Culture Change
You’re leading culture change in your company.
Before setting sail for the journey, you ready yourself and your vessel. You must decide what will be most useful for the seas ahead given limited space, uncharted waters and potentially stormy conditions.
“What to bring?” you ask.
Suggestions appear here, and in several upcoming posts, that describe how to use the conveyors of culture to change the culture.
Stories as Culture Conveyors
Imagine your company needs to shift from…
The old culture that celebrated
- Fighting fires and individual heroes who saved the day
To a new culture that celebrates
- Predicting, then preventing, by way of collaborating within and across team of experts, the conditions that cause fires
Not so sexy, is it?
The firefighting culture is, in part, maintained by company elders sitting around the campfire (the bar, the lunchroom, the pre-meeting conversation) telling stories of fire-fighting heroes. These stories are passed from one generation of workers to the next.
New Stories for Culture Change
As you and others developed plans for implementing the culture change, you identified new skills the firefighters would need – leading and building teams, collaboration, communication, conflict resolution, etc. But skills won’t stick unless you create, tell, celebrate and spread new stories needed to solidify and propel a different culture.
The new stories picture teams of firefighters visiting 3rd and 4th grade classrooms, working with city officials, giving presentations about fire prevention equipment and methods to local business owners. The iconic picture of fire fighter as hero carrying a six year old child away from a burning building is tough to combat. Therein lies your challenge. To overcome it, proceed as follows:
- Identify the type of story the new culture needs to celebrate. Let’s call it the new dance.
- Find someone doing the new dance.
Look in unusual places. After all, this is a change. Consider teams as heroes. - Tell stories of new heroes doing the new dance.
- Brand them as the icons of the desired culture.
- Discover the first followers of the new hero dancers. Publicly celebrate them and encourage others to join the dance.
Here’s a short film that demonstrates how to find and celebrate the new heroes, and their followers, who are dancing the change you hope to achieve.
Culture Change and the New Heroes
In 1957 Russia launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit Earth. The idea that the Russians might beat the U.S. at anything, sparked former President John F. Kennedy to launch a transformation in the U.S. public education system. In an all out effort to improve students’ proficiency in science and math, university researchers got involved in the development of school curricula. America became obsessed with exploring space. The country’s new heroes were astronauts and scientists not cowboys and generals. Future cultural icons would include the likes of Star Trek’s Dr. Spock and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Accident or culture change?
The lesson: Your role as change leader includes creating and including the right stories to propel the desired culture change.
If you’re interesting in reading more about how to achieve culture change, try The Coast Guard Charts A Course for Enterprise Change Management, by Stephen B. Wehrenberg. He provides a model for identifying and using the organization’s cycle for creating its culture to change its culture.
Stephen B. Wehrenberg, Ph.D., is Chief of Human Resource Strategy and Capability Development, United States Coast Guard, He is also the Coast Guard’s Vice Commandant for executive development. Steve is a past board member of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), where her served a as President during the organization’s 2011 start-up.