The Innovation and Learning Speaker Series is an ongoing collaboration between the SIOP United Nations committee and the United Nations that dates back to late 2017. Previous sessions have addressed a variety of topics including 360-degree feedback, performance management, survey design, and human resources management in the digital era, including the use of artificial intelligence in selection. Multiple TIP articles have reported on this effort over the years, including Sheikh et al. (2018) and, most recently, McChesney et al. (2024).
As part of this Speaker Series, the SIOP United Nations committee recently organized a webinar for the United Nations Development Programme’s Office of Human Resources (UNDP OHR) leadership and staff on the topic of changing organizational culture. The webinar was led by Dr. Elizabeth Kolmstetter and Brad Baso, who generously donated their time and expertise to support the UNDP in their efforts to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals working with local governments in countries all over the world.
Under the leadership of David Bearfield, the UNDP’s OHR has made significant strides to quantify and transform the UNDP’s culture as part of the “People for 2030” strategic plan. One of these recent initiatives is a new employee listening program called UNDPListens, which introduced quarterly surveys focused on specific topics to replace the previous Global Staff survey. To date, UNDPListens has conducted two staff engagement surveys and an inclusion survey with the aim of understanding both the existing and desired UNDP culture.
As UNDP leadership works to interpret and act upon the results of these surveys, questions of how to foster a healthy organizational culture in a large, global organization have risen to the forefront. The SIOP UN Committee was asked to provide a practical and context-specific overview of how to change organizational culture in a complex environment such as the UNDP. To do so, the SIOP UN Committee leveraged its access to organizational culture experts with broad experience in multinational organizations: Dr. Kolmstetter and Brad Baso.
Dr. Elizabeth Kolmstetter is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s first chief people officer, where she is responsible for driving a people-first culture. She has served for over 30 years in the US government leading innovative talent management programs across agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Intelligence Community. She has a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Virginia Tech and is a Fellow of SIOP.
Brad Baso has over 20 years of experience leading organizational change, culture redesign, leadership development, and employee experience reengineering in high-impact organizations. He runs a boutique consulting firm, Nourish Companies, that empowers people and organizations to reach their full potential. He holds a master of arts in Organizational Leadership from St. Catherine University.
The 90-minute webinar was structured with time for a presentation and ample time for audience questions. About 60 HR professionals joined the session. Dr. Sara Weiner, chair of the SIOP UN Committee moderated the session; SIOP UN Committee interns Chelsi Campbell and Lauren Moran worked on the logistics to prepare for and run the session.
Elizabeth and Brad began the webinar by providing a crash course on organizational culture, including how to define it by starting with the simple definition that culture is “the way we do things around here” (Deal & Kennedy, 1982), how to assess it, and most importantly how to change it. We will briefly share some of the highlights of their presentation, along with an overview of the question themes that arose during the discussion.
The speakers emphasized that culture within an organization should be defined by the shared values and behaviors on which the organization wants to unite employees, though it may take time to identify these. Both speakers also provided some “dos” and “don’ts” of organizational culture change. If leadership focuses on keeping the definition simple, communicating their reasoning and changes clearly, and believing in their workforce, they will be well on their way to achieving desired changes. Too often, organizations try to solve too many problems at once, adopt a generic definition of culture that doesn’t align with its goals, or don’t explain the why of the proposed culture change.
In terms of assessing culture, and from there, changing it, Kolmstetter and Baso emphasized that regardless of whether culture is being measured, it exists. Measurement enables organizations to focus on the goal of improving as a team, as a collective, rather than just focusing on positive survey responses. Global organizations will have lots of different starting points, and in some cases when the focus is on numbers rather than behavior change, high positive responses are “encouraged” and may not reflect actual employee beliefs or experiences. To facilitate culture change, leadership must focus on establishing and maintaining trust (e.g., through frequent communication, ensuring that survey results are transparent, and taking action on those results), and emphasize a culture of learning and growth rather than competition across teams and sites.
Webinar attendees had a host of questions related to challenges that the UNDP faces as a large, global, nongovernmental organization. In particular, the UNDP was described as not having one organizational culture but having many of them due to the large number of nationalities (180+) and the large number of offices within and across countries. There may be broad differences across individualistic and collectivistic societies that impact how certain interventions are received. Additionally, some nationalities have significant cultural differences on issues such as gender and LGBTQ+ equality. Kolmstetter and Baso drew upon their experiences in global organizations to encourage attendees to “get to the human.” Despite the differences, there are still shared values that are core to the organization broadly. For example, the UNDP may be able to rally around “service” as a core value. When it comes to differences on issues such as equality, they encouraged the UNDP to reframe these initiatives. Focusing on the core value and behavior of treating every member of the organization with dignity and respect is one way of grappling with these differences. Once these shared values are identified, then additional steps such as implementing leadership programs to help leaders lead in ways that are more consistent with these values can be taken.
Attendees asked multiple questions related to how to encourage employees to unlearn old practices and adopt new ones. Many of these old practices are unspoken and therefore may be hard to root out. Kolmstetter and Baso spoke at length on the importance of communicating the changes, celebrating small steps in the journey, and emphasizing the rationale for these changes. Meeting people where they are and seeking to understand why the organization may be encountering barriers to change while respecting and understanding the past will also promote buy-in to the process. They also discussed the role that folklore plays within an organization such as the UNDP. When explaining the “why” of a new change, it is helpful to have an understanding of the stories within the organization that celebrate things that are no longer useful. For example, there may be an unspoken culture of grit and perseverance, but this is not necessarily serving the goals of a new culture of adaptability and resilience. Leadership must be sure to acknowledge the old when introducing new direction and to explain why these changes are being made, especially the positive impact or outcomes they are expecting. Beyond this resistance to change, it is possible that people are on board but simply do not know how to do what you’re asking them to do. Invite employees to cocreate the desired culture and allow them to be part of the action planning and implementation of improved processes, practices, and programs. Development of training and other allocations of resources will not only communicate the way forward but also demonstrate the organization is serious about the change and is providing resources to get there.
We are incredibly grateful to Elizabeth Kolmstetter and Brad Baso for donating their time and expertise as the UNDP undergoes their organizational culture journey. The UNDP OHR had overwhelmingly positive feedback for the committee on the webinar, and we look forward to future collaborations on this topic as well as others. If you are interested in getting involved in future efforts, please consider joining one of SIOP’s committees.
References
Deal, T. E., & Kennedy, A. A. (1982). Culture: A new look through old lenses. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 19(4), 498-505.
McChesney, J., Campbell, C., Perry, E., & Poteet, M. L. (2024). The innovation & learning speaker series: Helping the United Nations explore the use of AI in selection. TIP: The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, 62(1).
Sheikh, N., Botha, A., El-Hage, L. R., & Lace, A. (2018). A partnership between the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and the United Nations Office of Human Resources Management (OHRM). TIP: The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist.
Volume
62
Number
3
Author
Lauren H. Moran, Chelsi Campbell, & Sara P. Weiner
Topic
Advocacy, Allied Organizations, Prosocial