Improving Maintenance and Reliability Through Cultural Change. Stephen Thomas G.
alterations, I will use the four-part model in my discussion of culture and how you can change culture in order to implement reliability-focused change in your organization.
Figure 2-4 below shows how each of these four components are a part of a larger whole which we refer to as our organizational culture. Each of these components plays a key role both independently and dependently as part of the cultural system.
Values
Values are the beliefs and assumptions that an organization believes to be true and uses as a set of guiding principles for managing its everyday business. They are what collectively drive decision making within a company. For instance, an organizational value may be that production is the only thing of importance and, when things break, they need rapid response in order to return them to service. Another example of an organizational value is that equipment should never fail where the failure was not anticipated through proactive maintenance work initiatives. Although these two examples are very different, in each case, the value described drives the collective decision making process for the organization.
Figure 2-4 Four types of culture
Role Models
Role models are people within the company who perform in a fashion that the organization can and wants to emulate. They are successful individuals who stand out in the organization by performing in line with the corporate value system. They exist throughout the organizational hierarchy, from the reliability/maintenance manager through the highly-skilled mechanics. Role models show people that if you wish to be successful you need to follow the values set up for the organization. These role models are then copied by those who work within the business because they show how to perform within the culture. In addition, the role models are used as an example for newcomers to clearly show how to behave if you wish to succeed.
Rites and Rituals
Rites and rituals are the work processes that go on day-to-day within a company. They are so ingrained in how people conduct business that they are not actually visible to those within the company. Rituals are “how things are done around here.” Rites are a higher level of rituals. These are the corporate events that reinforce the behavior demonstrated in the rituals. For example, planning and scheduling of maintenance work is a ritual performed by the maintenance organization to make repairs to equipment that has failed. The associated rite, the reinforcement of the ritual, is the fact that the organization requires a weekly scheduling meeting and adherence to the developed weekly plan.
Cultural Infrastructure
Cultural infrastructure is the fourth part of the organizational culture model. This is the informal set of processes that work behind the scenes to pass information, spread gossip, and influence behavior of those within the company.
These four parts, working in conjunction with one another, make up that rather elusive thing that we refer to as organizational culture. Each of these elements will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. The important thing to recognize is what people really mean when they talk about cultural change. They mean that they wish to alter the value system, displace people who are emulated, but are not in line with the new values, change the rites and rituals, and reframe the cultural infrastructure. Think about the implication of this change. It certainly is a major step for any firm to take; which is why it is so difficult to implement and make stick over the long term.
We already know that in every organization there exists a culture unique to that organization. What we need to discuss at this juncture is that within each culture there are sub-cultures that are unique to individual departments or groups. These sub-cultures exist because of that fact that every group within the company has specialized common problems that are faced only by those who are members. As a result, these groups form sub-cultures that enable them to address these problems and survive within their specialized environments.
These sub-cultures have unique traits but always include the dominant or core culture of the business. The simple reason for this is that a sub-culture without a foundation based on the business’s core culture could not long survive.
For example, take a machinery organization whose membership has a value system that believes strongly in reliability-based repairs. This culture supports the approach to equipment repair that requires an analysis of breakdowns and the development of a repair strategy that will return the equipment to service such that the cause for failure has been addressed and corrected. As a result, their leadership – the role models of this culture – provides the necessary time for the machinery engineers to do the proper level of analysis and development of corrective action plans – their rituals. This is wonderful in a reliability-based work culture; this machinery sub-culture will receive the support needed to be successful.
However, suppose this sub-culture is trying to survive in a reactive work culture. In this environment, production wants the equipment repaired and returned to service as soon as possible. There is no time for analysis and development of sound reliability-based repair plans. The directive is “fix it now and fix it fast!” How long do you think the reliability sub-culture would survive? In fact how long do you think the role models of the machinery group who were strong advocates of reliability-based repairs would stay employed? The answer is probably not very long. The reason is that the sub-culture is out of sync with the core culture of the business. This extinguishment of the sub-culture would also take place if the core was reliability-focused and the machinery organization was in a “fix it now and fix it fast” mode.
Sub-cultures, when they are able to exist, take on the same four traits as the core culture. They have a sub-set of values, role models, rites and rituals, and a distinct cultural infra-structure. It is logical to suspect that these sub-cultures will develop because departments or groups within a firm have their own set of issues; they need to develop the sub-culture to be able to successfully address these issues.
Figure 2-5 Four Elements of Culture vs. The Eight Elements of Change
When one group within a company is not as successful as the others, it is often because the sub-culture is out of sync. You see this quite often when a new leader takes over the organization or the organization is acquired by another firm. In each of these cases, a new culture is brought into the work environment. Some departments recognize the difference and adjust to get back into sync; others do not make the adjustment. Those that don’t are the ones that usually get into culture / sub-cultural conflict.
2.7 The Eight Elements of Change
In my book Successfully Managing Change in Organizations: A Users Guide, I introduced the eight elements of change. These elements – leadership, work process, structure, group learning, technology, communication, interrelationships and rewards – are the key elements that if addressed collectively will enable a firm to undertake and be successful in implementing change.
However, as I learned more about cultural change in an organization, it became apparent that these elements each had one or more of the four components of culture embedded within them. This meant that not only were the change agents responsible for addressing all eight elements within their change initiative, but they needed to be very aware of how each of the eight elements impacted the four elements of culture.
Figure 2-5 below shows this relationship. The eight elements of change are listed vertically and the four elements of culture are listed horizontally. This creates a matrix that