Manage Organizational Expectations For The Pace Of Culture Change

Cultural transformations are hard, and they take a long time. Companies will find success more likely if they set reasonable expectations for the difficult road ahead and the pace of change. To do that, CX leaders should:

Analogize organizational culture change to individual behavior change

While the challenge of culture change is abstract and hard to internalize for individuals, behavior change is not. Culture changes are composed of a collection of individuals changing their behaviors. Employees can identify with the difficulty of personal behavior change. In our lives, we have all tried to shed bad behaviors like smoking or a poor diet and adopt good behaviors like reading or regular exercise.

Reinforce that the transformation will take at least five years

Make sure that all employees, especially executives, know that they are signing up for a long-term project. Customize the timeline in this report to create your own version of a high-level road map that highlights major milestones of the transformation. Be transparent about which metrics you will use to gauge the success of the transformation and what degree of improvement you’re looking for in those metrics. For example, SGI asked two questions of employees to gauge their awareness and belief in the insurer’s customer promises: 1) Do you understand our customer promises? and 2) Do you think we’re ready to deliver on these promises? SGI set a threshold of 90% of employees giving a top-two box rating on both questions before it would share its customer promises publicly.