Culture change is perhaps the hardest challenge to be faced by any leader. It can evolve over time, with patience and commitment, but every successful change I have seen comes after a catalytic event of some sort.
Many years ago, I worked for a manufacturing business that had built a new factory in the west of Sydney, which had more than its fair share of teething problems. The production the factory was supposed to absorb and build upon came from an inner-city site that had been operating for almost 100 years.
In those years there had been built up a powerful culture of management Vs workers, and fierce demarcation battles between the many unions on the old site, several with only one or two members, desperately trying to build their position.
This toxic mixture was transferred to the new, automated site with the predictable results. Manufacturing productivity was appalling, labour relations non-existent, demarcation disputes ongoing, the place was on the brink of being closed as the biggest disaster since the Titanic.
In a desperate dispute, to make a point, someone (no charges were ever laid) resorted to arson in the warehouse. The damage was extensive, and the already hobbled ability to produce saleable product was almost destroyed.
However, it was a monumental catalyst for change.
In the middle of the night, I found myself driving a forklift, working shoulder to shoulder with warehouse and production staff clearing stock from the refrigerated warehouse into trucks for transport to outside storage.
This would have been absolutely unthinkable just 24 hours before.
Suddenly, everyone in the plant recognised that their jobs were about to go, forever. The unionised workforce recognised that those in so called ‘management’ were just people who wanted, like them, to do as good a job as they could. We found it was easy to communicate without the artificial barriers that had existed, and we all had a common purpose, to survive.
Within a few months, after enormous effort and collaborative changes unthinkable before the fire, the business had been transformed. The fire had been the catalyst for a determination to acknowledge the failures of the past, and to accept massive change was necessary, welcome, and in the interests of every stakeholder.
In a small way, this is what is needed in Australia.
A common purpose, clear and consistent communication, determination, and goodwill.
This does not mean there will not be fierce debates, and difficult decisions that need to be made, but it does mean that there is a general understanding of why those decisions were made.
After royally stuffing up the reaction to the fires in December 2019 and January 2020, the government recognised their failings when the Corona virus took hold. It served as a catalyst, and suddenly there was bi-partisan and general community agreement that change was needed.
We moved forward.
As things quietened down, the collaboration and goodwill dissipated, partisan politics and apparently ill-considered and reactive decisions taken by fragmenting politics at all levels re-emerged, driving people apart.
Question is, can we restore the emergent culture of goodwill and collaborative communication that served us well in the crisis? It is the same question commercial leaders need to ask of themselves after experiencing a catalytic event.
Do we have the leaders capable of driving the culture change necessary?
How do we assemble the resources necessary?
Can those with vested interests in the status quo, resistant to the changes, be shunted to the sidelines?
In the case of ‘Australia Inc’, failure to respond will leave all our children and grandchildren poorer: financially and emotionally.
Header cartoon credit: Dilbert, again. Scott Adams and his mate have a knack of hitting that vital nerve.
