Effecting Positive Behaviour and Culture Change

Continuing on the change management theme of my last post how do you effect positive behaviour and culture change in your organisation?

Values-based employee recognition helps manage this change process by clearly showing employees how they demonstrate the company values in their daily efforts; how doing so benefits themselves, their teams, the company, and the customers; and how their efforts will be acknowledged and appreciated by both their peers and their managers.

This model for behaviour change through values-based recognition follows five steps.

1) Establish a clear ambition to unify efforts, then build your recognition programme around that ambition. We encourage Global Strategic Recognition, which rewards employees for reflecting the culture and desired behaviours that get needed results, and not just the result itself. More on this here.

2) Secure commitment from the top. The CEO must back the initiative and directly secure the commitment of his direct reports. Quantum Performance cites a 60% failure rate of corporate change initiatives that do not have the CEO and his direct reports strongly committed to the initiatives.

3) Create a sense of ownership. McKinsey’s model for behaviour change illustrates that the “energy needed to drive change comes through a sense of ownership of the answer. When we choose for ourselves, we are more committed to the outcome.”

4) Monitor, measure and evaluate against these programme goals and values-based behaviours. This acts as a “lagging indicator,” enabling leadership to intervene in low-performing areas with targeted training and development initiatives or other actions to reinforce desired values-based behavioural performance.

5) Offer the reward of choice. A final critical component to generating and sustaining excitement and engagement among participants is rewarding desired behaviours in a way that is personal, meaningful and culturally relevant for them.

Does this work in practice? Frank Appel, CEO of Deutsche Post DHL, seems to agree in this article from the Financial Times. This article in European CEO also supports these tenets for successful positive change.