About Grid
The Grid Difference: Culture Solutions that Work
An organization's culture is the sum total of its collective attitudes, values, norms, traditions, precedents, and past practices. It is the most powerful force available to help or hinder change. Culture influences performance standards, how people communicate, make decisions, seek innovation, and address conflict-all of the components that are critical to success.
Because the forces of culture most often operate outside the awareness of leaders, they are the "hidden" forces that threaten to defeat even the most well-intentioned change efforts. Even the best proposed strategy can fail to take root in the long term because the organization's ingrained and unrecognized culture works directly against it. Leaders trumpet a new vision and strategy, and the organization marches off in that direction, only to revert to its old ways when it encounters the first roadblock or sign of trouble.
But these underlying forces of organizational culture are surmountable. Most leaders try to change culture using power and authority to force change. But the history of governments and corporations alike shows that real and lasting culture change cannot be achieved by force. Any temporary gains are eventually offset or completely nullified by the failure to change the hearts and attitudes of those involved at the implementation level. To reach its fullest potential, an organization must build and constantly reinforce an across-the-board culture where candor, creativity, and standards of excellence thrive. This is the heart of real culture change.
It has been said that the best way to break an old habit is to replace it with a new one. Grid solutions bring culture into the open for rigorous and ongoing evaluation, exposing unsound norms, precedents, and practices, and replaces them with sounder practices for the future.
Grid helps to answer the question: Is your organization's culture helping or hindering its ability to reach it full potential?
