As an external consultant there is always a fine line between honoring “the way we do things here” and pushing for and guiding change. Many, if not most, organizations have a tie to processes, structure and communication that is hard to break. Here are some areas to keep in mind in terms of the status quo of cultural loyalty:
Group Think
Group think helps people with consistency, clarity and sameness (which is comforting if you keep your viewpoint narrow). It homogenizes to the point where almost everything is predictable. The longer the tenure for an employee the greater the need to stick to the norms-cultural loyalty.
It is surprising how many times at an individual level cultural loyalty (CL) is questioned. The questioning typically (especially if drawn out by a CM practitioner) produces smart, viable alternatives. If that person does not have authority or leverage those alternatives die quickly.
Internal Politics
Patterns appear over time in organizations that are a direct result of the jostling and wrestling for position by individuals. That positioning tends to work the best when the jostler follows the path of least resistance. That path is the road to the way we do things here. So you end up with a structure that rewards and reinforces the status quo.
Functional Loyalty
The same patterns but much harder to break occur at a functional level. Certain functions tend to have more leverage than others (usually because they bring in revenue which, on the surface at least, makes sense). Those functions then match their group think against others. What you end up with is a secondary level of loyalty to culture-functional loyalty. Which is a synonym for a silo.
Founder(s) Influence
The majority of the time the patterns that replicate within the silos and cultural pods in an organization are the result of the founder(s) initial vision, values and business direction. Emulating that package tends to move individuals up the ladder. The more that spreads the more group think builds and the harder to break the way we do things becomes. Another secondary level exists here when the organization gets big enough for the functional leaders to steer their own vision and approach.
Guiding change at the transformational/horizontal level requires the ability to frame the “make sense” communication in order to replace the CL that is holding back change and growth. In my own practice I have found that I must take the difficult step of working with leaders to tweak structure and process before trying to touch cultural and functional loyalty. The same pattern happens with the change process itself. Often there are underlying structural and process weaknesses that will make complete fulfillment of the end state close to impossible.
The fine line approach is to draw out the CL that makes collaboration, negotiating and compromise possible.
