September 24, 2009

Responding to questions on LinkedIn can be interesting when it allows you a chance help someone with an issue or simply to organize some of your current thinking and put it out there for others to see. If you think your viewpoint is the correct one (and admit it, we do. At least I do until proven otherwise!), that’s why you post. Others answer the same question, sometimes a few people, sometimes a dozen or more. It can be informative to read the other posts. I often get some good ideas, but other times my original thoughts are reinforced.

The latter happened recently. There was a question posed asking essentially which comes first, innovation or culture. It was framed as a chicken vs. egg question and I answered this one easily. In fact, I didn’t really see where there was even a question. Culture must come first, as all business behaviors are an outgrowth of the current corporate culture. I’m very confident on this one.

I was surprised to see a number of responders who claimed innovation comes first, and then the culture. Where do they think the innovation was born? Innovation is not spawned in a vacuum. Innovation, or strategy or succession planning or whatever you want to talk about is created by people in a particular work environment, ie, the culture. Culture influences the beliefs and behaviors of everyone at work, so if an innovation of some kind is announced, you will see the cultural imprint in that initiative.

Culture is discussed all the time these days in business literature and yet there are some fundamental misunderstandings of what culture really is and how it operates. I admit to being something of a determinist here, and influenced by my anthropology background. But I stand by my assertions based on my understanding of culture from research and client observation. I love to have competing views thrown my way, as I’m always surprised at how much I still have to learn and how dumb I was a month ago. But right now I’m not chicken to take this position.

September 22, 2009

A common complaint about conventional training programs is that after a while it’s all forgotten. Especially for the so-called “soft skills.” The workbooks and binders languish on the shelves and old behaviors have returned. In some cases they never left. In any case, the questions begin to fly: What was accomplished? Why do we bother? Why doesn’t training stick?

I’ve done many, many workshops and training modules over the years, most of them custom designed for various clients. Sometimes I’ve been very optimistic that the training will stick, in others not very much. I see a number of problems at work here, but it really comes down to issues of cultural and individual change. We’ve all heard the stories and conventional wisdom about change and I’m not going to get into that here (other than say it’s not always accurate).

We conduct training to change processes and people’s behavior. Companies do not change easily unless the leadership has created a culture that values continual learning and improvement. The culture must support this; it must simply be part of how things are done and if you work here we expect it of you, too. Unless there is a commitment at the very top to this, communicating and leading by example, no one else will take it seriously and training will never produce the collective change wanted.

On the individual level, there has to be an equal commitment to change and improvement. Ideally the culture should support it and that will influence the individual to think and behave accordingly. However, I have seen individuals in my workshops incorporate what they learn in an unsupportive environment simply because they want to. That’s admirable. It shows initiative.

Companies spend millions on training each year. Unless they create a culture that values and integrates change and improvement, that’s millions wasted. Don’t listen to odd HR jargon like “extended learning systems;” build a culture that values change and rewards improvement.