Calls for cultural change have become ubiquitous in recent years, including everything from advancing racial justice and gender role issues to reimagining the American workplace. Hazel Rose Marcus recalls the summer of 2020 as a turning point in those conversations. “Everyone was saying, ‘Oh, the culture has to change,'” says Marcus, a psychology professor at Stanford University. “It was something that rolled off the lips of people from all walks of life.” But no one knew what exactly that meant or how to get started.
Looking at these debates, Marcus and his colleagues Jennifer Everhart and Maryam Hamedani have spent years studying how communities and organizations can turn their desire for change into reality. As a professional with experience in the field, I wondered what I could contribute at this time. “Culture is all around us, but at the same time it feels out of reach for many people,” says the professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and psychology graduate of the School of Humanities. Professor Everhart, who teaches, says:
Marcus and Eberhardt are faculty co-directors of Stanford SPARQ. SPARQ is a “do tank” that brings together researchers and practitioners to apply the lessons of behavioral science to the fight against bias and inequality. Mr. Hamedani is its executive director and senior researcher. Recently, they launched an evidence-based roadmap for intentional culture change with Rebecca Hetty, Associate Director of Criminal Justice Partnerships. american psychologist. They want to “point a way forward and say that cultural change is possible,” Hamedani said.
stanford business We sat down with Eberhard, Hamedani, and Marx to discuss the complexities of changing culture and how leaders and readers looking to do things differently can get started.
You begin your paper with the “Four I’s.” We believe this category helps people map their culture and see where there are tensions and disagreements. Can you give an example of organizational culture and explain it?
Hazel Rose Marcus: There are idea, the great ideology that underlies every organization. This is how we do things, what’s good, and what we value.Then institutional The parts are the everyday policies and practices that people use to do their jobs. Often they have been set down for a long time and people tend to follow them as if it were the natural order of things. The other me is Interaction, It has to do with what happens in your office every day, your relationships with your colleagues, the people you supervise, and the people you respond to.And finally, the fourth part is your own individual Attitudes, emotions, and behaviors.
Is there a way to summarize a roadmap for cultural change?
Maryam Hamedani: The first key idea is that we can change it because we built it. Although there are many forces over which we cannot control, the societies we build and inherit – the organizations, institutions, and ways we live – are human creations. And we need to feel empowered by that inheritance. Because it gives us the ability to make change.
The second part is that cultural change usually involves a series of power struggles, conflicts, and divisions. There are different groups that feel like they’re winning or losing. A lot is at stake for people. It’s important to develop a strategy to deal with it.
Finally, cultural change is unpredictable and can have unintended consequences. But dynamics can also follow patterns. For example, backlash occurs. Timing is critical. Therefore, you have to be agile. We need to recognize that cultural change is never-ending. This is a sustainable process and you need to stay on top of it, but that’s okay.
Marcus: Yes, changemakers cannot be discouraged when they see backlash. We also want to remind people that while they are indeed individuals, they are also individuals. make Cultivate culture through their actions. I think we are less likely to think about how our daily actions can contribute to the larger culture and its change within an individualistic system.
Hamatani: right. We are individuals and responsible for our actions, but we are powerful as a group.
Marcus: What do you model for each other? What are we focusing on? What are the implications for the workplace?
Your paper was written with the issue of social inequality in mind. What is your message to business leaders?
Jennifer Everhart: As a business leader, I think you have a lot of authority, but also a lot of responsibility to understand how culture works. You have the power to pull the levers of change. You decide what your social environment is like for others. So you have a great responsibility for creating and maintaining the culture that exists there, but you can also take a great responsibility for changing that culture for the better.
Marcus: When culture change comes up on the agenda, it’s often the first thing you hear leaders say, including those in the technology industry. A lot of times I’ll say, “Okay, I’ll go listen to it.” But we rarely hear about what they listen to, what they hear from the people who report to them, and how they implement it.
Listening is valuable because it conveys empathy, but it’s also useful to hear specifically what people perceive as the organization’s key values and underlying beliefs. what are we talking about? What are we aiming for as an organization? And, very importantly, do our policies and practices reflect these ideas and values and our mission? We can say we are talking about something, but in what way? How does it manifest itself in our daily work? Is there overall consistency in the four I’s of culture?
You worked with Nextdoor on a project to change its culture. How did it go?
Eberhard: They were reaching out to me and other researchers to find ways to curb racial profiling on the platform. The technology industry is focused on building products that are easy to use, intuitive so that users don’t have to think too hard. But these are also situations in which racial bias can flourish. So instead of trying to remove friction, we encouraged users to slow down and create more friction.
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As a business leader, I think you have a lot of authority, but also a lot of responsibility to understand how culture works. You have the power to pull the levers of change.
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jennifer everhart
They did this by creating a checklist that users can review before posting on the Nextdoor forums. The first thing they ask people to consider is that a person’s race is not an indicator of criminal behavior. And when you describe a person, you’re not just describing their race, you’re describing their behavior. what are they doing? Based on these social-psychological principles, Nextdoor found that simply slowing people down in this way can reduce profiling by more than 75%.
They were trying to solve something on an interactional level. What they could change was what the user experience would be like at the organizational level. Making these simple adjustments to the platform itself and the way information was presented changed the negative interactions that were occurring that could shape people’s ideas about race.
In your paper, you also talk about examples of investment firms that are struggling to increase diversity.
Marcus: Typically, this was the domain of white men with economics degrees from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton. It was a closed and locked world. Our research in the investment field shows that race can influence the financial decisions of professional investors. Many in the industry want to create a more open and inclusive culture, but there are strong default assumptions at work that act as barriers. For many of these companies, the default is still, “I intuitively know what a successful idea is and who can build a company that can grow.” I see it and feel it, and you either fit in or you don’t. ”
There seems to be a tension point in that at an organizational level we want to change, but at an interactional level, this is still a relationship-driven industry. So what do you do about it?
Hamatani: It depends on where you want to start on the culture map. Let’s say you want to diversify your MBA student body. Next, you need to see how they are mentored and supported through their schooling experiences, internships, and job opportunities. Do you think it should simply be assimilated into the default? Are you training a new, exciting, diverse group of people to act like the people who have been there for a long time? Or are you training them to look and sound different, but with their ideas and diverse ways of life? Do you give your students the same respect and status? Are you teaching your students a specific way to pitch because there is only one correct way to pitch? Or do you have other styles of communication and ways to sell ideas? Is it true?
At GSB, Jennifer is taking classes. Racial bias and structural inequality, where she brings in all these amazing CEOs who are women and people of color. Most students have never seen it before. And that’s what’s happening to people at these investment companies. They’ve never seen it before.Even the intervention of seeing these leaders come week after week and students asking them questions and having conversations with them… Alternating current.
Eberhard: I had Nextdoor’s CEO, Sarah Friar, MBA ’00, join me. We had Scott Mills, president of Black Entertainment Television, come on. We had San Francisco Police Chief William Scott come. Both are African American.
The hope is that students who go on to work in the business world will have a broader definition of what it means to be a “cultural fit.”
Hamatani: That’s exactly right. More specifically, it’s “leader fit.” And for women of color and students, they can also see themselves as leaders. But for that to happen, things need to be happening at every level of the cultural map. Once you sow this change, the levels will mutually reinforce each other and help you grow.
What would you recommend as a starting point for our readers who want to create intentional cultural change wherever they are?
Marcus: It starts with mapping the culture. What is important to us and what do we value? And to the extent that there is some consensus about our culture, we consider whether the way we do things reflects that. In so many organizations we work with today, there is a real gap between what leaders feel they value and value and what employees are experiencing. there is. What we recognize is that it’s important to give employees the opportunity to come together and discuss these issues, and to give them the opportunity to use company time and paid time to discuss these issues.
Hamatani: — Create a vision for the future. Because, “Okay, we care about that, but the reality is we’re very busy and we have a lot of work to do. But we care about it.” Because there is a virtue signal called. We need to meet quarterly or annual goals. ” Those are important, of course, but are employees and leaders alike engaged in helping people envision the future and develop goals and objectives together? Can you make small or even bigger changes to help you feel like a part of it?