To start a culture change all we need to do is…

“To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:

1.  Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.

2.  Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them” (Bregman, HBR 25 June 09).

I love the concept of storytelling to change behaviour & have seen first-hand how peer pressure can change pea haters into pea lovers… But to me, it makes more sense to time the implementation of the tangible elements that would re-inforce the desired culture (e.g. reward systems) to co-incide with the communication of the stories?    Whereas the article suggests not to change anything else (at first) & harness the tension created?  How so?  Can you use “the disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture” to drive employee ownership of the new systems?  Read Bregman’s “A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture” and let me know what you think…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under Change, Communication, Latest News and tagged with Change, Corporate Culture, Culture, culture change, Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One Response to “To start a culture change all we need to do is…”

  1. Doug Shaw says:
    July 2, 2009 at 5:28 pm

    You can’t beat a good story. We all like them, and we all remember the best ones. I use the power of stories all the time, I’m surprised they’re not a more widely used….tool? Still, maybe whilst we all like a good one, not all can tell a good one eh?

    Culture change requires persistence. So let’s say you’ve convinved some senior guy or gal to walk the floor and find out what’s on folks minds. First walk, they’re going to get pretty much nothing. Folk’ll most likely tell them it’s all OK. Senior gal goes back to office, closes door and thinks whoop de doo it’s all good. Nope. Go back and ask again. Once a week, why not Friday afternoon. After a while people will open up and also, people will start to check in on a Friday more often because they want ot engage with an engaging senior guy….or gal. You never know, they might all go out for a juice or a beer after and really get to talking about this culture stuff.

    Cheers – Doug

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