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Non-Instructional Interventions

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Non-Instructional Intervention - Culture Analysis

This article excerpted with permission.  Tanguay, D. W. (2002, October 20). The very first analysis. Message posted to Boise State University IPT560 course, Fall 2002.

The Very First Analysis

 

What’s Wrong Here?

Pretend for a moment that your organization conducted a survey of its employees, which revealed the following results:

  • half of all respondents believe the organization does not reward and recognize high-performing personnel in all positions, pay grades, and job types
  • fewer than half believe the organization encourages them to take reasonable risks to improve performance, and most respondents perceive that the outcome for personnel who take risks and achieve the wrong outcome is a shortened career
  • most shared the perception that one ’bad’ supervisor can derail an entire career

Moreover, among the root causes found by your organization for these perceptions were that:

  • employee evaluation criteria are too subjective
  • promotion criteria are too vague and change from year to year
  • promotion decisions are dependent on subjective evaluations
  • promotion decisions are based on comparisons with others within similar longevity zones instead of organization needs
  • initial perceptions of career opportunities in the organization are too optimistic
  • And, most disturbing among all these findings, the perception among responders that these conditions have rendered their leaders too concerned about themselves to help subordinates sufficiently (Bennett, 1996).

 Which intervention(s) would you choose to mitigate the obvious performance gaps that this survey implies?  Before you answer, you should know that the survey itself is a product of an intervention, so the more pertinent question is: Which intervention provides this kind of data?  To answer that question, one need only look at some of the words seen in the survey results:  “respondents believe,” “perceive,” and “perceptions” are key indications that these results are from a cultural analysis. 

 

How Was It Discovered?

 Lineberry and Carleton (in Stolovitch and Keeps, 1998) advocate an analytical model for performing a culture audit, which consists of twelve areas for which organizational, operational, and behavioral data must be collected and analyzed:

  1. Intended directions/results
  2. Key measures
  3. Key business drivers
  4. Infrastructure
  5. Organizational practices
  6. Leadership/management practices
  7. Supervisory practices
  8. Work practices
  9. Use of technology
  10. Physical work environment
  11. Perceptions and expectations
  12. Cultural indicators and artifacts

 

The survey results reported above were generated from a 1995-1997 Coast Guard Workforce Cultural Audit.  The audit surveyed 6,250 individuals (out of approximately 36,000) on most of the issues deemed pertinent by Lineberry and Carleton.  According to top Coast Guard leaders:

The Workforce Cultural Audit is a tool to help the organization anticipate and plan for changing human resource needs in coming years, especially planning and training needs in a multi-cultural and mixed gender working environment.  It is designed to measure the overall progress and effectiveness of Coast Guard policies and initiatives as all personnel work toward the Commandant's vision to be recognized as the world's premier maritime service.  The purpose of the Workforce Cultural Audit is to discover what areas in the working environment are strengths and which are considered barriers to everyone's full partnership on the Coast Guard team.  The Coast Guard contracted and partnered with Transamerica Systems, Inc. of Washington, D.C. to conduct the Workforce Cultural Audit, and help develop positive improvements in the way the Coast Guard does business.

 

Text Box: Web Site Helps Coasties Plot Career Courses Source: Navy Times, May 2000 It's been a long time coming, but Coasties finally have a central resource for career information. A new Web page pulls together data on ratings, qualifications, education and evaluations - all at a single site. The new site is called "Career Central", and it has a lot to offer. "The information was already out there, but it was in a lot of different places," explained Lynn Donahue, a program coordinator in the Office of Leadership and Diversity. "We felt that if we could somehow centralize it, that would provide a service that is really missing." The page had its genesis in the Coast Guard Workforce Cultural Audit, a sweeping review of personnel issues, which two years ago reported that Coasties were unhappy with their access to career information. Coasties told surveyors their "initial perceptions of career opportunities in the Coast Guard are too optimistic". They complained that "many supervisors lack good communication skills" and "leaders are too concerned about themselves to help subordinates sufficiently." As a result, the audit team recommended the development of a central career resource. The new Web site got a warm reception from Coasties when it went live April 19. By May 10, it had already drawn more than 5,400 hits. "We are hoping it means we are fulfilling a need that was there", said Donahue. "We are pleased that the word is getting out." The site is a vast compendium, offering links to almost a dozen topics that include professional development, evaluation systems, and workforce specific information for most categories of military personnel. Under the "enlisted" heading alone, visitors will find more than a dozen topics including ratings information, military requirements information, enlisted performance evaluations and servicewide exam information. "It is going to take some time to explore it," Donahue cautioned. She added the site is meant to supplement, not replace, first-hand coaching and mentoring by supervisors. "This cannot take the place of that, but it can be a resource you can turn to, to look for more information".

What Was Done About It?

The survey results provided above are only a small sample of the kinds of data that were collected in the Workforce Cultural Audit.  Overall, the important cultural and organizational issues revealed were concentrated under four overarching domains:  career obstacles, diversity management, communications, and leadership. 

Under Career Obstacles and diversity management, follow-on interventions resulted in:

  • improvements to reward, recognition, communication, and feedback systems (too many to list; see inset for one example)
  • better measurement of impact of current management policy
  • better managing of employee expectations
  • improved fairness of the evaluation system and promotion process
  • an automated mentee-driven, mentor matching system
  • necessary refresher training on the personnel evaluation system
  • ensuring the precepts that guide promotion boards are public and easily obtainable by fax
  • an updated career guidebook
  • improved workforce monitoring measures to help determine success of diversity management efforts
  • inclusion of diversity management skills within the existing leadership development program

 

Under Communications, many existing organizational doctrines were updated to reflect current reality.  For example, one cornerstone manual used throughout the organization was updated with a list of leadership competencies and an explanation of the Coast Guard’s Leadership Development Program.  It was the first time leadership competencies had been identified for the entire military workforce and for civilians.  The Workforce Cultural Audit also pushed more rapid migration to new computer, internet and intranet technologies throughout the organization; a recurring problem that met with strong federal funding limits until the audit authenticated mission needs to congressional leaders.

Within areas of Leadership, an optional multi-rater feedback system, called the Leadership Effectiveness Inventory, was developed and customized for Coast Guard use.  Additionally, several needs assessment and focus groups were established to investigate the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and abilities required by particular organizational components (e.g., enlisted personnel, junior officers, and civilian personnel).  This proves that a cultural audit may be a means to an end in some respects, but often reveals needs that require further investigation and larger, targeted interventions.

 

Was The re Any Real Impact?

As a Coast Guard officer who came from the enlisted ranks, I have witnessed a shift in culture since the results of the Workforce Cultural Audit were reported in 1997.  One of many I can report with confidence is based on the survey results that began this report.  Those results signified a severe “career fear” shared by many survey respondents.  Since then, the evaluation and promotion systems that once cultivated a culture of strict risk avoidance are turning around (albeit slowly) to a culture of participative risk management.  The tide has not turned completely on every issue, but I use that as just one example of how the programs and policies subsequent to the Workforce Cultural Audit are showing signs of success. 

 

Does This Mimic Current Trends At All?

This success is attributed to the manner in which the cultural audit was conducted, as much as how the follow-on efforts continue to be carried out, because they all appear to be based on the following criteria: 

  1. Culture change builds on the current culture and values of the organization.
  2. It requires involvement and participation at all levels of the organization.
  3. It is systemic, requiring consideration of all organizational components and variables.
  4. It is planned and reflects a long-term commitment, as long as a continuous effort to inform and educate all the people in the organization about its rationale and process.
  5. It is stakeholder-oriented, which is to say that it is clearly geared to respond to, or anticipate and react to, the organization’s external environment.
  6. It has the visible commitment and support of top management (Stolovitch and Keeps, 1998, p. 348).

To be candid, usually I would read a list like this and consider it “pie in the sky fluff” that rarely sees the light of day, but having witnessed this criteria in action, I deem it wise advice for any organization seeking effective culture change.  This is especially important because of how often we read articles in the HPT literature that conclude with a caveat analogous to “Of course, for any of this to work, the culture has to be aligned to the change to begin with!”  If that’s true, then culture analysis is oft times the place to start.

 

Who Can Help?

Process consultant Edgar H. Schein, Ph.D. is quoted as saying, “There are only two ways to shift a paradigm:  by killing babies or by educating slowly" (personal correspondence with University of Maryland college professor, 1998).  That was Schein’s graphic way of expressing what it takes to effect change in organizational culture.  Any study of culture change should begin with Schein.

For students in Boise State’s IPT program, David Ripley teaches a seminar in Culture and Systems Change.  The textbook for the course -- Volume 4 of ISPI’s Performance Improvement Interventions Series, Culture and Systems Change, edited by Dean and Ripley -- is a comprehensive resource.  Other sources are listed in the References section of this report.

A host of companies that specialize in assessing and developing organizational culture were revealed in a recent online search.  One big player in the industry is EMERGE International (http://www.emergeinternational.com/index.html).  EMERGE uses their own Cultural Due Diligence® process, a systemic approach for evaluating organizational culture and providing long-term solutions.  EMERGE presented a workshop on their process at a recent ISPI Culture & Change Management Conference in Washington, DC.  EMERGE’s most recent workshop was conducted at the Annual Conference of the Society for Human Resource Management in September of this year.  Their workshop focused on how to

  1. Assess and define the 'right stuff' (both the quantitative and qualitative data)
  2. Gain "buy-in" from the Executive Team
  3. Create a process for eliminating gaps between "current state" and "future state"
  4. Involve employees in defining the values (behaviorally)
  5. Build in standards and accountabilities
  6. Use culture to drive positive business results.

EMERGE’s focus appears to be firmly grounded in sound HPT principles.

 Organizational change and culture issues are often associated with the field of organization development.  Another organization to join, beside ISPI, is the Organization Development Network (http://www.odnetwork.org).

 

REFERENCES

Stolovitch, H. & Keeps, E. (Eds.), (1998). Handbook of human performance. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Bennett, R. F. (1996, April), Career fear - a legacy from the sixties, USCG Academy Alumni Association Bulletin, 21-24.

 

 

OTHER SOURCES

Kotter, J. P. & Heskett, J. L. (1992). Corporate culture and performance. New York: The Free Press.

Schein, Edgar H. (1992). Organizational culture and leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1992.

Schein, E.H. (1999). The corporate culture survival guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

 

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