Surely practitioners and scientists alike are aware that something is radically wrong when the thing that is most cited as the main cause of failure for Change Management, Strategy Success and Organization Development alike is not clearly defined nor operationalized.
The operational definition of Culture goes simply as “the way we do things around here” and even the best analyses referenced below use this simplistic definition as their guide. To see the range of nebulous definitions see this HBR list . We cannot say any of these definitions are wrong, but the reality is they are not clear enough to help leaders understand and take effective culture change actions.
Typically, a diagnostic is taken of the organization around Values and Behaviors and these become the focus of change interventions, which highlight Training around e.g., Innovation, and embodying Values such as Egalitarianism, and enhancing Personal Responsibility, etc.
Cameron and Quinn (2006), described 4 types of Culture under the titles:
Schwartz (2003) delineated 10 Culture types as follows:
Self-Direction: independent thought and acts, choice, creation, survey
Stimulation: taking risks and adventure
Hedonism: egocentric meeting of personal needs
Achievement: competitive personal success
Power: social status and prestige, control of persons and resources
Security: safety and stability, harmony of society, mutual relations and personal harmony
Conformity: self-limitation and subordination of personal affinities to expectations of others
Tradition: respect, devotion and acceptance of customs and ideas offered by the traditional culture and religion
Benevolence: preservation and improvement of wellbeing of those persons that the person is frequently in touch with
Universality: care and tolerance to the benefit of all people and nature
These are the 2 most popular models of Culture, but they have no theoretical base, offer limited help towards development, do not have a systems perspective, take no accounting for hard capabilities, etc. However, Liñán and Francesco (2014) found that Schwartz’s Cultures were correlated with GDP in the order presented above.
UDT is the new name for Dynamic Systems Maturity Theory (DSMT)
In summary, UDT is a peer reviewed normative model of Human System Development, that is equally valid for people, organizations and economies, and having unprecedented theoretical depth, scope and application. UDT Integrates models from across Psychology, Org. Sc., and Economics to counter bias in each field. UDT research identifies Levels which incorporate 15 Developmental Phases and corresponding Stages of Habituation (Resides in a State/Level) along which Capabilities can be diagnosed for Maturity.
These Stages occur in already-established patterns such as Exploitative (which is a feature of Stage-1a Habituation), Groupthink (a feature of 2a), Silos (2b) to Regenerative (7b), for organizations; and it is this pattern of Habituation that transforms the scientific and practitioner grasp of Culture.
The Cultures differentiated by Schwartz map directly onto UDT Model Habituation levels and in perfect correlation to Productivity and Returns as detailed by Linan.
Therefore, we can finally define Culture as the Habituated Stage of Maturation.
The model shows how misleading it is to attend to Culture without Maturity. Consider the case of Apple in the 1980s. It surely had a Culture defined by Innovation (6a). However, it did not have a Dynamic-Learning interaction with the marketplace (5b), and it did not have good Formal Procedure/ Bureaucracy (4b) and that is why it declined so dramatically and was overtaken by Microsoft who did have those qualities. All Culture surveys make this mistake of assuming that prevailing functionality gives any sort of worthwhile diagnosis or starting point for interventions, and they offer no grounding for sustainability.
So what does this mean? It means that Culture is described by a UDT (OrgCMF™) Maturity Level habituated. We can observe practices, behaviours and values that reflect the Organisation, and position it at a Maturity Level.
What does it not mean? It does not mean this is the actual true functioning or learning level (Maturity) of the Organisation as a system, because as in the Apple example Maturity Development Stages were skipped or missed (Level 4 & 5- covering necessary proceduralization and focus on the Market).
Unitary Developmental Theory ( UDT) and research tells us that Organisations Develop and Learn just like humans, in a progressive development maturation process. Skipping a level for any Capability (Dynamic or Construct) increases the risk of both performance and change failure.
It also highlights that focusing on Culture and making assumptions about an observed Culture can be misleading, while focusing on Capability Maturity where Culture development and improvement; is integral to the system improvement, and is a much more robust and reliable approach to Culture change, because all the organisation system elements (Capability Dynamics & Constructs) are taken into account.
The issue is avoided when using a UDT based Maturity Assessment and following the rules for selecting the Assessment Question Statement when completing any UDT based assessment such as those found within the OrgCMF™.
The Assessment Results in the case of the Apple example above would have found that the true Organisation Capability Maturity would have been between Level 3 and 4 and that the observed Culture of Level 7 was a misleading indicator of how the organisation would function in current and future scenarios.
Now, we can treat Culture Change as an Organisation Development intervention of diagnosis and development, and because the model is normative for developmental learning, we can do so in the knowledge that a) diagnosis of change capacity is valid and optimises Traction; b) the developmental process is complete and optimises Sustainability; and c) such development is correlated with systemic effectiveness, productivity and returns.
Having established above, that existing approaches to Culture Change can be misleading as regards Assessment of the Organisations ability to perform going forward, and incomplete when we consider the 'Inters' that exist between system elements/capabilities, we now have a new more comprehensive approach to Culture Change, where Culture as a Capability is part of the development model and where Values, Beliefs, Behaviours and Practices are observed as regards their impact across all Organisation and Team Capabilities.
Values, Practices, patterns of behaviour and soft-skills are all still relevant but they are addressed in the context of the Habituated Capability Maturity Level.
The current Capability Maturity Level has an associated Culture description (which may or may not be the observed/habituated maturity positioning as it relates to Culture) so changing the Culture requires changing the Capability Maturity Level normally to a Higher Level following the Human System Development Process outlined in UDT. Occasionally and temporarily an organisation may change to what apparently is a lower level to address a sudden challenge but in fact this actually reflects a high level of maturity, certainly amongst the leadership and key influencers that acknowledge and support such a temporary change.
The Organisation Capability Maturity Framework (OrgCMF™) is a set of Reference Models, associated Bodies of Knowledge and Capability Maturity Assessment Digital Platform that us underpinned by DSMT. Using The on-line Assessment Tool (www.orgcmf.com) select the appropriate Reference Model (Organisation Maturity Index or Team Maturity Index) Configure & Run your Maturity Assessment to determine your habituated Maturity Level and receive guidance on calibrated actions to move up to the next development level of maturity. Identify an agree the target Maturity levels that will deliver the transformation or performance improvement and culture end state desired. Prioritize those important Capabilities that are missing and must be acquired and the gaps in existing maturity levels habituated and the target levels.
Remember Culture is an integral part of the team or organisation system and to try to address it in isolation and without reference to the now defined development process will surely lead to poor traction, sustainability and outcomes often associated with Change Failure.