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By Rick Crandall, Ph.D.
How to change your organizational climate
Many organizational change initiatives start with employee input. If you haven't done an anonymous survey, with results fed back as group data to each unit, then you are not serious about managing your organizational climate. It's easy for top bosses to feel that everything is just fine, because smart "underlings" keep their heads--and their complaints--down. Most leaders, like Peter Holt, are shocked when direct feedback from people who report to them totally contradicts their image of their own style. And you are in for equal shocks at how departments feel about each other and the company.
Selling the new climate
In order to sell a new organizational climate, you have to repeat the same message over and over. As the late management guru Edward Deming did with TQM, you have to hit the same points for years to build credibility. One slip back to the Bobby Knight style can subvert years of effort on your part unless you sincerely ask forgiveness.
If you want to change the minds and hearts of the people under you, you have to care about them--and show you mean it. If you don't, you're dead in the water in today's competitive climate.
About the author: Dr. Crandall has consulted and written on marketing since 1981. He writes a monthly column on marketing for the Executive Edge newsletter and is the author of the new book Marketing Your Services: For People Who Hate to Sell.
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