If we want to better meet members’ unique needs, we need to alter processes, roles and routines and move decision-making down. In fact, to do this we must alter aspects of our Association’s management system. A management system is an Association’s underlying approach to setting priorities, communicating expectations, monitoring performance, and making adjustments to resources to achieve outcomes. The Association’s management system communicates beliefs and defines expected behaviors — and when we alter those two things we redefine important cultural dimensions.

Association Management System

Every Association has a management system, even if it does not call it that. So whether the system is loosely structured or completely unconscious, a management system communicates culture through the expectations it sets (or does not set) and the behaviors it expects (or does not expect).

Most experts agree that you cannot change culture by simply declaring a new set of behaviors or values as the new norm. Instead, my experience has been that the most effective way to change culture is to change the management system. When you do that you change the routines and the roles. That shift then creates a shift in what’s normal, and that begins shaping new cultural norms. All this, of course, takes time.

Now Management System

One of the best methods for changing expectations through the Now Management System® is created by effectively designed and well-run quarterly business reviews. For example, when measures are in place for a team, and those measures are in “red” or “yellow” at the time of the business review, the team is then expected to report on their progress in using our 7-Step Problem Solving process (or whatever process improvement methodology the Association has selected) to turn that measure to “green.” This quarterly business review routine communicates clear ownership of the problem, the expectation of transparent and focused action, and use of the organization’s methodology for improvement.

Bottom line is that these business reviews create a new pattern of behavior, and that behavior will alter cultural norms as it redefines processes, routines, and roles.

Can resetting expectations and changing culture be done quickly?  Of course it takes time and focus to build the system, create sustainable new routines, and teach people their new roles and behaviors, especially regarding problem solving and decision-making. However, in our experience there are certain techniques and best practices that speed the process of cultural change and move decision-making down to the front line.

Can Association cultures change quickly?

“You can see the culture shifting from one quarterly review to the next,” is a sentiment we often hear from leaders. “Our people are learning it’s safe to show that there are problems.”

Coming Up Next: What creates a willingness for culture change at Associations? Next week I’ll share some thinking I have been doing on that topic.

Why should Association CEO’s worry about their culture?

This is the third in a series on organizational culture, its role, how it is shaped, and how it can be changed.

Why should Association CEO’s worry about their culture?

association CEOCEO’s are the primary individuals who can effectively alter culture, and that responsibility can loom large.

In the work we do with our customers, the most common driver of change is the reality that keeping up with today’s fast-paced world isn’t easy. Associations feel the enormous pressure of a now-oriented world. The members of our Associations that want good service and they want it now.

So, the reality of our fast-paced world demands that Associations continually adapt and improve everything they do every day. The key point is that in order to meet the unique needs of today’s members and to ensure a great member experience, Associations need to be much more responsive.

Association CEO’s Support Culture Change

In order to be more responsive to member needs, significantly more decisions need to be quickly made every day. CEO’s can see where this is going: to succeed we need a culture that supports more effective decision makers. This ambitious, yet worthy goal can only occur if CEO’s shape their culture to support the goal.

In practical reality this requires we move real decision-making authority into the hands of those who are doing the work – employees. Of course this does not mean all decisions.  However, the decisions that directly impact the member experience need to be made by the people who are directly accountable for a great member experience.

Huge Association Culture Shift Required

Yet, many Associations, maybe even most, operate from a hierarchical management foundation.  This requires that decisions travel up and then down the chain of command. That takes time, and in this day and age, it takes too much time to enable a great member experience. Therefore, for most Associations, the opportunity to adopt a responsive culture demands a huge shift.

Why should Association CEO’s worry about their culture?

Members’ demand for speed and great service is driving many CEO’s to realize that they must change their culture to prosper. For most Associations the change demanded by our now-oriented world challenges the rock upon which they were built – the shared assumptions about “who decides?”

What makes an Association’s culture shift quickly? Some thoughts on that next week.

Change Culture, Deliver Value and Grow Associations

Change Culture, Deliver Value and Grow Associations

 Every Association needs to add more member value, and, they want to grow revenues.  However, they first need to change their culture. Why?  Culture is the predominant determining factor that sets the stage for Association growth. If the Association’s culture doesn’t buy the change in focus, it won’t happen.

Culture is the Leverage Point at an Association

 Change Culture, Deliver Value and Grow Associations

If a CEO want to shake things up and make some changes, success will be governed by the Association’s culture. In other words, culture is a shared set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that drive how people in organizations behave – because the people in the Association have come to believe that is what works.

Over the years, I have witnessed or participated in many attempts to change Association cultures. The only approach I have seen that works consistently is when the senior management team changes the underlying system of management, and then supports that action by modeling a new set of behaviors.

Implement a Management System at Associations

Management system” is a new idea, and it is not something often taught to leaders or even a term many use. A change in the management system is enabled by a conscious shift in behaviors by senior management.

An Association’s management system includes all the processes, routines and roles associated with:

  •  Setting direction
  • Defining accountability
  • Getting work done
  • Checking in on progress and results
  • Adjusting resources and actions in response to results
  • Solving problems
  • Acknowledging success

Make It An Association Growth Management System

An effective Association growth management system makes clear how things work, what is expected of people, and what actions are taken when things get off track.

Accountability and transparency are the foundations of great management, but these values come to life when surrounded with functional expectations rather than lofty ideals.

Change Culture, Deliver Value and Grow Associations

If Associations want to make significant shifts in culture, they must first change their management system. And CEO’s and Senior Managers have to model the way to an Association where delivering value and driving growth define the culture.

About the Author:  John M. Bernard. Passionate about employee engagement and the elimination of fear. Author of BUSINESS AT THE SPEED OF NOW and Contributor at Potomac Core Consulting’s Blog www.potomaccore.com.

 

Association Culture Change Is a Big Deal

Association Culture Change Is a Big Deal

 As my colleague Beth Doolittle puts it, “Culture is not what we say it is, it is what it is.”

Association Culture Change is a big deal

John M. Bernard, Culture of Innovation Author,
Chairman and Founder,
Mass Ingenuity

The Next Seven Weeks 

I intend to strip away the mystery of culture and share with you what it is, what creates it, and how to change it in order to meet organizational goals.

Culture Matters

Culture is the great invisible hand, and that hand determines much of what is possible for Associations to achieve. But because it is invisible, shaping it is one of the great challenges of leadership.

Culture is Central

Most Associations’ cultures restrain rather than accelerate change. Obviously that won’t work if your organization must move more quickly and effectively. So, as leaders we must understand what causes culture in order to create the culture we need to prosper.

Dr. Peter Drucker, often called the father of modern management, is credited with having said, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” That is one of the great truths about organizations. Culture, not the leaders, determines what is accepted and what is rejected. Culture decides which people will be accepted and successful and which ones will leave. Culture determines which ideas get implemented and which get dumped. And, culture determines if corporate strategy will even be given a chance to succeed.

Association Culture Change Is a Big Deal

We live at a time when all Associations – are facing demands for change that go well beyond any time in the past. Culture is central to organizational change because it determines the direction and pace at which it will be accepted.

Association Culture is a big deal. Why?  Culture is a great lever of change and it’s mysterious. It’s mysterious because what moves it isn’t what you might think.

Next week, I will talk about the role culture plays in change.  I’ll also share the primary tool that shapes culture and, therefore, can reshape it.