[Music] people always ask me Arthur how is it that you can get such fast results in culture change with these big companies and I always tell them you're asking the wrong question see the question is not how fast because that's actually part of the solution the question is how can you keep sustainable organizational culture change in an organization and the reason is because most of the time when we try some kind of an initiative in our companies there's a couple of things that happen number one people go oh not another one and of course the
other one is that all of these people at the top and they come up with all of these brilliant ideas and they forget to ask the people that matter the ones that they're going to quote change and see the thing is that speed these days is required for organizational culture change see we are in the pfb era pfb post Facebook you know when you've got your phone and suddenly it's like I sent a message 15 minutes ago and they still haven't replied you think something's wrong or that email hasn't been replied to in almost four
hours I think we should follow up see we are less patient than we used to be we need to have things now we are looking for instant instant gratification instant change and so therefore if we don't see some kind of change we immediately assume oh well I'm just wasting my time and this brings us back to the idea that people resist change do you believe that people resist change because I don't think so if somebody showed up at your door and says hi we have a check for 1 million dollars and it's gonna change your
life which you would say no no I'm fine thank you very much we don't resist change what we resist is stupid stuff we're resisting the idea that if I am wasting my time and not getting a result well then I should be doing something different I know I should be doing the same thing that I'm already doing in order to keep the results on the other hand if you start changing something and you see that that is actually giving you results well then you embrace it you accept it and that is one of the key
factors show results absolutely quickly so that people can start to get excited about culture change but why should we do culture change in the first place well maybe you've been there it's Monday morning you get out of bed and you go is it Monday again and then you go to work and you're not really excited but you know you need to work because you need the Paycheck at the end of the month and so often times we go to these jobs as individuals and our lives are not really fulfilled so here's the thing if we
are in a position to create an organization where somebody can get up in the morning and go wow it's Monday I get to go to work too yay then you've created not only an organization that will be more successful because your people are going to be more innovative more excited but you're also going to create an organization that supports a greater purpose and let's go through some of the stages of organizational culture change and why we need to know where we are in order to really achieve anything so first of all there are five different
types of organizational culture right now the first one this is the one where people really don't like to go to work - it's the blame culture you know you've been there wasn't my fault in fact if Judy had just given me the right information on time I would have been fine but she didn't so it's not my fault and so what happens in this culture is trust diminishes nobody trusts each other people are scared to do anything there's no innovation because there is too much fear people wait for you to tell them what to do
now the next level is the multi-directional culture now the multi-directional culture this is where you've got some cohesiveness in some departments but the part departments don't really talk to each other right so you've got the accounting department okay the finance department over on this side and then maybe you've got the other guys in marketing on the other side and they're always fighting because the finance department has got their things that they're supposed to do in the marketing department has got their things that they're supposed to do and then of course the procurement department there in
the middle and nobody is cooperating and so everybody's frustrated and they forget that there is one bigger greater purpose for that organization and the next one the next one's the live-and-let-live culture here's an organization they're already doing something it's already good we're already making money why do we need to change anything I mean come on we're already doing okay you know I show up to work I go home at night why do I need to do anything extra it's fine innovation doesn't really happen why people are complacent you know it's my life it's my job
what can I do and so we end up in a life and an organization of mediocrity never really kind of reaching for anything bigger never really feeling that potential of being extra valuable why because we have accepted mediocrity now the next level of culture evolution is the brand congruent culture so you've got a brand right whatever that brand may be whatever it is that your organization is doing maybe it's a service maybe it's a product and you go like wow that is such a cool thing look did you know that I work for this company
yeah that's that's the company I work for because they produce such cool stuff or they create this super cool service that is happening and people are excited why because they believe in what they're doing and there is more innovation because they always want to improve on the product or the service their call always thinking of new ways they're throwing ideas around because they're invested in what the organization is trying to do but then the highest level of culture evolution the highest level of culture evolution is the leadership enriched culture and see oftentimes we wonder well
what does a leader supposed to do a leader supposed to tell you what to do so that you do it you know maybe in the beginning if you need something but at the end of the day do you really want somebody constantly tell you what to do I mean have you ever had ideas that you knew would be really great but nobody listened to you and so a leadership enriched culture is one where the leaders leave their egos in their pockets I know it sounds impossible but when these leaders develop other leaders then it doesn't
matter who's doing what the only thing that matters is the objective what are we trying to achieve and this gives the opportunity for everyone in the organization to have a sense of value a sense of possibilities in their career for even the janitor the guy that cleans the toilets to come up and say hey I've got a really cool idea and people listen to him and even the new person that comes into the organization can take charge of a project if they just happen to be more expert in that area than even the CEO so
the leadership in rich culture develops cultivates leaders leaders who are excited about the brand excited about the organization and people who take charge never waiting for anything never waiting for people to tell them what to do but it depends how do you get how do you evolve your culture well the first thing you got to do is you have to know where you are where is your culture now where have you started I mean doesn't that make sense you have to have a starting point before you can get to the next one so we developed
a tool that helps organizations to essentially measure and then also test and check their progress and this organizational culture evolution assessment basically gives you that foundation and once you have that foundation once you have that now you see okay here we are maybe we're at the blame culture maybe we're at the live-and-let-live culture but now we know where we are now we can move up to the next level and whatever strategies you use are gonna support that but what strategy do you use how do you get people involved how do you get people excited about
culture change I mean you've been there with all these different initiatives everybody tries all these different things why don't they work why don't they last why aren't they sustainable and one of the biggest reasons besides the fact that they take too long is that they do not have the engagement of the people so the first thing you gotta understand is that it cannot be a top-down initiative it can't be the guys at the top there's like I mean think about it you've got like five maybe twelve guys at the top and they've maybe you have
an organization with a thousand people does it make sense five guys trying to convince a thousand people to believe and think and value the same things they do or does it make more sense to get a thousand people to come up with some ideas and convince the five guys at the top it has to be a bottom-up initiative and oftentimes a lot of organizations don't trust their people enough and it's the people at the bottom it's a people in the middle it's the people all around that are interacting they're making things happen they know the
problems they know how to solve problems but oftentimes they don't have a voice and when you give these people of ways when you bring from a bottom-up initiative that's when things start to happen but there are five pillars to making this happen the first you must have a greater purpose that means you have to have something that everybody in the organization believes in now you're thinking but Arthur how is that possible I mean there's all these different diverse people and they all have different ideas well let me give you a little bit of research in
53 different countries we've asked one question what is your ideal working environment now I want you to think about this your ideal working environment so one of the things we found that no matter what culture no matter what situation no matter what education level no matter what position people more or less have the same ideas the same ideas for the ideal working environment they needed to have some kind of trust either trust people to do their jobs or let people trust you that you actually know what you're doing they had to have some kind of
teamwork where they felt like wow we know people are really out to help me and then of course a supportive environment when that department over there was cooperating with my department they needed to have some kind of clarity they needed to see how okay I know where I'm going I know what I need to do at least I have some structure maybe to help me understand what I need to achieve and finally they needed to have some fun and if you think about it is it easy to get people to believe that they could achieve
this ideal working environment is it possible that when you get people connected to this idea this ideal working environment that that becomes a greater purpose because it's not just for them it's for everybody it's for the persons next to you it's for yourself and it is also for the organization and so once you have the ideal working environment then you have a greater purpose something that everybody is working towards but then pillar number two you must have a methodology that can help people to actually achieve it and we of course use the directive communication psychology
the science of group dynamics now there's other stuff out there as well but at the end of the day how can you create that ideal working environment what methodology do you have to get people connected communicating trusting each other to get people to have more clarity better communication to have people to better be team members and the next one of course is having the common language see a common language is about being able to communicate things that are big with small words so for example there's a lot of buzzwords out there's a lot of things
out there that are talking about that you use like one word or two words or one phrase and people already know what you're talking about so for example if I said dude you need sucked me people are going I understand what that means only if they've had this training behind it or this idea if they understand the whole thing and that means because they understand because they know what it means now you can have communication without conflict you can remind each other of what the methodology represents of how to create that re that ideal working
environment so once you have this common language when you use it you're reminding people of what they've learned of how to achieve this greater purpose but then you also need a unified identity see the unified identity is like a club you have a club and when you're part of a club the people in the club are kind of like you're your buddies you know who they are you accept them you're excited about them you know and and you work together you create things together but then there's also the people there outside of the club seem
to be in the club this unified identity you give it a name because every club must have a name every club must have a purpose to create the ideal working environment and if people are not in the club that means they're not really excited about your culture change they're not excited about creating your ideal working environment so there's two things you can do you can just leave them aside and ignore them or you can help them to join the club and finally the supportive environment see all of us want to change something in our lives
we want to improve something maybe sometimes we just say wow you know I want to stop smoking or maybe I I want to stop always being late and what happens is that within this club within this group you can trust each other you could tell them this is what I personally want to achieve and the next time maybe you pull out a cigarette the people around you say hey as I said you wanted to stop smoking and you go yeah that's right okay and you have this environment of people that hold you accountable for the
person that you want to become not what the organization wants you to become because quite honestly you have higher standards for yourself that most organizations do and if we can get the people around us to help us achieve those the organization benefits in the process so let me show you a graph really quick when we start this process there's a peak within two weeks you can see very visible results I mean super visible results I mean they you know people are excited people are you know like wow this is amazing we're gonna do great things
that's at the peak that's after about 15 days but after a while after about 30 days okay this is where the adjustment comes people start to say okay you know here's like part of a reality and here's how we can apply this and they start to adjust now after that about 50 days that's where they start to get the real confidence of how they're gonna put it together and finally 80 days it settles and there's sustainability but in order to achieve this you have to measure every part of the way and we've even developed an
app for that as well it's called squad Li okay with an AI and squad Li see the thing is that anytime you have any kind of measurement oftentimes people have like annual reviews and it just takes too long because you know how whenever you've achieved something you don't want to wait it's like did I do it right did I do it wrong you need to know now because we're in the PFP era so if you have an opportunity to give people feedback within 20 seconds and then have that connected to an overall bigger picture of
an entire year you can see everything and you're giving people feedback to see okay I'm doing this right Wow great I got this award great okay and it's simple and it's easy and it helps you to maintain the behaviors that you as an organization you as a group of people have created have designed in order to achieve your ideal working environment that requires measurement measure where you are when you start your organizational culture measure it after a month see how you're doing compare it against the first time and all along identify the behaviors that the
people have created for themselves they're guiding principles in order to achieve this ideal working environment measuring the behaviors not the KPIs see sometimes organizations focus on measuring the KPI and not the behavior that eventually gives the KPI KPI is our way over here behaviors are here here here here here here so you know you know I'm doing it right so when you go home today when you go back to your jobs I want you to think how could you contribute to creating an ideal working environment how could you contribute to just making people feel like
they're more valuable in your organization's thank you [Applause] okay
