Practical Guide for Culture Change

1. Dawson Consulting Group
OVERVIEW
Culture is a key ingredient in your ability to become and remain competitive. It is a fundamental capability required for successful
execution of your business strategy and an ‘engine of value creation. There are many successful cultures, but research tells us that:
Clearly defined cultures based on strongly-held values are more effective than those less-well articulated.
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There are no ‘bad cultures’, only aligned and mis-aligned cultures. The degree of culture alignment is an accurate
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measure of organizational effectiveness and, ultimately, value creation resulting from strategy execution.
There are certain ‘fixed’ elements of a culture, but given proper motivation and the right tools, any culture can be shaped
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– sometimes substantially – in a new direction.
The culture of your company is that consistent pattern of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors shared by members of the organization.
Like the ‘air that we breathe’ culture is largely invisible to members of the organization, while powerfully shaping all decisions,
attitudes, and actions. Some elements of your culture are set into the fabric of your company’s industry and history: these may be
difficult to change. Other elements of your culture – how agile and responsive you are, what you reward or punish, how disciplined
you are, just to name a few of the myriad other elements – are indeed amenable to change.
Effective executive leaders should be asking themselves these questions:
Given our forward vision, and the business strategy that will take us there, what kind of culture do we need to
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successfully execute that strategy?
What kind of culture do we have today? And how big are the gaps between the current ‘as is’ and the required ‘to be’?
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In light of answers to these questions, how big a change must be undertaken? How deep is my own and my team’s
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commitment to leading and modeling that change from the top?
Why focus on culture?
 You have overhauled or refreshed your business strategy – how well does the existing culture
support and align this new strategy?
 The leadership of the company has changed - new values and direction from the top are needed.
 Changes in ownership, merger or acquisition draw attention to fragmented cultures that need to be
integrated and unified.
 Internal employee attitudes or evidence from external competitors draw attention to a culture that is
out of alignment or unsuccessful as a medium for executing the business strategy.
APPROACH AND FRAMEWORK
Like visiting an exotic foreign land, a company’s cultural characteristics are dramatically visible to the new arrival – that external
view is an important piece of Dawson Consulting Group’s value add. There are three challenges that make changing organizational
culture exceptionally difficult: First, you have to recognize what elements of the culture need to change, blending strategic drives
with core values into a clear set of objectives; a destination. Second, these high priority drivers must be crystallized into a change
roadmap and observable behaviors so that progress can be measured. Third, this roadmap and associated metrics must be driven
down into the ‘people infrastructure’ of the company in order to create focus and accountability on required behavior changes at a
very pragmatic level.

2. METHOD
Like all travel from a starting point to a destination, culture change must begin with an assessment and roadmap to guide the way.
There are many triggers that lead to a focus on culture change, successful efforts always include these essential elements:
1. A destination vision with accompanying roadmap detailing the journey and related metrics: what are the values and
behaviors that ‘operationalize’ the new culture?
Destination Roadmap
2. Executive leadership – both individual and team - fully
committed to consistent modeling of new behaviors and
Consistent Leadership Example
open to course corrections when the talk fails to line up
with the walk.
Human Resource Levers
3. A fully functioning human resources capability. After the
destination vision and leadership modeling, the primary levers
of culture change are mostly human resources processes: performance management, competency-based
leadership development and training, and well-tuned reward systems. Transactional HR staff must develop into strategic
internal consultants to the change – complementing the ‘what’ of the change with leadership on the ‘how’.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND RESULTS
We have helped dozens of clients over 20 years shape and transform their organizational culture to be accelerators of business
strategy. Dawson Consulting Group has developed a unique blend of tools and methods that focus on both broad enterprise
objectives, with continuing linkage back to individual executive and team behaviors. The best culture change roadmap in the world
is useless without executive behaviors that model the new values and behaviors. In fact, it is worse than useless, because it creates
hope and then cynicism about real change. A successful culture change can take as little as 18 months or as long as 5 years. A new
or early stage culture is more of a ‘blank page’ and there is less baggage to unload. A long standing legacy culture must also
contend with overcoming the resistance of the status quo before it can change, which often requires turnover of leadership – always a
lengthy and painful process. Working with Dawson Consulting Group, you can expect:
1. A proven set of culture-change tools, methods based on best practices and 20 years of varied experience
2. A clear focus in the form of the Culture Change Roadmap.
3. Practical and explicit mechanisms to create and maintain accountability for executive behavior.
4. An integrated model that blends business strategy, broad enterprise change, with focused executive development.
ABOUT DAWSON CONSULTING GROUP
Dawson Consulting Group is an organizational effectiveness firm, founded in 1989, focused on helping organizations align
culture with strategy through optimization of executives, leadership teams, and the key processes and structures they are
responsible for. The firm is composed of senior professionals with background in psychology and human resources. Office
locations in Honolulu, Silicon Valley and New York.
Dr. Dawson’s forthcoming book: Culture as Engine of Value Creation: Five Critical Success Factors will be published by
Stanford University Press in late 2009. It is a practical handbook for CEO’s on how to shape organizational culture to optimize
business strategy.
© Dawson Consulting Group
830 Covington Road, Suite A, Belmont, CA 94002
cdawson@DawsonConsult.com 650.773.2925 www.DawsonConsult.com