How can you engage shareholders during a culture change?

Rather than communicating a vision, try to create it together with stakeholder. The sooner stakeholders are included in the process, the more they will support it. It will be difficult for them to oppose or resist a culture change vision that they helped create themselves.

From personal experience, shareholders are mainly interested in return, specifically capital growth and dividends. Culture change will, if done effectively, improve both. So sell it on the basis of improved performance all round, citing David McLeod/ Nita Clarke’s splendid Engaging For Success report. Philip Crosby used to talk about the elevator speech when convincing stakeholders- keep it short, snappy and focused on what they want to hear. After that ignore them, they are likely to be as useful as a chocolate fire guard

1. Share what's the ultimate purpose, so that the stakeholders can align their goal with the organizational transformation goal, and get their clarity on What's In It For Me. 2. Seek their ideas on the transformation journey ahead - including, dos' and donts', milestones to gauge effectiveness, responsibilities & accountabilities identified and agreed upon in the bigger group, so that everyone knows their part/role 3. Ask them to publish their Goals & Milestones to all 4. Keep checking in at an agreed upon frequency of how things are progressing & what needs attention/support, facilitating those aspects 5. Create recognition opportunities for those stakeholders who are successfully pushing forward the agenda, inspiring others!

It's commonly believed that shareholders are only interested in the company's profitability. This is correct. Shareholders own a significant stake in the business, and any change must be well orchestrated. A significant change that impacts stakeholders and potentially puts the business at risk but is inevitable must be wholly owned by the shareholders. Involving them from the onset of what caused the change (social, cultural, tech), what needs to be changed and how it will be managed to ensure the penny doesn't drop becomes paramount. Change will be successful when it doesn't come as a surprise.

A vision requires clarity in respect to what it actually means for staff. Without which there is no affinity to a high level vision regardless of how emotive it it. Fundamentally any type of change is a threat to individuals. Staff want to understand not only why change is required but how it impacts them and what is actually required to change. In my experience we leave this far too late in the process of change and needs to accompany want top one vision that is developed.

Você pode ser um grande tradutor e conector durante processos de transição cultural de qualquer origem, o que não apenas facilita a compreensão de pontos chave para o negócio, mas traz elementos essenciais para fortalecer a confiança sobre os benefícios de se avançar. Criar pontes é uma ação diária e evolutiva sem a qual não criamos vínculos, e vínculos, com os argumentos adequados, dão a liga para a integração de tais processos.

Vision is imperative, especially in a world that is so full of change and uncertainty. People crave the big picture vision. They crave the ability to connect the dots to all the things that are happening around them. That is the most important investment that leaders can make. This is why amidst culture change leaders need to embrace tools like Viva Engage with Leadership Corner and Storylines. Resist the urge to go into a siloed off room as leaders to discuss the future without sharing it wider and inviting teams in to help curate the culture. Remember, culture is what people do when no one is looking over their shoulder, nor asking for status updates. Invest there, and provide an inspirational vision, always.

When changing the culture, the WHY? is essential. The “Why” is what drives the buy-in. Co-Create the need for change, the direction and vision for change. A mural board for this exercise can add clarity. The implementation plan should have owners from all levels of leadership and company. A bottom up approach for this change works best. Leadership purely act as facilitators.

By confidently presenting an introduction of your adding key successful examples for each stage and seeking feedback for preferential directives, bringing them into the discussions! Their experience should add wider confidence!!

I agree with all the various insights but what we might have missed is who are we engaging as stakeholders? A forgotten stakeholder might be the community where the organization is located. Building good community esprit is tantamount to building a great business relationship with the organization and might even help bring about better employee engagement while also creating the positive cultural change leadership is seeking. Hope this helps!

No one person can lead any type of change by themselves. Cultural change must take place in the minds, hearts and ultimately behaviors of others. Think of including shareholders into all phases of the change process like the water ripples created by a rock thrown in. To effectively transform culture, you need to include shareholders in from the inception on. But knowing who the shareholders are is another topic to ponder on: too often we too narrowly define that and forget to include all the relevant parties.

This is so important to do. If people aren't included they are very unlikely to support it. In order to get change champions consult them, ask for their views and opinions etc. Inclusion at its best. So for example, parents want their children to eat vegetables but they refuse it. The goal is here is to include them in the cooking itself and they are very likely to eat it with no fuss. In a study by Radtke et al. (2019), kids were more likely to like vegetables if their parents got them involved in cooking activities. Unsurprisingly, the kids who liked vegetables also ate more of them.

The best way to bring someone along the journey is to involve them. Start by communicating the strategy, the vision and the change and then provide space for their thoughts, input and feedback. Ensuring that people feel heard is critical to change management of any kind.

My recommendation is that main stakeholders initially share their current perspective and are definitely part of defining the desired culture,then become the first ambassadors to it.

Co-creating change is more effective than involving. Bringing people on board with the bigger picture why as well as the specifics of what changes you will see is key. Even better is asking everyone- including stakeholders- what changes they will make.

Involving shareholders is critical. This isn’t just about getting their buy in. It should be that their voice brings value to the change taking place. Don’t just ask them to be a part of a focus group or survey but provide them with opportunities to participate and even lead some initiatives. I’ve found that creating self selected teams that focus on one area really helps shift the culture.

Since culture is often not written but it's very deep and facilitates organizational performance. Involving them enhances their understanding of what is changing, or need to let go and what they are going to hold on unto. Let people experience the process and also contribute to ideas of how best to start doing other things differently

Invitations are invigorating and infectious in all the right ways. Asking stakeholders to join to help shape the culture is pivotal, because they are the ones that bring this to life. Remember a business is nothing more than a collection of humans marching together (hopefully) in the same direction to a common outcome. Unless you open allow people to raise their concerns, you will never be able to understand where they are coming from and therefore you most likely won't be able to delight them. Create moments of joy and delight along the way to help shape culture and celebrate contributions and collaboration.

Ask them to imagine where you could go, if you would succeed. Then give them space to build that vision without obstacles. Assemble a team of innovators to join the adventure. Watch them soar.

Work out loud. Use the power of collaborative tools to take the guesswork out of the work. People don't want to have to chase down status reports or even wait for meetings to be scheduled to get an update. In the era of Copilots people will expect to be able to simply type in a prompt: "Give me the latest updates on the building move for Accounting and Finance next quarter." And what they will expect back is an accurate scraping of all the SharePoint sites, OneNotes, Loops, Teams Chats and more to give them an accurate picture of where things stand. People are working in a world of hyperpersonalization and on demand knowledge. Save yourself time and plan for the ease of inclusion and inquiry.

Treat shareholders as people, not shareholders. And let them voice upfront the concerns shareholders should have. I have seen it go wrong mostly when they were seen as shareholders not human beings. The communication became formal and impersonal.

Regular updates to stakeholders are like timely checkpoints in a marathon, essential for maintaining momentum and direction in culture change. It's like giving a progress report on a long-term project. In my experience, diverse communication methods, such as newsletters or webinars, ensure that the message reaches everyone effectively. Highlighting both successes and areas for improvement showcases transparency and fosters trust. Celebrating milestones not only boosts morale but also visibly acknowledges the efforts of those involved. It's about creating a narrative of progress, where every update adds a chapter to the story of transformation.

I completely agree with updating them regularly. Sometimes the momentum is lost if people are not updated regularly. Finding some creative ways of marking the milestones and celebrating the achievements so far can also be one way of ensuring that we carry everyone along.

This is where effective reporting aligned to the ISO 30414 human capital standards is absolutely mission critical. Culture change success must be operationally defined for all stakeholders in a business - including the shareholders.

Be guilty of over communicating. As a leader I made our vision statement short enough to remember, while also capturing the entirety of what our team drafted. That short statement was then communicated in staff meetings, newsletters, social media, assemblies and automated calls repeatedly until it became part of our conversation and ultimately our culture. It was the standard we measured our work by and reminded us of our why.

Culture champions are essential to the effectiveness of a programme. Once you have champions on board, you can achieve anything as they convey the message in a way that people understand and not just a cascade down approach.

Securing sponsors of change is key and ideally. Choose the sponsor(s) strategically with the end goal in mind. Whilst encouraging them to actively express approval and commitment, I’d add on that sharing why they approve from a genuine, human place is a key factor in engaging buy in, both internally and externally.

When implementing change, especially something as important and dynamic as culture, I follow the Kubler-Ross Change Curve- 1. Denial, 2. Anger, 3. Bargaining, 4. Depression, 5. Acceptance, 6. Meaning. As we move along the curve, it is extremely important to identify early adaptors and use them as ambassadors to ensure all shareholders continue to move along the curve, and ultimately see the cultural change as positive. These ambassadors become change agents, and throughout the process these shareholders feel connected, solicit feedback and engage in process improvements. The best way to reward shareholders is to involve them in the change process, and ensure you continually check in throughout the change curve.

Culture is a journey, not a destination. Make sure you are building check in and ways to improve and solicit feedback to keep your culture evergreen. Also know that no one or organization gets everything right- it’s okay to need to make adjustments.

Evaluating and improving shareholder engagement in culture change is like conducting a post-project review in IT system implementation. You gauge the effectiveness of your strategies using specific indicators, such as engagement levels or stakeholder feedback. This process is critical for identifying what works and what doesn't, much like debugging a new software. In my experience, this step is where real learning and innovation happen. It's about iterating the process, enhancing methods, and continuously aligning with shareholder expectations. Think of it as a software update; you're refining and enhancing the system based on user feedback and performance metrics.

I think this step needs to happen twice - once at the beginning and again at the end. Data, both quantitative and qualitative, is so important when trying to define an issue, set clear objectives, to share and agree a way forward and to implement and review. Good quality data from multiple sources is essential in order to give any project credibility. Without introducing a level of education early on, efforts frequently fall flat due to lack of engagement and support. People need context in order to understand and invest time, effort and resources. People also need a vision to buy into. They need to be a part of a story they can identify with.

I’d argue this needs to be a continuous process and not just take place at the end - what’s the point of having it there? Just like continuous feedback or feedback loops, evaluating shareholder engagement should be something that is constantly looked at during this kind of project to ensure it’s success.

Having a continual process of planning, doing, studying and acting(PDSA) enables the team to evaluate progress and take action on time. Regardless of the improvement process selected for use, the key is that it is continual and cyclical.

At the outset of any culture change initiative, I like to engage key stakeholders through one on one interviews. It’s one of the best ways that we can engage their involvement early in the process. It also gives us the opportunity to better understand their concerns going into the change initiative. Similarly, this perspective will help to inform the approaches used to change the culture.

Slightly amused that the article asks about Shareholders and most responses have knee-jerked to talking about Stakeholders. My first question - why would Shareholders need to be involved at all? Institutional ones won't care, Individual investors who aren't major owners can't influence. If we're talking a small firm with a handful of private shareholders, they'll lead the cultural change as it's their culture. Also - culture change is a transformation and won't work with tools designed for functional change within the culture as it exists.

As this is a complex and challenging process we should be transparent and foster a open communication channel. Having an open communication will bring many ideas to the page how to implement it in a long term goal, also follow up by providing updates on the same about the progress of the culture.

The six points are one way to go about change and very similar the change curve process I studied. The primary key I have experienced and read in my course, is time and time again lies in the leadership instilling this change, from top to front line, each person has to be model the message. In a manner consistent with the message being passed down to each. Workers are watching, and if they see leadership counter or not model the action being asked of workers, this is the key reason things don't change. These six points above are great and are those action items the leader can use to instill the message(s). Waiver or worse allow your followers see you act contrary to "the" message is the most common reason cited for a failure of change.