Presumably on the basis that the ideal marriage guidance counsellor is the guy who is just coming off his sixth and messiest divorce, IBM Corp, showing commendable lack of shame and offering to tell others how to reorganise their businesses to meet changing circumstances – but looking at IBM with some 180,000 deeply unhappy employees wounded by three tumultuous reorganisations in six years yet little nearer to solving its intractable problems, potential customers might just worry that IBM’s consultants will leave their businesses in the same shape IBM is today. The company announces from White Plains, New York that the new IBM Consulting Group has somehow acquired a new capability that will help its clients understand and manage the human and cultural aspects of business transformation. The service is called Business Culture Analysis and is intended to provide the Group’s clients with a variety of techniques and diagnostics to assess an organisation’s cultural environment and its alignment with overall business operations strategy. We designated organisational change management as a key competency in building the IBM Consulting Group’s Business Transformation Practice, according to Bob Howe, IBM vice-president and general manager of the Consulting Group.
Major change initiatives
For executives leading major change initiatives within their companies or organisations, effective assistance with organizational culture issues is virtually nonexistent right now, (if it were, IBM might be in better shape today). The company promises that the Business Culture Analysis assesses several key components of an organisation undergoing business transformation using re-engineering and quality techniques. To guide the success of the transformation process, the approach takes into account the organisation’s vision, values, culture, communications, incentive programmes, performance evaluation, morale, and competencies. Financial performance measures, customer satisfaction and the level of innovation at a company are taken into consideration, it says. Employees’ concerns with the overall implications of their company’s re-engineering effort, such as job security, added responsibilities and acceptance of the redefined organisation are also important as IBM may or may not have learned to its cost. Our clients are finding that there is no quick fix when trying to align so many potential areas within an organisation’s culture with an on-going business transformation, says Janet Caldow, IBM Consulting Group consultant heading the Business Culture Analysis effort. One of the main reasons a high percentage of business transformation fails is due to an absence of a business culture strategy that is in place from day one of the re-engineering process. A combined benchmark and research project to measure the effectiveness of Business Culture Analysis and its correlation to business strategy and performance is underway with projected participation of 50 companies. The Business Culture Strategic Benchmark is designed to establish measurement criteria and help clients fully align all aspects of their organization and its culture with their overall business operations strategy, IBM says – but remarkably, like the cousin that the family never talks about, it fails to say one word on its own woes.
