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Question: Discuss About Changes In The Culture Of Their Business Organisations? Answer: Introduction The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, also known as the ANZ, is one of the five largest successful companies in Australia. The bank is also the largest company in New Zealand. The company was formed out of the Bank of Australasia, while it established its first Melbourne office in 1838 and its headquarters in New Zealand. The bank provides a range of services to a diverse pool of clients. As of today, the company is publically listed with almost 376,813 shareholders and a workforce of 35,000 people. The company serves more than six million customers throughout the world. The company demonstrated excellent performance results in 2008 even when the year was tough for the global financial industry. ANZ was never this successful throughout its foundation. During the early 1990s, the bank was facing a number of issues, such as bad debts, poor organisation, employee morale and poor customer satisfaction rates. After experiencing such poor performance and workplace conditions, the company appointed John McFarlane as the CEO of the bank in the late 1990s. It was under the leadership of the new CEO and his freshly formed management team that the bank was able to revive its market position and become successful through a series of planned changes and transformations. Main features of organisational transformation during McFarlanes tenure at ANZ Bank One of the biggest reasons behind the worldwide success of ANZ Bank was the planned changes or the organisational transformation that the new CEO of the company, McFarlane, was about to introduce over a period of time. The change program implemented by the new CEO, along with his new management team, had certain features that helped the management in ensuring a successful transformation and reinforce the changes in the longer run. Some of the features of the organisational transformation program implemented by McFarlane are given below: First of all, the transformation program implemented during the tenure of McFarlane was a well-designed change management program that targeted the entire organisation on the whole. The transformation program involved all the stakeholders in the change and was properly designed before it was implemented. The new CEO of the company was able to understand the role that the culture of the workplace plays in the overall performance of the employees and considered organisational culture to be a topmost priority while planning the change program. By inviting a research company to conduct a survey on the discrepancies between the existing bank values and culture, the new CEO made sure that they could identify those areas where the company required changes. Through such initiatives, the new management was able to discover that there was too much bureaucracy and hierarchy in the organisation, which was hindering the performance levels of the employees. as a result, the transformations program was designed to bring about changes in the values of the organisation on the basis of employee inputs while the existing values had been incorporation into the culture by the senior managers. Secondly, the new management formulated a dedicated breakout and cultural transformation team to assist the management in implementing the planned transformation strategies. Breakout workshops were arranging in which the employees were made more aware of their values, the values of the organisation and how they had an influence in driving their behaviour. Such breakout units helped the new management in continuously diagnosing the behaviour of the employees and identifying the effect that the transformations were having on the stakeholders. Further, the breakout teams acted as change facilitators, which are a necessity for increasing the chances of success of a change program. Thirdly, the new management of the company was able to implement a performance management system, which helped it in increasing the success rate of its transformational strategies. The company used performance scorecards and key performance indicators to assess the performance levels of the employees across various fields, such as financial, customer, etc. The performance management system was divided into three parts i.e. performance planning, performance coaching and performance assessment (Henshaw, 2011). The management designed an effective performance management plant that measured the right performance objectives using the right performance indicators and metrics. Such an effective performance management system helped the company in ensuring greater chances of success in its change management initiatives (OGBA, 2009). Finally, the management followed an effective approach to ensure organisation wide support from the stakeholders during the transformational program, which could otherwise lead to the failure of the program. The new management at the ANZ company followed a top-bottom as well as a bottom to top change implementation strategy that ensured greater trust and communication amongst the stakeholders (Cummings, 2013). Thus, the ability of the management to establish trust and communicate the transformation program clearly to the stakeholders helped it in ensuring a greater success rate for its change program. Challenges for managers in implementing transformation strategies It is often said that a change is not the problem, resistance to change is. An organisation can experience a variety of changes that can have an effect on individual units, processes and sometimes on the entire organisation as a whole. Cultural change is an organisation wide change that has an impact on the entire organisation as a whole and is considered to be one of the most difficult changes to be implemented in any organisation. Cultural changes can bring about changes in job roles and responsibilities, operations, dealing with clients, buyers and suppliers, etc. As a result, cultural changes receive a great deal of resistance from the stakeholders and the managers responsible for implementing a cultural change has to face a number of challenges in their attempts to achieve a successful transformation. Some of the challenges that the managers working in companies like the ANZ and trying to implement a cultural changes face are discussed below: First of all, when the change is related with the culture of an organisation, it becomes very difficult for the managers to build organisation wide trust and establish effective communication networks, which was also a challenge that the management of ANZ Bank faced while attempting to bring about changes in their organisation culture. Building trust and communicating the change program is one of the most important pillars of success while trying to transform the culture of an organisation and in their absence, the stakeholders can create panic due to fear of the unknown and can offer a great deal of resistance to the change program (RICK, 2015). As a result, it can become difficult for the managers to implement a cultural change successfully and can fail in their attempt to achieve a successful transition. Secondly, cultural changes can also involve alterations in the job roles and responsibilities of certain employees, which can further result into a change in their power status or status quo. Such a condition can trigger a lot of resistance to the change program as the employees working on the topmost position might feel a threat to their powers and can offer very strong resistance to the change management program (BRADFIELD, 2006). Further, cultural changes can also involve elimination of certain job profiles from the organisational hierarchy, which can generate stress amongst the employees and can have an effect on their performance levels. As a result, it becomes an important challenge that the managers face while trying to transform the culture of their organisations. Thirdly, it is a natural tendency of human beings to resist changes as they bring them out of their comfort zones. In case of cultural changes, it is obvious that the entire organisation will have to undergo a major change, which will definitely bring a lot of employees out of their comfort zones (Ryan, 2014). As a result, the employees offer a higher resistance to such changes that can have a huge and a long lasting impact on their jobs. Therefore, this is another challenge that the managers trying to transform the culture of an organisation are bound to face. Lastly, cultural changes also become a challenge for the managers because a talk about cultural change can initiate a lot of group dynamics and politics within the organisation. A culture of an is defined as the way in which an organisation carries out its work operations and how the things are done in a company. The culture of an organisation is the only thing which binds the entire workforce together and when there is a change being planned for the culture of an organisation, the stakeholders can create panic and can become part of group dynamics, which can make it difficult for the managers to implement the transformation strategies successfully. Attributes of key leaders at the ANZ Bank and role of leaders in managing change programs A leader is a person who has the skills to make the other people follow and get things done by keeping them motivated. A great leader is the one who has the potential to bring the best out of his followers and contribute more towards the overall success of an organisation. The way in which, under the leadership of John McFarlane, the ANZ Bank emerged as one of the top companies in the areas where it had its operations clearly proves the efficiency and effectiveness of John as a leader. During his ten-year tenure, John proved to be successful in increasing the customer satisfaction rates, higher staff engagement, community recognition and above all, turning around the financial performance of the company and delivering on the promises that were made to the shareholders. John McFarlane proved to be a successful leader and even at the end of his tenure, most of the stakeholders did not want him to leave the company and felt that his tenure should be extended. John McFarlane had a great deal of knowledge about the operations of the bank and knew how to involve all the stakeholders, which helped him in ensuring higher engagement levels. Further, as a leader of a company, John also had the ability to analyse the market trends and undertake strategies that would help the company in becoming more successful in the times to come. He followed a futuristic approach and made some important decisions that helped the company in grabbing a greater market share and reviving its position in the market. Organisational leaders have a great role to play in the implementation of change management programs and can bridge the gap between success and failure. John, as the leader of ANZ Bank, played an important role in influencing, directing and managing the change process at ANZ. First of all, John worked hard to carry out extensive research and surveys through professional organisations so that they could identify the areas where the organisation required changes. It helped the company in identifying those operational areas which were inefficient and prepare change management programs to deal with the inefficiencies identified. Secondly, John worked hard with his management so that they could avoid situations that could give rise to resistance to the change program. They implemented strategies that enabled them to establish trust in the organisation and communicate the change program to the stakeholders in the best possible manner. The decision to improve communication and establish trust helped the management at ANZ to effectively manage resistance to change. Thirdly, John also designed and implemented a performance management system that helped the management to continuously analyse the progress that it had been making in the implementation of the change program. It also helped the management in identifying the areas that were proving to be ineffective and turning them effective by performance coaching. Furthermore, the system of performance management also helped the company in reinforcing the changes that had been successfully implemented so that the employees could not switch back to their previous cultural values or behaviour. Conclusion Managing a change program is never an easy task as many organisations have lost their market share to their competitors because of their failures to implement changes successfully. ANZ Bank is a perfect example of how leadership can play an important role in ensuring success for a change management program as it was able to greatly revive itself under the efficient leadership of John McFarlane. The ability of the company to successfully transform its cultural values was made possible by the leader of their organisation, who worked hard in influencing, directing and managing the change process. References Henshaw, J., 2011. Performance Management: Are you clear on what you want from your employees?. [Online] Available at: https://managing-employee-performance.com/clear-what-want-from-employees/[Accessed 11 September 2017]. OGBA, C. N., 2009. MANAGING CHANGE THROUGH PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT. [Online] Available at: https://www.unn.edu.ng/publications/files/images/OGBA,%20CHIKA%20NGOZI.pdf [Accessed 11 September 2017]. Cummings, K., 2013. Trust, Communication, and Leadership: The Three Laws of Influence. [Online] Available at: https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Management-Blog/2013/04/Trust-Communication-and-Leadership-the-Three-Laws-of-Influence [Accessed 11 September 2017]. RICK, T., 2015. WHY IS ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE CHANGE DIFFICULT. [Online] Available at: https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/why-is-organizational-culture-change-difficult/[Accessed 11 September 2017]. BRADFIELD, ., 2006. Challenges of changing culture. [Online] Available at: https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/18/10447.html[Accessed 11 September 2017]. Ryan, R., 2014. The Challenge of Changing Organizational Culture. [Online] Available at: https://icma.org/articles/challenge-changing-organizational-culture-0[Accessed 11 September 2017]