Corporate Culture Transformation case study

The problem:

Emirates Hotels and Resorts was about to open its flagship property. There are over 280 employees from 32 different nationalities and each with different hotel training with different service styles. The hotel will be operational in 4 weeks and everyone is franticly running around to complete their tasks by extra short deadline. Yet, despite efforts of management to align and create a unified vision, let alone culture, there was no unified identity and individuals were acting and reacting as individuals and not as a cohesive force. Emirates wanted a cohesive force that provided an exclusive type of service in line with the Emirates philosophy.

The background:

When people are “busy” or “stressed” they tend to be on autopilot, they react to situation after situation and force feeding values and missions will have little effect. Traditional “Change Management” approaches apply the “change the policies, reinforce them, then eventually behavior will change” while this does work, its takes too long often highly resisted, and therefore most of the time gets abandoned in the process.

The solution:

A new approach to changing and keeping a culture uses Directive Communication Psychology to cultivate chain reaction change within the organisation itself. There are # steps in the process:

Step 1 – senior management must be committed to the RESULT and not to their own egos or hard fast way of doing things. In this case, the management had the commitment.

Step 2 – discover the factors that are bothering the majority of the people. besides the usual  “we want more money”, some of the real issues became apparent such as an impression that respect was lacking between managers and subordinates. Additionally, many felt that their input was valuable yet no one listened – there was already an open door policy from the GM, but no one used it… hmm. Senior management is consulted and pre-determine the guidelines that can be accepted for Instant implementation of new initiatives

Step 3 – Discover who are the positive and negative Key Influencers. In this case we identified a total of 22 positive Key influencers and 2 negative ones.

Step 4 – Apply the DC Revolution strategy by separating the total group into 2 groups of 12. This process incorporates five 1-day experiential trainings, each followed by 1-day onsite implementation and dissemination of experience gained at the workshop. The process incorporated the psychological tools on how individuals could achieve their own personal emotional and life goals through their work and related their own success as a function of successfully cooperating with others. In an experiential environment, key influencers become aware of the effects they have had on their environment and how that has affected their lives and success. They take responsibility for their world and no longer blame others for their problems.

Step 5 – Address the emotional issues found in the discovery process. This is done through creating Guiding Principles that they extract from their interactions with others in the organisation. They become the representatives for the people.

Step 6 – Have coaches on site to assist in the dissemination of information and implementation into the work processes. Each key influencer works with 5 others to implement what they have learned and those 5 then work with 3 to 5 others. In essence, the key influencers become the consultants and the coaches simply assist these “in-house consultants” to be effective.

Step 7 – have a half day show and presentation where the entire organisation attends. The key influencers perform scenes from their work environment that all can relate to and how the difficulties are overcome with the new knowledge that everyone has attained through the program. Key influencers also present changes proposed by them and the other staff to senior management

Step 8 – senior management accepts the initiatives proposed – why? Because they have fallen within the guidelines that were preset by the senior management in the discovery process step 2. To solidify this commitment, the revolutionaries prepare their Revolutionary Creed on a large board where everyone signs it including senior management in the acceptance of the new culture they have created.

Step 9 – hold revolutionary elections where the corporate revolutionaries elect a commander from their peers. The elections also include a general (for each location if there are multiple sites) and 2 lieutenants for each general. The purpose, to keep the revolution going by having a representative that actions the revolution initiatives and mobilizes the revolutionaries to implementation. They also are responsible to make sure that senior management don’t get too “busy” in the short term to apply the guiding principles that will make the big difference in the long term. The revolution leaders are elected periodically and part of their responsibility is to maintain the integrity of the guiding principles across the organisation.

The end result was that the people felt totally empowered, they felt like they were part owners in the organisation and personally benefited from its success. 7 months later employees were still volunteering for extra duties (without pay) and were still confidently and passionately working as a unified culture they embraced.

For more information on revolutionizing your corporate culture,  please contact us at: info@directivecommunication.com or visit www.directivecommunication.com

Download Corporate Culture Transformation Case Study.pdf