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Guest Column Change Your Corporate Culture To Enable Change small companies couldn't fi nd their own culture with a search warrant. "Good chemistry with the guys" is T he corporate culture theme of this year's HDAW was interesting on a number of levels, especially since most the best most do. However, the meeting's focus on innovation was essential for all players in today's market. "Innovate or die" is not a new thought. But, innovation requires companies to change and unfortunately, most can't do much more than fi ne tune their past. How do we change the way we have By Bill Wade Wade & Partners innovation as a culture component is to defi ne the term. I turned to distribution guru Bruce Merrifi eld for a pithy defi ni- tion: "Th e profi table implementation of strategic creativity. heavy-duty distributors and suppliers are at best mediocre at all four elements — strategy, creativity, execution and mak- ing money — within this defi nition. Fixing them all may seem daunt- Here's an immediate concern: many " been trying to change? What if we develop a "corporate cul- ture" that "enables" change to happen? Th e "fail forward faster" theory gaining popularity today suggests that we should try some necessarily imperfect experi- ments to learn as much as we can in the shortest time for the lowest total cost. Here are two key questions to seed ing, but both strategy and creativity are usually limited only by company and in- dustry groupthink (unless management has consciously surfaced, defi ned and then modifi ed the collective, mindset of the team). Start asking out loud, "What are the Perhaps a fi rst step to thinking about by-product of the fi rst three elements. However, aggregate fi nancial reporting usually masks the huge cross-subsidies that exist within most businesses — especially distributors. Super profi table products, employees and customers all off set their super loser counterparts, and the entire eff ort can drown in a river that's an average of three feet deep. Managers need to get more coura- busy working in the business to make monthly numbers that they don't have time and lack resources to work on the business. Profi tability, the fourth factor, is a the eff ort: What are the specifi c, organizational "antibodies" that have killed past change initiatives? assumptions and facts that have lead us to think and do (some conventional practice)?" If all are assured that they won't be criticized for asking the ques- tion, new conversations and wisdom can unfold quickly. Most companies also fall short on good implementation. Some of the most common reasons What if we could name those specif- ic, anti-change rules and behaviors; explore the unspoken, dysfunctional assumptions (and motives) behind them; and then, re-engineer them to create a climate that enables innova- tion and change? from a general lack of time, funding and patience. In this market, everyone is so include many types of fear. Most people don't really have a clear understanding of why change benefi ts them, so they don't support new ideas enthusiastically. Additionally, change eff orts suff er geous and innovative about weeding out losers to feed winners before they go out of business or a consolidator buys them to do it for them. If these questions about corporate culture are unsettling, don't worry. Fewer than four percent of all mature compa- nies are able to continuously innovate. Most companies have over-invested in being too effi cient instead of eff ective. Th ey are short-term oriented instead of long-term investors in continuous innovation. If your plan is a try-harder refi ne- ment of last year's numbers airbrushed with an optimism fed by unrealistic industry averages and economic expec- tations, never mind. Financial incre- mentalism seldom funds the signifi cant new solutions to thrive on accelerating change in the HD environment. Th e views expressed in the Guest Editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily refl ect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Truck Parts & Service magazine. Bill Wade, partner in Wade & Partners, is author of Aſt ermarket Innovations. He can be reached at www.wade-partners.com 4 TRUCK PARTS & SERVICE | June 2012