Executive Summary

Aligning Corporate Culture with Strategic Change was commissioned by Business Intelligence as part of its ongoing research programme into best practice thinking and developments in change management frameworks and systems.

Through ten focused chapters and 11 dedicated case studies, this Report explains how exemplary organizations throughout the world, and from differing industry and service sectors, are successfully transforming corporate culture in support of strategic or major change objectives. Indeed, the Report shows that understanding and leveraging the power of corporate culture is pivotal to long-term change success.

Throughout the Report, the advice and guidance of culture change consultants and academics is interwoven with the experiences of practitioners in the field. The intention is to provide readers with a rounded view of how to address and overcome the myriad, and often hidden, challenges in a culture change effort. A snapshot of each chapter follows.

Chapter 1: Introduction
This Chapter explains why understanding corporate culture is critical to succeeding with major change initiatives, stressing that most change failure is usually due to cultural problems. It looks at several definitions of corporate culture and provides a working definition for this Report. It also provides an overview of the key learning points from the Report.
A case study on Continental Airlines demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 2: Corporate Culture - The Key to Successful Business Transformation
Chapter 2 explains why a culture change effort has to be in support of strategic or major change initiatives. It examines research that suggests that culture has a powerful impact on bottom-line performance and shows that possessing a strong culture is not in itself a guarantee of success. Rather, cultures must be adaptive to changing marketplace and customer demands. It also shows that exemplary organizations actively orchestrate 'winning' cultures.
A case study on the Inland Revenue Accounts Office, Cumbernauld, Scotland, demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 3: 'Culture and Change Management' - Exclusive Research
This Chapter details the findings from the'Culture and Change Management' survey, which was exclusively commissioned for this Report, of how organizations from Europe, North America and the rest of the world are actively managing and shaping corporate cultures. Based on the real life experiences of 236 responding organizations, the survey shows how well corporate cultures are defined and understood within organizations, how actively the culture is managed and how successful companies have been in changing their cultures. This Chapter provides a comparison against success objectives between companies with 'extremely well defined' cultures and those with 'very poorly defined' cultures.
A case study on Millennium Inorganic Chemicals, a survey respondent, demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 4: Leading Culture Change - The Role of the CEO and Senior Management Team
This Chapter explains why the leadership of the CEO and the senior management team is the single most critical success factor in a culture change effort. It explains why corporate leaders have to invest significant amounts of time and energy into a culture change effort and how they must personally live and role model the new cultural ethos. Also explored is the importance of vision, mission and value statements in providing direction and behavioural guidelines for the new culture.
A case study on KFC demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 5: Assessing the Cultural Challenges
Chapter 5 explains why it is judicious to assess the existing culture prior to a cultural change effort. Doing so will help senior management pinpoint the key cultural challenges ahead and therefore enable them to draw a roadmap from the existing to desired cultural states. The Chapter looks at several cultural assessment tools available and shows that central to culture change success is understanding the power of organizational subcultures and a company's 'unwritten' rules of behaviour.
Case studies on Superdrug and DSM Resins demonstrate best practice.

Chapter 6: Frameworks for Implementing and Driving Culture Change
This Chapter shows why it is vital to involve the whole of the employee-base when rolling out a cultural change initiative; key phases being 'unfreezing' the existing culture and 'refreezing' the new. It shows why piloting a culture change programme is often beneficial prior to organization-wide rollout and the key role played by change facilitators and champions deep inside the company. It also explains why it is crucial to ensure that corporate measurement systems reinforce the new cultural ethos.
Case studies on BT Northern Ireland and Siemens KWU demonstrate best practice.

Chapter 7: Aligning Human Resources Management with Corporate Culture
This Chapter explains why human resource systems must be aligned and reinforced with the new culture. It shows why organizations must alter recruitment, performance appraisal, career development, recognition and incentives, and compensation mechanisms, and examines the challenges of each. The Chapter also shows why it is often injudicious to devolve responsibility for a corporate culture to the HR function, while showing how exemplary HR functions play a crucial enabling role in driving culture change deep into the organization.
A case study on Hyundai Car (UK) Ltd, demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 8: The Communications Imperative: Messages, Media and Practices
Chapter 8 shows why internal communication mechanisms are vitally important in delivering the culture change message throughout the organization. It looks at the myriad of communication tools available: both traditional, eg, cascade briefings and newsletters, and new, eg, corporate intranets. This Chapter explains why communication mechanisms must be mutually reinforcing and that messages must be honest and timely, and clearly support the new cultural ethos.
A case study on Ernst & Young demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 9: Mergers and Acquisitions - The Cultural Challenges
This Chapter explores the many cultural challenges within merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. Indeed, it shows that M&A failure - and failure figures are frighteningly high - is normally due to cultural, not strategic, reasons. It shows the importance of cultural due diligence prior to the merger or acquisition and explains why managing the cultural factors should be a key focus for a long time after organizations formally join.
A case study on Lehigh Portland Cement Company demonstrates best practice.

Chapter 10: Conclusions and Key Learning Points
The final Chapter summarizes the key learning points from the Report and prognosticates on what a 'high performing culture' will look like in the early years of the new millennium.