Australian Submarine Corporation — Cultural Change & Organisational Systems

Organisation: Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC), 2010

The Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) engaged IGOR to undertake a major organisational review and prepare the organisation for cultural change. The work was undertaken at a time of significant pressure to improve the organisation’s performance and strengthen its ability to deliver its submarine maintenance and support responsibilities.

ASC was a complex operational system comprising engineering, technical, trades and corporate functions operating across a large Defence industry environment. The organisation contained distinct communities with different roles, working environments, information flows and perspectives on how the organisation operated.

A central feature of the review was an apparent divide between the large operational and trades workforce and the professional and corporate workforce. These groups worked in substantially different environments and had developed different understandings of the problems facing the organisation. Each tended to attribute difficulties to the other, creating an organisational pattern in which communication problems, competing assumptions and separation between groups could reinforce one another.

IGOR conducted a whole-of-organisation review to understand how the system was operating and where barriers to effective communication, coordination and change were embedded in the organisational environment. This involved extensive interviews across the organisation, engagement with senior leadership and operational personnel, and direct observation of the environments in which the work was being performed.

IGOR also worked alongside change and improvement personnel on site, providing the methodology, training and direction required to conduct the organisational review. The work was supported through regular reporting and feedback to senior stakeholders, with findings progressively brought together into a broader assessment of the organisational system.

The review considered not only individual attitudes and behaviours, but the structures and conditions through which those behaviours were being produced. This included the physical separation of groups, communication pathways, organisational relationships, management practices and the ways in which different parts of the organisation understood their responsibilities and constraints.

IGOR developed recommendations for organisational and cultural change, including advice that aligned with concurrent lean improvement activity. The recommendations addressed the conditions required for a more integrated organisational culture rather than treating cultural change as a matter of instructing individuals to behave differently.

This reflected a core IGOR principle: culture is shaped by the system in which people work. If an organisation wants different behaviours, it must create an environment in which those behaviours are possible, expected and reinforced. Structural separation, communication barriers and organisational practices can therefore become barriers to cultural change regardless of how strongly individuals are encouraged to change.

The work provided ASC with a systems-level view of the organisational barriers to change and a set of recommendations for creating the conditions required for a more integrated culture.

What this demonstrates

IGOR can diagnose complex organisational systems in which culture, structure, communication and operational performance are tightly interconnected. Rather than treating cultural change as an exercise in changing individual attitudes, IGOR analyses the organisational conditions that produce behaviour and designs practical changes to the system around people.

The project demonstrates IGOR’s ability to work directly inside large, technically complex organisations, engage across occupational and organisational boundaries, identify systemic barriers to change, and translate that understanding into practical organisational and change-management advice.