Why Culture Change Efforts FailAccording to Philip Atkinson, in How to Become a Change Master, as many as 90% of major culture initiatives fail.  Without leadership, there is no change.History of PROSAFE Culture AssessmentsOne of the first projects I ever worked on for PROSAFE was facilitating a culture assessment for the US Navy. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld had a mishap reduction policy for the military and we were able to participate in this effort through facilitation of our culture assessment process at various Navy bases across the country. For the past 20 years I have been heavily involved in culture assessments from the military, to chemical refineries, to various forms of construction companies from subcontractors to GCs.It has been a highly enlightening experience. On one side of the fence, I was immersing myself in the laws and regulations, and equipment and technology related to the safety profession. On the other side of the fence I was learning so much about culture from the people who perform the work and those that manage the work. It was amazing to me how the perceptions of the frontline were very different than the intentions of upper management. Where did middle management fall? Right in the middle. Most often, they shared some of the frustrations of the frontline combined with some of the great intentions of upper management.So why do the majority of culture change efforts fail?Many times, upper management doesn’t really understand what drives culture, how to change culture, or how hard and slow culture change actually is. This is not placing judgment on management. They simply don’t know what they don’t know. One time I had a client call for some training services and after some conversation on the type of training needed the client made this statement, “I don’t want a safety program I want a safety culture”. Again, I am not placing judgment, just bringing to light the lack of awareness that may exist. The truth is, that client already had a safety culture. The words he used just didn’t match the thought he was having. The thought he was having was that he wanted a more improved safety culture than the one that currently existed in the organization.I’m paraphrasing here but I’ve heard John Maxwell explain it like this: When companies say they want a culture, they already have one. What they really want is an intentional culture. What they currently have is an unintentional culture. An intentional culture is a constant uphill climb.So let’s provide a little insight into what effective culture change efforts look like along with some struggles that companies may experience along the way.Culture change is a Top-Down effort with a vision to become Bottom-Up.Many organizations focus on the frontline employees when they want to change their culture. This is expected when the culture they want to change is the culture they see in their employees. Management is also looking at various departments in other ways on a frequent basis. How is this department performing financially, quality wise, safety performance, etc.? It’s only natural for management to look down the org chart when wanting to make a culture shift. But unfortunately that is the least effective effort to implement. Employees and middle managers are products of the management driven culture.Consider this example; I have worked with several different subcontractors that work for most of the main large general contractors in our area. I always ask them, “Which general contractor has the strongest safety culture? Which has the weakest?” It’s interesting how the answers are almost always the same.These projects consist of several hundred workers at any given time. The greatest percentage of warm bodies on the project are subcontractors. A very small percentage of human beings on these projects are general contractor management. Who drives the culture the most? The small group of managers at the top.Changing culture starts at the very top; from there it flows into middle management and finally arrives at the front line. Many organizations want an employee driven culture, but it starts at the top.Culture change is a wide arching overall approach vs. a targeted effortCulture change is strategic, not tactical. You can’t fix a strategic problem with a tactical approach. Implementing tactical approaches, such as new programs, does not achieve the wide-ranging strategy of changing culture. How a program is implemented and its success is directly tied to the status of the current culture. It’s easy to fall into the targeted approach trap. If management feels that the problem with the culture is select groups of employees, then it is only natural for them to try to change these small groups of employees. But again, these small groups of employees are products of the current culture, not drivers of the culture bus.Culture Change Is SlowThis requires patience. In our “right now” world it is hard to develop the patience, celebrate the small wins and give the effort and time required to see the change. With our culture assessment clients we always recommend they wait at least 3-4 years before seeing any positive results in a future assessment. Let’s say upper management decides to come up with a strong plan for changing culture. First they may come up with some required leadership, or coaching, or human error training for upper management and a separate version for middle managers. Developing the training plan, getting everyone through the training and then seeing the results of that training at the frontline level could take at least a year to even see a hint of it.Training alone will not create a significant cultural shift. After the training, supervisors will most likely need coaching in the field to reinforce the concepts presented in the training. The time and resources for an effort such as this are great. For the frontline employee to actually witness these efforts in the field will take time.Real, intentional culture change is slow……and requires a lot of patience.Change Is HardIt actually goes against the way our brains are wired. To make a change initiative a habit or normal behavior within the culture requires doing it 10,000 times, not 10, not 100. This actually requires  creating a new neural pathway in the brain that becomes preferred over the old behavior.If we send management to a class on effective coaching techniques it won’t result in effective coaches. A class is a great start but it is only one small effort made toward the change. It just generates awareness to coaching techniques. The attendees of the class have to do the actual coaching in the field, get feedback from someone with expertise on the matter and continue to make it a normal behavior in their day to day activities. There must also be true accountability in some form for these new desired behaviors.Great culture change efforts are never a one and done approach. They are focused so much more on the journey than on the destination.Culture change is combining a technical approach with an emotional approachThere are technical things that need to be addressed within a culture change effort. Maybe how purchasing is handled, systems that don’t wo...

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