In January of 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on take-off killing all seven crew, and grounding the American space program for two years. Of the exhaustive investigations that took place (that led to a significant number of changes for NASA, and how they conducted their business), perhaps the most important change was that for the first time, talking about changing corporate culture was fair game.
The engineers and investigators determined the technical causes of the explosion, but when they dug deeper to understand why those technical issues were not addressed in advance, they ended up in the uncomfortable place of changing corporate culture. It turns out NASA had a culture whereby many qualified people knew there was a significant risk of disaster, but none chose to voice those concerns, even if they would have been listened to.
I call this an “uncomfortable” conclusion because highly technical people in any organization want to discuss things they can see, touch and/or count. Changing corporate culture is something that nebulous and messy. It’s difficult to define, impossible to measure, and probably the most important element of performance in an organization — as NASA found out the hard way.
So how do you go about changing corporate culture?
You don’t.
Much like Jerry Seinfeld dominated television with a show about nothing, organizations need to get about doing what they do. I was recently in the NBC store in New York, more than a decade after Seinfeld left the air, and discovered that a significant portion of the wares were dedicated to Seinfeld’s “nothing”. The Soup Nazi, Vandalay Industries, and Kramer’s hair all testify to the enduring quality of Seinfeld’s “nothing”.
Changing corporate culture is a lot like the show about nothing. What people do, how they interact with each other, how they manage conflict, what gets rewarded, who gets promoted, how success is measured and a score of other things all add up to your corporate culture.
The silliest thing you can do is to declare a change in corporate culture to some virtue you read about at some other company. The culture you have now is a product of the things above. If you want to change your corporate culture, you need to address those things.
And don’t think it will happen in a hurry. It will be a decade more before Seinfeld is replaced at the NBC store.