The Sunday Mail
Changing Perspectives
Rutendo Gwatidzo
HAPPY new month to you all. It is my hope that no one got into serious trouble considering that yesterday was April Fool’s Day.
All sorts of pranks can happen on this day, some of which do not always end well.
I know of relationships that ended because of the day’s pranks.
I will never forget the day I first learnt about April Fool’s Day.
I was in primary school in the village.
Three girls lied to me that my mother had been taken to hospital. They further said she had instructed that I follow her there. I scampered to the hospital on foot as there was no other means of going there. The hospital was about 21km away.
Back then, we had no phones, so upon arrival, I started looking for her.
It took me almost an hour, asking in every ward but no one had seen her.
As it was getting dark, I began crying and wondering where my mother was.
How was I going to get home that evening? Realising the impact of what they had done, two of the three girls followed me to the hospital, while the other one went to our home to inform my mother about it. The hospital staff had already offered me a place to sleep overnight when the girls arrived, only to tell me that they were just fooling around.
The hospital ended up providing an ambulance to take us back home.
Our parents were forced to contribute towards the fuel that had been used.
So, the joke did not end well at all.
The girls were in serious trouble with hospital officials, their parents and my parents, too. Since that day, I never liked April Fool’s Day. Anyway, let us now talk about culture. Culture is defined as the way things are done repeatedly.
It can be the way someone talks, dresses and behaves, or it can be religion. Culture is a subject often overlooked yet its impact is great.
According to research, for organisations, culture contributes around 70 percent of success or failure, especially during infancy.
There are certain ways of doing things that many people adopted without properly understanding them. Changing a culture requires intention, commitment and strategy, among many other strategies. This is so because culture builds over time and it dominates, even when the people involved are unaware of it.
Organisational status
Beware because “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, one author once said.
This simply means no matter the strength of your plans, as long as the team driving them does not possess the right culture, the strategies are likely to suffer.
Inasmuch as teams carry their individual values and culture, they still need to align these with the vision they follow.
Employees should always be willing to adjust and act in a way that promotes the success of the business.
Over a long period, both management and employees adopt unpleasant values without understanding why they do what they do and how it affects stakeholders.
In most cases, most of these things were just passed on by those who preceded them.
Redefine culture
We need to remove unwanted elements within organisations.
We should break barriers to transform our operational culture.
Oftentimes, people are scared of change. Many tend to resist change.
Sometimes, breaking barriers requires moving out of the comfort zone and being on the edge. Look at what the Covid-19 pandemic did. It pushed many organisations to adopt new ways of doing business that they never thought were possible.
Many thought workers were only effective when they were physically at the office. They believed that face-to-face interaction translates to increased productivity. However, we have big organisations like Microsoft, Old Mutual and Econet Wireless that reported an increase in productivity in certain areas of the business as employees operated and worked online. Changing culture requires the intention to do so and commitment.
We need to find agents who drive the change initiatives and keep doing it until it becomes a lifestyle.
Look at the history of Valentine’s Day, for example. Someone decided to change the day’s narrative from commemorating a tragedy to celebrating love. The same can be done to replace days like April Fool’s Day, for instance.
Instead of fooling others around, causing pain and confusion, we can simply decide to replace those acts with good ones. This is how a new culture starts and grows. Why call it Fool’s Day, anyway? Who exactly is the fool?
Is it the one fooling or the one being fooled? The same applies in many different aspects of life. Be challenged to look around you and the things you do or you contribute towards to see if they create good memories, whether they make others smile, whether they give a good reputation to your name and whether they promote good practices.
The moment you find your answers to be negative, begin to create a new culture. Let us break barriers to transform culture. As Africans or Zimbabweans, there are certain things we are known for that are not good. May we be agents of change to break those things.
They may be parastatals or certain organisations that are known for poor customer service or substandard products, let us all be inspired to bring about a new culture.
You have what it takes to transform the next generation. Be encouraged to start now.
Rutendo Gwatidzo is managing consultant at The HUB HR Consultancy. She is a multi-award- winning consultant, speaker and mentor. Contacts: +263 714 575 805/ [email protected]/ Facebook: Rutendo Gwatidzo Official.
