When I took over a company as CEO early in my career the com

When I took over a company as CEO early in my career, the company was a $2MM revenue company losing $0.5MM a year. It had great technology based on the owner\'s patents, and had a terrific R&D department. In fact, the company culture was R&D focused, with an attitude of \"we will invent and make the best, and sell what we want.\" The sales and marketing departments were under staffed and under funded, and pretty much ignored by senior management. R&D did what they wanted to do, regardless of what the customer wanted. The culture was fine for R&D, but the company was almost out of business. A change in cultures was required if it was to survive.

When I left the company 3 years later, it was a $25MM revenue company making $5.2MM per year.

What kind of actions do you think needed to be done to change the culture of the company?

Solution

The steps to change corporate culture will stay similar in all kind of company situations. You can take 4 steps to do the same, as described below:

1. Identify the new culture: Start by determining what the structure and processes will be of your new culture. Are you looking to decentralize operations and create more decision making autonomy? Or are you trying to drive more creative innovation? Regardless of your goal, it’s important to map out the structure and how processes will flow. A big corporation with multiple office locations in the country looking to create more autonomy, might ask corporate managers to not interfere with the decision made by the management of the local office. By putting that structure into place, managers would hopefully learn to get out of operations and let local offices determine the best courses for action in their specific markets. By allowing local offices to operate under their own accord, you start to empower them to make those decisions, and as a different crisis comes about, they’ll learn to solve their own problems and become more autonomous.

2. Focus on the people: As you’re trying to build these new processes and structures throughout your organization, don’t forget to keep your employees in the loop. Make sure that they are kept up-to-date on training and have all of the knowledge they need to be successful within the new company culture. Also, don’t be afraid to bring in new employees who can fit within this new culture and bring a fresh perspective. New employees can be help reinforce the company culture change, and keeping your existing employees trained and enthusiastic about the changes will foster change and cooperation.

3. Reward employees for the behaviors you want: You’re trying to drive change, so why not reward your employees for displaying the behaviors that will help be catalysts for change within your organization. Changing your company culture will require buy-in from your employees, and there’s no better way to get them want to change the culture, then by rewarding them for helping them change it.

4. Review, revise, optimize: Throughout the change process, make sure to continuously ask for and receive feedback and evaluations on the performance of the culture change. Understand what’s working and what’s not. Then, begin to revise your change processes and structure until you get everyone to buy-in to the new company culture. It’s never easy to change your company culture, but consistently evaluating your progress will help ensure that you create a company culture that every employee is happy with.