Comstock's magazine 1119 - November 2019 | Page 28

n LEADERSHIP
NO EASY FIX
Changing an organization’s culture takes time and effort — and always starts at the top
BY Jessica Kriegel
DESPITE ALL THE TALK ABOUT CREAT-
ING AN IDEAL COMPANY CULTURE,
it continues to remain a mystery to
many executives. A string of happy
hours and team-building sessions is
not enough to carefully craft an ideal
organizational culture. Culture is a
complex system of many organiza-
tional variables, including strategy,
processes, leadership styles, empow-
erment, organizational structure, per-
28
comstocksmag.com | November 2019
sonalities, shared language and social
norms.
Organizational culture is the values,
beliefs and behaviors practiced in an
organization formed over time because
they are rewarded or punished by for-
mal and informal rules, rituals and be-
haviors. Or, to oversimplify it, culture is
“the way we do things around here.”
So, how does culture change happen?
It’s complex, it takes time, and there is no
one-size-fits-all solution. The following
is an example of culture change that hap-
pened over the course of multiple years;
hopefully, it will make the process a little
less mysterious. Details about my client’s
name and industry have been changed
for anonymity.
Foxclore, a rapidly growing organi-
zation in the biotech space, has 14,000
employees. Each team within Foxclore
has a unique organizational culture.