How to Change Your Culture

This post's podcast episode is available on Sounder, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify.

When you are short of time, here is the one action that will give you 80 percent results in 20 percent of the time.

DO THIS

Convince leaders to identify and adopt the most important new behaviour that will enable the change.

BY DOING THIS

–        Identify the behaviour that will best enable the change.

–        Define how leaders will model it—what it looks, sounds and feels like.

–        Communicate stories of how leaders are demonstrating this behaviour.

All big changes require some form of culture change. This means modifying how people think, interact and behave. Your challenge is that these traits are deep-rooted and difficult to alter.

Since a culture is ultimately defined by leaders’ words, actions and behaviours, leaders must change themselves to change the culture. Identifying the most important new behaviour that will enable the change gives leaders and their teams a target to focus on. When leaders model this behaviour, they signal to employees the need to work differently to adopt the change. Profiling examples of leaders demonstrating new behaviours speeds up adoption by the people who report to or work with them. Furthermore, stopping a contrary behaviour quickens the transition toward the new one. For example, if collaboration across teams is the new behaviour, calling out information hoarding and poor communication reinforces the commitment to change how people work together.

KNOWLEDGE BITES

CULTURE CHANGE VISIONING TOOL: How will leaders demonstrate the most important new behaviour that will enable change?

SUCCESS TIP

Sharing an example of how the new behaviour contributed to a past success implies that some people already have it.

The Change on the Run:44 Ways to Survive Workplace Uncertainty book is now available. Go to http://www.changeontherun.com or your favourite bookseller for more detail.

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