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Times are tough in corporate America, making jobs harder to get and keep. In times of economic uncertainty, it can be hard to keep employees motivated and productive. Sometimes, as managers get increasingly frustrated with a company's slowed financial growth, intractable problems of performance, employee dissatisfaction, and the desire for a silver bullet solution can tempt them to shift quickly amongst a variety of change initiatives to try to make some headway. These are just the kind of circumstances that encourage employees to accuse management of sponsoring "flavor-of-the-month" programs.
It can be demoralizing when it seems like nothing does any good, no matter how many new things you try. If that's the case - if problems keep mounting even though you've tried to make improvements - maybe it's time to stop banging your head against the wall of individual behavior and particular circumstances and do a broad culture scan.
Culture and infrastructure are often stronger and more resilient than even the most dominant individuals. Long-standing structures and habituated processes and procedures can be difficult to modify despite the best of intentions.
Trying to change the people or the way they behave, without changing the underlying structure that either supports them or blocks them, is like trying to bail out the ocean with a ladle. You may move a lot of water over time but, somehow, the job just never gets finished.
Long-sustained cultures tend to protect status and selected memory, and to discount new inputs and attempted improvements: "We tried that and it didn't work" or "We don't do that kind of thing." This can be as true for a department or work group as for an entire organization.
Even if you're able to conceptualize a new vision for the future, though, just dictating the kinds of changes people have to make, and using threats or raw power to compel their compliance, rarely works for the long term. Too many old habits will pop up to subvert the new rules.
Instead, it's often more productive to try to restructure the environment, and even...