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Tools of Culture Change Management

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) helps an organisation to focus on and grow the successful things happening in the organisation. It thus

builds a very upbeat and positive approach to transformation. AI is said to be one of the fastest ways of achieving cultural change in

an organisation.

When to use it

AI is a philosophy built on developing the positive within an organisation, rather than around traditional 'problem solving'

methodologies. The approach can be used throughout the transformation programme, but does not work if the organisation has

already decided on its solution or needs an immediate fix.

Who to use it with and how

AI can be used on a small scale, for example in helping those leading the organisation to plan, and within teams. It can also be used

on a large scale, across the organisation.

For example, managers and staff can be trained as AI facilitators and supported in running AI sessions with other staff. Or it can be

used as part of other activities, as at Lincolnshire Childrens Services. At all of their service improvement days, staff have been

asked to report briefly on their stories of success. This means that on these days they start with something like 250 stories

illustrating what is being achieved to create a very positive and confident context for future planning.

Power and impact

AI looks at what works well and uses that as a foundation for future development. It is essentially life-affirming rather than deficit-

based and this has the effect of increasing the amount of energy and enthusiasm in the organisation. In seeking to identify the key

things that make a difference, it ensures that as change happens those elements are brought forward into the future, and help to

shape service provision

Stoke City Council were the first local authority in the UK to engage on a full corporate Appreciative Inquiry:

We initiated an Appreciative Inquiry intervention and drafted in Local Government Improvement and Development to

support us in a Building on the Best programme. This was designed to enable the council to discover more about itself

and to use this knowledge to motivate and inspire staff and partners to deliver excellent services.

"The design principles from Building on the Best have now also been built into the councils People Management

strategy. They are used to improve staff and management competencies, built into corporate learning and development

programmes and used to provide an ongoing resource toolkit for managers.

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Schein's cultural analysis

A tool to help transformation leaders better understand the organisations culture as a basis for planning the transformation

programme, Edgar Scheins Cultural Analysis tool focuses on looking at organisational culture at three levels:

y Artifacts: visible organisational structures and processes what you see, hear and feel.y Espoused values: the organisations strategies, goals, priorities, philosophiesy Basic underlying assumptions: unconscious, taken for granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings

Schein says this tool should only be used as part of a transformation programme and that doing a cultural analysis for its own sake

is at best boring and at worst dangerous.

He also says that undertaking a cultural analysis is complex, probes deeply into the organisation, needs skillful handling and is not

right for every organisation:

"If someone says we want to do a cultural analysis, I spend quite a bit of time probing. Why? What for? And what will you do with

it? Sometimes this will lead to a workshop dealing with culture, but that same set of questions may lead to some other form of

consultation or counselling."

The techniques should be used by the transformation leadership team with managers and frontline staff at the beginning of the

transformation programme.

Process

1. Bring together groupings of managers and or frontline staff to discuss organisational culture and begin to identify some of

their own assumptions. Give a short input on organisational culture and the distinctions between artifacts, espoused values

and underlying assumptions. Follow this with a brainstorming session around what they see as the artifacts of their

organisation.

2. If there are enough newcomers to the organisation they should form a separate group and report back first as they are

likely to be the people best able to identify the organisations culture.

3. Artifacts are things such as the office layout, the mode of dress, status symbols, and so on. Capture these on flip charts.4. Follow this by a session to encourage the participants to observe some of the values that lie behind the artifacts. Write these

down on a flipchart.

5. The facilitator should begin to push for some of the underlying assumptions by noting areas of consistency and areas of

inconsistency between artifacts and espoused values.

6. Discuss with the group if the assumptions they have noted form a pattern.

7. Break participants up into smaller groups and get them to identify some more assumptions and then classify them into two

categories: those cultural assumptions that will aid the organisation in getting to its goals and those cultural assumptions that

will hinder the organisation in getting got its goals. This self-diagnosis is then reported back to the total group and analysed

with the help of the facilitator to determine what steps might be appropriate. In this discussion it is crucial that the facilitator

helps the group to focus on the useful parts of the culture. They should help the group to recognise what the consequences

are of saying that they want to change those parts of the culture that they may view as unhelpful.

8. From these workshops a series of actions can be developed to align the organisational culture to the strategic direction and

goals of the organisation. Through this process frontline staff are involved in owning both the diagnosis and the interventions