Attitude, Behavior, Culture: The ABCs of Organizational Change
“If you want to make something successful, you have to set a culture”
-Suresh GP
The Importance of Attitude, Behavior, and Culture
In his presentation during the second day of BRMConnect 2018, Suresh GP spoke about powerful, yet often overlooked, contributors to business value. Attitude, Behavior, and Culture (ABCs) differ from other areas of business because they represent intangibles that cannot be shifted with conversation alone. Individuals must take it upon themselves to change.
In recent years, organizational culture has remained at the forefront of business concerns, and for good reason. Employees must buy into the mission of an organization and fit with its culture to feel empowered enough to optimize business value. However, before you can think about getting to C, you must take care of A and B first.
Suresh GP
An individual’s attitude shapes their habits and behavior. And group behavior ultimately influences an organization’s culture. So, to improve your culture, you must first focus on changing people’s attitudes.
Utilize Value Mapping
The process for influencing attitude starts with a high-level business analysis on identifying value leakage. Assess the ABCs of your current operations and determine how a failure within these areas affects your business. Does the failure lead to a loss of revenue? Negative brand image? Or perhaps an increase in time-to-market?
Once you’ve identified these gaps through value mapping, focus next on generating solutions that will produce long-term impact. The BRM Body of Knowledge (BRMiBOK) serves as a valuable resource to accomplish this.
If you are a Professional Member of BRM Institute, you can find the BRMiBOK book here.
If you are not a Professional Member, you can become one here!
Subsequently, utilize the tools in the BRMiBOK to influence the attitudes of your employees. Because you identified value leakage earlier, you will better understand your ideal value-enhancing organizational culture. And this will provide insight into the necessary methods and techniques for shaping attitude.
Encourage Transparency
After you’ve begun the process of solving for value leakage, good communication is key for establishing trust with employees, strategic partners, and peers. Maintain full transparency about the culture you’re seeking to cultivate and why it’s necessary.
Finally, outline the behaviors and attitudes you’d like stakeholders to adopt for achieving that shared vision. By getting everyone on board, this encourages buy-in. Naturally, motivated employees will innovate and bring new perspectives to the table, which ultimately increases business value.
