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ABOUT KIM’S CONSULTING SERVICES

OCAI is an instrument that allows your organization to measure where it is AND where it wants to be. We can administer the OCAI in your organization. We can also guide your company through a culture change strategy development and implementation, using the principles discovered through the OCAI assessment. l

OCAI AND CULTURE CHANGE CASE STUDY

A company was divided into a number of business divisions, each offering customers a different product or service. Thick boundaries existed among the divisions, and division managers functioned as the heads of their own kingdoms. In a discussion of the company’s future, the CEO and the president of the business' concluded that any customer should be able to effortlessly access all the company’s products and services across different businesses. but such an outcome was completely fictitious at the present time. Since they wanted to present a seamless front to their customers, these two senior managers felt it was essential to begin with the top management team. They needed a team that really was a team. They knew that if the top managers continued to behave in fragmented, self-serving ways, the organiation wouldn’t survive over the long term. A new culture, and emphasizing cooperation, teamwork and customers service, was required.

Although everyone within the organization claimed to agree with this vision, little changed. Particularly troublesome were the division heads, who had learned to operate successfully in an independent manner and were quite uncomfortable withthe concept of working cooperatively with one another. The president, who encountered continual resistance and increasing the frustrationa s ahe worked with these division heads, asked one of us to join him as a change agent. Our charge was to help him change to organization’s culture, beginning with building an effective top management team.

After engaging in interviews, analyzing company documents, and holding lengthy conversations with the president, we agreed that a deep culture change was necessary. Subsequently one of us attended a two-day meeting with the management group. It was clear that this group was composed of bright, well-intentioned people who wanted to fulfill the organization’s objectives. They had initiated a number of rational steps to try to implement a change process. For exampe, they had rearranged boxes on the organizational chart, reconfigured reporting relationships, and written new policies. They were not, however, acting as a team.

Toward the end of hte meeting, we discussed the team-building process togeether and planned a two-and-a-half-day meeting to work on team buildiong. We decided to begin by analyzing the culture of the team. We would then employ a serieds of exercises to analyze and change the actual behavior of the team. We also planned a series of follow-up meetings designed to check on progress and realign assignments if necessary.

The head of human resources, a man who was also an experienced change agent, assisted in the team-building meeting. On the first morning, the group appeared uneasy. We began with the nonthreatening task of employing the OCAI to analyze the current and desired cultures within the organization. The group consisted of fifteen people representing both line and staff functions. At the beginning of the cultural analysis process, three subgroups of five people were created. Each individual completed a personal analysis and then shared his or her results with the subgroup. Each subgroup compiled its results and shared them with the entire group. A comprehensive profile of these results appears in FIGURE 3 below.

The group members found that depicting the organization on a cultural profile was an easy and insightful exercise. Their results provided us with the material we needcded for a discussion of where they were and where they needed to go. Afer the discussion, we asked them to return to their subroups and carefully considier the meaning of change in each quadrant. Their subgroup discussion was structured around this question: What does it mean and what does it not mean to increase, decreased or stay in the same quadrant. (See Chapter 5 in the book for their full analysis and lists of items for this).

The group members were pleased with their lists and were subsequently feeling comfortable and confident. We indicated that this diagnostic process was consistent with their usual pattern of cognitive work, and that they were not going to slowly move away from topics with which they were comfortablee. We were going to gradually zero in on their own behavior.

After a several culture change exercises, described in Chapter 5, significant progress was made. Two weeks later, one of the participants reflected, “In my whole career, I have never had a developmental experience that powerful. Several of us were recently on the corporate plane returning from Washington. You could tell that we weren’t the same. The difference in our relationships is palpable.”