Organizational culture is the deeply held beliefs, behaviours and a certain way of working or conduct in a given company. Organization culture is something that has been in the company for the longest time period and can go for as long as the company started to the extent that some people do not even know where it came from. These cultures are so deeply held and thus this stands to mean that they cannot be easily changed or altered in the company in the normal course of operations. It is therefore important for the company to try and see how they can work around them to improve on their productivity even in these long standing cultures (McKelvey, 2000).
Despite this fact, many companies have gone all the way to change their organization culture all with the sole purpose of improving how people work and also their perception towards things and people (Ashkanasy, 2000). For the purpose of this paper, we are going to analyse TriZetto Corporation, a company that is based in the United States of America. This is a company that provides medical care solutions to those health centres around the world that wish to improve on their efficiency and work better towards the betterment of their operations. The company serves more than 200,000 care providers and more than half of the population in the USA. This demonstrates the strength of the company and the fact that it is crucial to realize the culture in place is adhered to by incumbent workers, therefore newly hired employees should also follow the same.
As a company that is operating in a dynamic environment, it has goals and objectives that the company wishes to accomplish. These goals and objectives are stated as to fix the problems currently existing in the healthcare sector, and to impact positively the lives of patients in positive ways through affordable costs of accessing medical care and its efficient administration. The mission of this company is to provide solutions to health care problems and improve on the degree at which the service is offered. In its vision statement, the company wishes to make health care as simple as possible to all the people irrespective of their attitude, religion, race or colour (Ashkanasy, 2000).
For a long period of time, TriZetto had operated very comfortably and sat in this zone for a long period. Though this changed when a new CEO, Trace Devanny, joined the company in 2010. Trace realized that the company had major opportunities to grow but it had a major weakness that could reverse all this achievemnt. This opportunity was based on the fact that the American government had amended so much law and clauses that governed the governed the medical centres and their provision of the services to their clients. These amendments enabled TriZetto to become very efficient over the years and the provision of the information became simpler for them. This also ensured that the company offered as many services and information as possible to the clients and also acquired other entities in merger and partnership deals. This shows how successful this entity was and how well it had mastered its field and became the top player in that industry.
Despite these strengths and opportunities, Trace discovered that there was one culture that evident in the organization that needed to be changed; comfortable mentality. This was an issue that meant that people were satisfied with what they offered and thus they did not think that there was much that could be done apart from what they were already doing. This did not get down well with Trace and he wanted to change this culture for the better whereby the employees could always aim higher and beyond their abilities.
Changing organizational culture is not as simple as it may sound but it needs so much commitment and dedication of the entire team. To begin with, Trace formulated several changes that he felt were necessary to introduce the needed change. First, he made the workers realize that customers were the most important people in their business and they needed to be very customer focused. This meant they had to devise newer ways of approaching at customers needs to ensure they realize their goal of becoming success agents of the company initiatives (Ashkanasy, 2000). Besides these, TriZetto introduced other products and services that go hand to hand with the medical services, for example, consultancy.
There are a number of factors that a person needs to consider before embarking to change the organizational culture of any organization. In the first place, the manager should focus on the company’s external and internal environment of operation and the ease it can change within its desired limits. The environment will determine where the company is placed in the market share and the possible effects on the change (Ashkanasy, 2000). It is the most important factor that TriZetto began with when staring this course of action. Secondly, the company needs to consider the values that are held dear by the company. The management needs to not necessarily change the values but change them to be used towards the new direction so as to achieve the objectives. These values will be more realistic if the company built on their strong points and ensure that there is the minimum deviation from the normal.
In any setting, attitude of the people that are mandated with a certain activity is very important, whether positive or negative, as it affects the success or failure of the mission at hand. It was important for Trace to look at the attitude of the employees and try as much as possible to influence them positively (McKelvey, 2000). This could be hard and but it is an important ingredient in the process of changing the culture of the firm. TriZetto had to influence people to come out of their comfort mentality and focus on the customers as the boss and the major contributors to the success of the company. If he could manage to change this, he was assured that changing of the culture was also an easy task. Once the attitude is changed, the company needs to focus on how to change the relationships between the employees and other stakeholders. Devanny led by example and always strived to establish the desired relationships with all the people he interacted with before he could reach a conclusion on what he wanted to achieve. This is what is known as participative leadership. Good relationships will enable everyone to feel at home and in a better position to change how they look at things because everybody wants to feel appreciated and loved but above all recognized in their own capacities (McKelvey, 2000).
When the company has been able to positively influence the above four steps, it is now the time to hit on the last step that will be crucial in the implementation of organizational culture change. This is what is known as the behaviour change (Ashkanasy, 2000). TriZetto Company had this desire to change the way people behave and their attitude towards things and people was intended to change in the shortest time possible. The change in behaviour was the necessary step that would lead to the organization achieving the customer based focus as earlier stated. At long last, TriZetto Company was able to change its culture despite the critics that organizational cultures are deeply held and cannot be changed with ease at any one given time.
Changing of the culture does not come without its fair share of challenges on the part of the employees and other people for whom the change is being introduced. The workers of this company felt as if the new CEO had come up with so much demand and he was up to manipulate their long standing status quo. This was an issue that needed to be looked into and Devanny was already too focused to ensure that the company was a better place to be and also ensure that the set goals were achieved. These critics were mostly contributed towards by the internal politics that are there in every organization and they are at times heavy. This change was however fruitful as the company workers were able to provide specialized services to their clients and they always aimed for higher goals thus leading to even some very innovative ideas among the people. This translated to the general success of the company and efficiency in the provision of the mission, vision, objectives and goals of the company.
In conclusion, an organization that is intended to change its culture should not be afraid to go forward to ensure they meet their aspirations provided they are for the betterment of the company. The management should follow the right steps to reduce the stress levels among the employees who are to make the change effective. Change in organizational culture is important especially those that does not support the growth of the company or are influencing the performance of the employees negatively.
References
Ashkanasy, N. M., Wilderom, C., & Peterson, M. F. (2000). Handbook of organizational culture & climate. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
McKelvey, M. D. (2000). Evolutionary innovations: The business of biotechnology. New York: Oxford University Press.
