When I speak about culture change, inevitably the audience (or more specifically, the organizer) is looking for something practical, that they can take home and apply right away. This can be a challenge when it comes to culture change, which is by its nature a complex animal, wrapped in the unique details of every individual organization. And while I argue that many organizations can change their culture faster than they think they can, it is certainly never a “go back to the office and fix it in the next few weeks” endeavor.

But I refuse to leave it people with the “it’s complicated” answer when I give talks, so I’ve taken to focusing on a very important point that I think is too often missed in culture change discussions.

If you want to change the culture, then you MUST change some management processes.

Not just processes–management processes. These are the processes we use to manage the work (as opposed to processes we use to do the work). Other work processes will certainly need to be changed as well as part of your culture change efforts, but I think the management processes offer a lot of opportunity that too many organizations miss.

Within management processes, there are two obvious places to start. The first is with HR processes. So far, in nearly every organization that I’ve found that has a super-strong and clear culture, the processes they use for hiring, on-boarding, and managing performance have been innovated. We take these processes for granted I think. They are “admin” and we just do what everyone else does. But that makes them ripe for innovation, and because they tie so directly to the culture, changing the way you do them can give your change effort a boost.

The second area is any process related to internal collaboration. Think about it: your culture becomes alive  through interactions among your people. It is when we work together by talking, emailing, and collaborating on projects that we have a chance to demonstrate our values, and make our culture tangibly visible. But, again, most internal collaboration processes are taken for granted. Perhaps the most widely used (and loathed) internal collaboration process, for example is the meeting. Why are we not innovating our staff meetings (team meetings, project meetings, etc.) based on the cultures that we truly want?

Changing HR and meetings won’t transform your culture overnight. But these management processes will have a disproportionately large impact on your efforts, and, frankly, most people hate your HR processes and your meetings anyway, so either way you’ll score some points!