I’ve moved around many insurance companies and consultancies and in my experience the bigger and longer established the organisation the more ingrained the culture and harder to change. Culture can only be changed in a ruthless way led from the very top. And quite often when change is led from the top and that change ruffles feathers (as it needs to) the 100% backing begins to fall away as the consequences are felt. Influential people underneath in the management chain gang up and apply spin to portray the attempts at culture change as mismanagement. People who are good at their job even though they are part of the culture problem may leave and the company finds them difficult to replace. The breaking of these eggs to make an omelette begin to be seen as mistakes, and then leader either leaves or has their wings clipped. The consequence is the organisation reverts back to a status quo.
More often than not, the culture change is never attempted. Unless of course a scandal forced it. Those who rose through the management chain are products of that environment and have thrived under it. So of course they see nothing wrong. They then apply hire and promote like minded people around them, who are used to thinking and behaving just like them. Preferring to have “another me” close by to delegate things to, rather than thinking who do I need in here to compensate for the skills and the perspectives that I don’t have - that’s what should happen!
Personally, in my experience I find British organisations the worst for this. Particularly when it comes to middle management believing that a bit if spin over substance is what’s needed to get ahead. I often wonder if the educational system has played a role in breeding this workplace culture. And I often wonder if the dysfunctional nature of much of the British economy, as well as Brexit, be in part attributed to a culture of poofery that I see an endemic in British management classes in my experience.
I know one business here in the U.K. that cleared out all of the badly behaved children and yet the organisational culture did not change. It was as if the old culture had been infused into the walls of the building and infected any new people coming in.
You are quite correct: culture change is so hard it is either never tried or attempts are abandoned after several bloody battles.
One key indicator of poor culture is slavish attention paid to spin and PR. All organisations need good PR but there is a moment when a line is crossed and the ‘good’ PR, still the organisations key objective, becomes detached from reality.
British management is poor, on many metrics. There is plenty of data on this. Getting into a U.K. boardroom is utterly impossible for someone like me. I am just the wrong sort of person. That’s not to personalise it but more to argue that there is a new ‘class’ of people who all went to the same schools, universities & management consultancies who now form a club even more secretive than Freemasons and the Illuminati
In my own niche industry every time an insurer considers itself expense heavy, it circles the wagons and thinks through how to cut staff on any activity that could be in some way automated. Quite often that comes to the detriment of the customer service and the company knowledge of its own business, as the people with the experience of getting their hands dirty are shown the door. Yet seemingly no company get enough of people who float from one overcrowded virtual meeting rooms to the next, to throw out weird and wonderful uninformed opinions of what should or should not happen. Too many spoofering chiefs creating unnecessary work for a dwindling population of Indians.
Furthermore, the first opportunity that emerges to outsource an activity they pounce on it, applying as much spin on the proposition to demonstrate its value for money when the true motivation is to relieve themselves of responsibility of anything of substance. Preferring to limited their ivory tower managerial role to casting wide nets of collective responsibility on as little as possible.
Interesting discussion on corporate culture.
I’ve moved around many insurance companies and consultancies and in my experience the bigger and longer established the organisation the more ingrained the culture and harder to change. Culture can only be changed in a ruthless way led from the very top. And quite often when change is led from the top and that change ruffles feathers (as it needs to) the 100% backing begins to fall away as the consequences are felt. Influential people underneath in the management chain gang up and apply spin to portray the attempts at culture change as mismanagement. People who are good at their job even though they are part of the culture problem may leave and the company finds them difficult to replace. The breaking of these eggs to make an omelette begin to be seen as mistakes, and then leader either leaves or has their wings clipped. The consequence is the organisation reverts back to a status quo.
More often than not, the culture change is never attempted. Unless of course a scandal forced it. Those who rose through the management chain are products of that environment and have thrived under it. So of course they see nothing wrong. They then apply hire and promote like minded people around them, who are used to thinking and behaving just like them. Preferring to have “another me” close by to delegate things to, rather than thinking who do I need in here to compensate for the skills and the perspectives that I don’t have - that’s what should happen!
Personally, in my experience I find British organisations the worst for this. Particularly when it comes to middle management believing that a bit if spin over substance is what’s needed to get ahead. I often wonder if the educational system has played a role in breeding this workplace culture. And I often wonder if the dysfunctional nature of much of the British economy, as well as Brexit, be in part attributed to a culture of poofery that I see an endemic in British management classes in my experience.
I know one business here in the U.K. that cleared out all of the badly behaved children and yet the organisational culture did not change. It was as if the old culture had been infused into the walls of the building and infected any new people coming in.
You are quite correct: culture change is so hard it is either never tried or attempts are abandoned after several bloody battles.
One key indicator of poor culture is slavish attention paid to spin and PR. All organisations need good PR but there is a moment when a line is crossed and the ‘good’ PR, still the organisations key objective, becomes detached from reality.
British management is poor, on many metrics. There is plenty of data on this. Getting into a U.K. boardroom is utterly impossible for someone like me. I am just the wrong sort of person. That’s not to personalise it but more to argue that there is a new ‘class’ of people who all went to the same schools, universities & management consultancies who now form a club even more secretive than Freemasons and the Illuminati
I couldn’t agree more.
In my own niche industry every time an insurer considers itself expense heavy, it circles the wagons and thinks through how to cut staff on any activity that could be in some way automated. Quite often that comes to the detriment of the customer service and the company knowledge of its own business, as the people with the experience of getting their hands dirty are shown the door. Yet seemingly no company get enough of people who float from one overcrowded virtual meeting rooms to the next, to throw out weird and wonderful uninformed opinions of what should or should not happen. Too many spoofering chiefs creating unnecessary work for a dwindling population of Indians.
Furthermore, the first opportunity that emerges to outsource an activity they pounce on it, applying as much spin on the proposition to demonstrate its value for money when the true motivation is to relieve themselves of responsibility of anything of substance. Preferring to limited their ivory tower managerial role to casting wide nets of collective responsibility on as little as possible.
Feeling somewhat cynical this morning.