Brainzooming participated in a new business presentation with a group of other companies. We were proposing a change initiative for a multi-agency department within a city government. As our in-person presentation drew to a close, the review team asked about each of our experiences with comparable culture changes.
My answer, rather than detailing the specifics of a particular initiative, focused on important lessons I learned during a significant change in organizational culture.
What lessons did I share on how culture change works? There were three lessons.
An organization may have a groundswell for change from within the ranks. In a business setting, though, you need senior leadership to be on board with a changing culture. That can involve:
While the need for the change may emerge from objective evidence, facts alone will not win the day when changing a culture. The facts MUST be intertwined with emotional appeals. Facts may get people's brains engaged, but these initiatives are as much about the heart as they are about the mind.
Even though you may have a big launch event to signal that there is a different direction for doing things, real change doesn't happen at a point in time. It's an ongoing series of daily events - some huge, some barely noticeable - that disrupt the status quo, demonstrate a new way of doing things, and solidify the newness on an ongoing basis. If you think you're done with culture change, I have news for you: your work is not only not done, your culture is probably rolling back to what it was before.
That is my best advice on how culture change works. – Mike Brown