How to shift an existing culture

Changing a corporate culture is a difficult task, and it should be done slowly. Don’t force it; adaptation to changes at a massive scale is always painful. It should be done in steps:

• create a vision for the future,
• describe your vision in a story and pass it to your closest employees,
• create a plan of actions you want to reward and how,
• prepare materials for your employees and the necessary retraining programs.

There’s no change without tracking how employees answer to senior management strategy. You should hear feedback and act upon it to make this shift towards innovation as smooth as possible. In the end, there are three ingredients in shifting a corporate culture towards innovation:

• rewards,
• hiring,
• retraining.

By rewarding innovative behaviors, hiring new talented people, and expanding the skills of your employees, you’ll be able to create an excellent environment for innovation.

We should remember that the emergence of AI in the workplace requires a massive re-skilling of employees at all levels, especially when it comes to:

• adaptability,
• social intelligence,
• communication,
• problem-solving.

Re-training of employees is crucial to implement hybrid solutions of people collaborating with machines on a daily basis. In some positions this is already common (think traders). Still, adoption of machine learning, especially the most cutting edge research, will nevertheless require new skills to use available tools in the best way.

That’s why building a mindset of life-long learning (courses, seminars, books) plays a crucial role in creating an innovative culture. Moreover, it builds trust whenever an organisation invests in its employees and cares about their growth.