Before a digital change, organisational culture is not visible in a presentation or in values displayed on a wall. People see it in what happens when an order is late, data is missing or a new process step is unclear to everyone. If management wants to understand how change will be received, it needs to listen to these everyday situations first.
Digital transformation and employees are often discussed as separate topics: the system is one project, and people are another. In day-to-day work, that separation does not hold. A new system enters existing relationships, habits, unspoken rules and the ways decisions are made when time is short.
Picture a morning in manufacturing. A planner sees that material has not been recorded in the expected location. The warehouse worker knows the goods arrived, but the receipt has not been completed. The production manager is waiting for an answer because the schedule needs to change.
In one organisation, people will quickly say what they know, raise the issue and agree on the next action. In another, everyone will try to protect their own part of the work: someone will send a message without a clear question, someone will wait for approval, and someone will resolve the issue outside the system so the day can continue more quietly.
The difference is not only about discipline or goodwill. It shows how the organisation really operates under pressure.
Organisational culture is especially visible in four daily situations:
Management does not need to be present in every one of these situations for its patterns to be visible. People draw conclusions from them about what is genuinely valued: speed at any cost, accuracy, mutual support, caution, independence or waiting for someone else to decide.
An ERP, an integration or a new procedure can make data more available and steps more visible. On their own, they cannot resolve who is responsible for a piece of data, who can stop an incorrect process or what happens when one department has a different priority from the company as a whole.
If people currently maintain parallel spreadsheets because they do not trust the data in the existing system, a new system can carry the same problem into a different form. If deviations are reported only once they become urgent, better visibility will not automatically create a habit of early warning.
This is not an argument against changing systems. It is a reason to prepare a process change around real work, rather than only around an imagined process flow.
For example, sales may consider an order complete once it has been agreed with the customer. Accounting may need several more details before issuing an invoice. Production, in turn, needs a confirmed date, specification and available material. If these differences are currently handled through calls, personal relationships and reminders, a new system will make them more visible. But someone still needs to make a decision: which data must be complete before handover, who checks an exception and where it is recorded.
This is where a culture of change begins. Not with a message that everyone should be open to something new, but with a clear agreement on how work will be handled when a real exception appears.
The most useful conversations are not those in which people are asked whether they support change. Most will answer politely, and the answer will not explain what happens in real work.
It is better to start with a recent example. Ask employees to describe the last situation in which work stalled, data was wrong or a customer was waiting for an answer. Then listen to the sequence of events.
These questions can open a practical conversation:
It matters not to turn the conversation into a test of loyalty or a collection of individual complaints. The purpose is to identify patterns. If several people name the same person as the only source of answers, there is a risk of relying on one person's knowledge. If the same data is checked in three departments, it may not be clear who creates it and who trusts it. If exceptions are resolved in private messages, the process probably has no agreed place for an exception.
After these conversations, it is useful to separate what is a process issue from what is an issue of capacity, authority or data.
A process issue may be an unclear sequence of steps. An authority issue exists when someone sees what needs to be done but is not allowed to decide. A data issue arises when the same information is kept in several places or nobody knows which version is valid. A capacity issue can mean that the procedure is reasonable, but there is not enough time or enough people to carry it out as intended.
This distinction helps avoid a poor solution: building every existing workaround into the new system. Some workarounds keep work moving because they close a real gap in the process. Others only conceal unclear responsibility or distrust in the data. Before configuration or rule changes, it is necessary to know which group they belong to.
A useful small framework for every important handover can look like this:
These questions do not replace a project plan. They give the plan the real conditions of work.
When preparing an ERP implementation , it is therefore not enough to discuss functions and reports. It is necessary to understand handovers between sales, procurement, warehousing, production and accounting. At these transitions, people see most quickly whether a change has made work easier or simply added another step.
A culture of change does not mean that everyone will immediately be pleased with a new procedure. Change can rightly bring questions, caution or resistance, especially when it affects work schedules, authority or the way performance is assessed.
An open conversation also does not mean that every preference will remain in the process. At times, one standard way of working must be chosen, even if some people are used to a more flexible approach. At times, the system will require data to be entered earlier than before. These decisions can be demanding, but they are fairer when explained through their effect on the whole process rather than presented as a personal preference.
The greatest risk appears when employees are asked for honesty and their examples are then ignored without explanation. Not every suggestion can be accepted, but it is possible to say what was considered, what was not and why. This does not remove every disagreement, but it creates a clearer relationship to responsibility.
Before deciding on a new process, choose one frequent but sufficiently important workflow: from order receipt to delivery, from a procurement request to goods receipt, or from recording work to calculation. Speak with the people who actually carry it out and walk through the latest specific case, not an ideal diagram.
Record where people wait, where they check, where responsibility is taken and where an issue goes unspoken. This is a more useful starting point for digital transformation than a general message about readiness for change.
If you want to connect this conversation with a review of processes and systems, the ORKA team can help structure the initial questions through Connected operations , or you can Talk to the ORKA team .