#380: Rebuilding Organizational Culture: A Step-by-Step Guide for Leaders

A tornado can level a town in seconds, be prepared and patient when rebuilding

Many things can cause cultural decline within an organization. It is not a single event. However, one day, you wake up and it feels like a tornado just hit, and you realize that you need to rebuild from the ground up. It's daunting, but like any other major project, you eat an elephant one bite at a time. 

The time required to rebuild an organization's culture can vary significantly based on several factors, including the extent of the cultural decline, the size of the organization, and the commitment of leadership and employees to the change process. For a small to medium-sized business, the cultural transformation process generally takes 12 to 24 months. Here's a rough timeline:

Months 1-3: Assessment and Planning

Acknowledge the Problem: Leadership acknowledges the cultural decline. Look in the mirror to place blame and through a window to give praise. Take ownership of the problem because, like an old saying about decay, "The fish rots from the head down."

Conduct a Cultural Assessment: Gather data through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Talk to the team and get their opinions. Find out what they think the organization's number one problem is. Ask them what they would like to see in the future. 

Define a Clear Vision: Develop and communicate a vision for the desired culture. Vision statements do not have to be poetic; they have to be precise. If you want a culture built on core values of integrity, trust, and open communication, then say it. Don’t spend time making it sound like a work of art. It needs to reflect YOU.

Months 4-6: Early Implementation

Leadership Commitment: Leaders begin to model desired behaviors and communicate the vision consistently. One of the most important aspects of leadership is saying what you'll do and then doing what you say. If leadership fails to exhibit accountability, for example, it will fail to implement that as a core value. 

Engage Employees: Involve employees in discussions about cultural change and solicit their input. Continue talking to the employees and begin a feedback loop.

Revise Policies and Practices: Start identifying and revising policies and practices that need alignment with the new culture. With the engagement and the feedback loop, implement changes and adaptations to the plan. 

Months 7-12: Building Momentum

Training and Development: Implement training programs and workshops to support the new cultural attributes. If your new vision includes three or four new core values, find or develop training programs to teach and reinforce these behaviors. 

Engage Employees: Continue involving employees in the process and empower them to take ownership of the change. They must feel part of the process; more than they think it, they must see that their input is valued. 

Monitor Progress: Establish mechanisms to monitor progress through feedback and performance metrics regularly. How can you set up a metric to monitor any of the core values? I've written on this many times in the past. Determine how you can quantify or objectively evaluate behaviors, actions, and performance. 

Months 13-18: Deepening the Change

Adjust and Adapt: Make necessary adjustments based on feedback and monitoring results. Adapt, innovate, overcome—the Marine Corps mantra. Continuous improvement means regular updates to plans and processes. 

Celebrate Successes: Recognize and celebrate milestones and successes to reinforce positive changes. Which employees have exhibited the new culture? Lead by example!

Sustain the Change: Ensure the new cultural elements become part of daily operations and behaviors. By this, we mean that you start solidifying these trainings and teachings into employee handbooks, policies, procedures, and other ways to memorialize them. When you have perfected a training program on trust or communication, that becomes part of the permanent plans to sustain these changes. 

Months 19-24: Sustaining and Embedding the Culture

Continuous Improvement: Continue to refine and improve cultural initiatives. Maxwell writes about the Law of Process, which I liken to continuous improvement. What can we do better today and tomorrow? We acknowledge that we can't be perfect, but we can always be one step faster, better, stronger, etc. 

Evaluate and Reinforce: Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the cultural change efforts and reinforce the desired culture. Ask yourself if it's working. If so, double down on owning whatever you have in place. 

Long-term Commitment: Leadership maintains a long-term commitment to sustaining the new culture. You can do this by placing your values into your five—and ten-year plans. Once you've learned how to monitor and evaluate those aspects of your culture, you can measure them and set goals. Create a way to measure customer and employee satisfaction and put those in your strategic planning. 

Four Key Considerations to the Entire Plan

• Leadership Commitment: Consistent and visible commitment from leadership is crucial throughout the process. Again, say what you'll do, then do what you say. Be transparent and lead by example. 

• Employee Involvement: Engaging employees and fostering their sense of ownership in the change process is essential.

• Communication: Regular, transparent communication helps build trust and keeps everyone aligned with the cultural vision. After two years of rebuilding, you should be able to go to anyone in the organization and have them tell you what they see going well. 

• Flexibility: Be prepared to adapt strategies based on feedback and evolving needs. You can modify your plans to achieve your values without erasing them. 

While the timeline above provides a general framework, the duration may vary. Some organizations might see significant cultural shifts sooner, while others may take longer to embed the new culture fully. Patience, persistence, and a genuine commitment to the process are essential to successful cultural transformation.

The number one failure point of any rebuild is not the lowest-level employees; it is almost always the C-Suite. One bad apple in that group will spoil the entire bunch. As a leader, you must acknowledge and identify those people and get them to buy in or bow out. 

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If you are looking to revise and rebuild your culture, let’s talk! Having an objective point of view and someone to bounce ideas off of is necessary in this process. Setup a quick meetup to discuss your plan at this LINK, and let’s spend the first 30-minutes, of your next 24 months together.