Creating a High Performance Culture in less than 3 months: Case Study
By Tan Jit Khoon & Arthur Carmazzi
www.management-excellence.net www.directivecommunication.com www.carmazzi.net
Changing Organisational Culture has always been a great challenge because most people inherently resist change and deep held beliefs and values in people have to be dealt with. Traditional culture change programs involve creating policies and procedural changes which are supposed to create behavioural change leading to a new set of beliefs and values. This is usually a long drawn process which make maintaining buy in more difficult and may lead to some key individuals leaving causing disorder to the operations. This requires great patience and is an expensive process because of the disruptions. The long process also consumes great deal of leadership and management resources. Because it does not deal directly with individual and group psychology, implementation is often an uphill battle because of the inherent resistance to change.
It will be ideal to change organisational culture in the shortest possible time because it is easier to build on success. Everyone will want to join a champion team. But, is it possible to create a high performance culture in less than 3 months? Yes, if the Organisational Culture Change program is based on individual and group psychology. The case study presented as follows was for a flagship property for an International Hotel chain. The Culture Change Program was based on Directive Communication Psychology.
Background
The objective was to create a unified and exclusive service culture like no other hotels in line with the Group’s philosophy. The hotel was due to be opened in 1 month. At that time, there were a total of 280 staff from 32 different countries with ongoing hiring. Though experience in the hospitality industry, each individual had different service styles and skill set from their previous employers. The short time frame post a huge challenge for the diverse group of employees and created tensions between various departments. Further, the temporary staff accommodation is not comparable to those of the established hotels and that created resentment for staff, especially those who joined because of the group’s reputation.
The Approach
Based on Directive Communication Psychology, there are three underlying main factors that affect people’s behaviours. First factor is their perspective of their environment. Next is their emotional drivers. As much as people would like to think that they make all decision logically, the truth is every decision people make and every action they take is linked to at least one of eight emotional needs. Third factor is the reaction of that environment to their behaviour. These factors are all interrelated. For maximum effectiveness, all factors will have to be dealt with together.
The pre-requisite of the program is the strong commitment form senior management. The program started with understanding the objective and the clear guidelines set by the senior management. Selected employees at all level were interviewed for discovery of issues surrounding the organisation. Besides the usual “we want more money”, some of the issues were tension between managers and subordinates, underutilised open door policy. During this phrase, the consultants had also identified 24 positive and negative key influencers (unofficial leaders) that have the power to affect the group.
The key influencers were divided into 2 groups and trained by the consultants on Directive Communication Psychology. The training process incorporated six one day experiential training followed by one day onsite implementation and dissemination of experience. The training incorporated psychological tools to elevate the awareness of how people process the world around them, and the emotional drivers that motivate their actions or inactions. This awareness will affect their perception leading to change in attitude and thus behaviour. In the experiential environment, key influencers became aware of the effects they have had on their environment and how that had affected their lives and success. They started taking responsibility for their world and no longer blame others for their problems. The games and tools used in the training had also built a strong bond among the key influencers from different levels across various departments creating a strong foundation for inter department cooperation.
During the onsite implementation assisted by facilitators, the key influencers work with 5 others (including their superiors) to disseminate their learning experience. Those 5 will in turn work with 5 others. During these sessions, issues discovered earlier were addressed through creation of a unified identity, 24 guiding principles and numerous improvement projects. The key influencers become the representatives for the people. This created a positive chain reaction throughout the entire hotel.
The grand finale was a half day session where the entire organisation were present to see the key influencers perform scenes from work environment that all can relate to and how the obstacles were overcome with the new insights acquired throughout the program. Key influencers also presented the improvement projects proposed to the senior management. Senior management accepted all the proposals as they were all within the guidelines setup in the first phrase.
The Results
The end result was euphoria for the entire organisation. The management achieved their objectives. The hotel opened on time. During the soft opening, they received many compliments about all the employees on their energy, motivation and excellent service. The people felt totally empowered and that they were part owner of the hotel. Furthermore, the knowledge they gained not only benefited their professional lives, they had also improved their relationship with their family and friends. 5 months later, employees were still volunteering for extra duties (without pay) and were still passionately embracing their unified culture.
