INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CULTURAL PRACTICES
Photo by Antonio Fadel on Unsplash
As I explain in detail in Chapter 5 of my book Transformation: From Potential to Practice, a key element of making organization transformation sustainable is creating and committing to practices that institutionalize the new culture.
While each organization will design its culture consistent with its industry and the larger culture in which it operates, in all of the companies we have worked with, across a wide range of industries, we find that the designed cultures have the following characteristics in common:
Accountability
Integrity
Complete, open, honest communication
Committed Partnership
It is not sufficient for sustainability for a company to simply adopt these practices and post them on the walls or on their website; rather, it is critical that the practices be institutionalized.
Institutionalize: to establish (something, typically a practice or activity) as a convention or norm in an organization or culture. Institutionalization refers to the process of embedding some conception (for example a belief, norm, social role, particular value or mode of behavior) within an organization, social system, or society as a whole.
Institutionalization, then, lives in behavior, consistently practiced. Examples of behaviors are:
Regular, consistent communication.
Bringing practices up at every meeting (similar to “safety moments).
Building practices into performance reviews.
Training leaders on modeling values and practices.
Leaders being accountable (holding themselves to account, calling others to account, being willing to be held to account) for values and practices.
Practicing what each value and practice means in daily conversations.
Hiring for people who are a fit for the culture based on the values and practices.
Not settling for less or hope people will learn to fit.
Onboarding includes integration into the culture.
Leaders looking for coaching/teaching moments for each of the values and practices.
Leaders owning, modeling, and engendering ownership of the values and practices throughout the organization.
Without consistency of these behaviors at all levels of the organization, the organization will inevitably default to the old culture and the work done on transforming the company will go to waste. I can