Culture and change management – exclusive research

Executive Summary

1.     Entitled 'Culture and Change Management', this survey set out to discover what importance organizations give corporate culture, how well managed culture is and the key cultural change enablers.

2.     A total 236 organizations, 159 from Europe and 79 from USA/Rest of the World, responded to the survey.

3.     Almost 12 per cent of respondents claimed they had an 'extremely well defined' culture, and the same percentage claimed a 'very poorly defined' culture. Tellingly, the former group performed better in virtually all subsequent questions.

4.     Over a third of organizations scored 3 (on a scale of 1, change resistant, to 5, highly adaptable). This suggests that most organizations have some way to go before they create adaptive cultures. Even those with 'extremely well defined' cultures only scored a mean of 3.32.

5.     Companies with 'extremely well defined' cultures are much more likely to discuss culture formally than those with 'very poorly defined' cultures.

6.     A total of 72 per cent of companies with 'extremely well defined' cultures claimed that responsibility for culture resided at a senior level, against just 40 per cent of companies with 'very poorly defined' cultures.

7.     Interestingly, 50 per cent of companies with 'very poorly defined' cultures devolve responsibility for culture to the HR function.

8.     Well-defined corporate values play a key role in building successful cultures.

9.     Companies with 'extremely well defined' cultures are far more likely to possess cultures that support strategic objectives than those with 'very poorly defined' cultures.

10.   Forty per cent of organizations claim to actively manage corporate culture.

11.   Almost 60 per cent of respondents have attempted to change their corporate culture.

12.   Communication mechanisms played an important role in changing the corporate culture.

13.   Respondents seems fairly, but not overly, satisfied with the role played by consultants in the change effort.

14.   Senior management role modeling new behaviours was by the most important enabler of successful culture change.

15.   Companies with 'extremely well defined' cultures were massively more likely to succeed against their change goals than those with 'very poorly defined' cultures. Indeed, just 10 per cent of the latter group claimed to have exceeded their goals.

16.   The importance of culture change has grown significantly over the past five years and is set to increase further over the next five.

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