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Many organizations are interested in culture change. They often have various definitions of culture change. It’s very difficult to alter what people think. It is easier by far to change behaviors and to align those behaviors with desired performance. There needs to be clearly defined guidance on what good performance should look like. There must also be consistent reinforcement of conforming behaviors, and consistent corrections for non-conforming behaviors. Consistent reinforcement and consistent corrections move people and organizaitons toward desired performance.
Desired Performance
Performance improves when desired behaviors are established over an extended period of time. You cannot mandate that culture will change in a three month, six month or even a two year period; it is entirely dependent on how well the effort is managed and led. You can train your organization to manage behaviors and to attain performance levels in a systematic manner that results in desired performance levels. The Alidade Performance Optimization Model© (POM©) is a system based on two factors; information and action.
Information
Information provides the foundation for performance optimization. In the POM© model, this is the set of policies, processes, procedures, and performance expectations that an individual or an organization will use as guidance for their actions and performance expectations. Information also includes the measures of performance, and the evaluation of that performance. In simple terms, information includes “what” needs to be done, “how” to do it, and “how” we are performing against the objectives.
Action
Action refers to what the leader does with the information. Action has two components; individual feedback and guidance feedback.
Individual feedback action is the actual positive reinforcement for conforming behaviors, or the corrective feedback for non-conforming behaviors. This is how we ensure individual and team performance levels are attained and maintained. Managers and supervisors must have, or be provided with training on, effective feedback skills.
Guidance feedback is a means to make adjustments to the policies, processes, procedures, performance objectives, measures, etc. Guidance feedback ensures our expectations are reasonable and attainable, and that they are available for people to review.
The systematic application of individual feedback and guidance feedback provides the structure to attain desired performance.
Time
Establishing and maintaining desired behaviors through individual feedback, and guidance feedback will, over time, will result in sustained Performance Optimization. This them becomes culture change as less and less effort is required to maintain the desired performance level. The level of effort will never completely go away because effort is always required to sustain strong performance.
The POM© provides a means to attain desired behaviors and ultimately culture change.
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