Is Your Company Ready To Change Its Culture?

Peter Bregman wrote recently about changing a corporate structure. In the article he cited a study by the University of Illinois researcher Leann Lipps Birch. In the late 1970’s a series of experiments was conducted on children to see what would get them to eat vegetables they disliked. This is a high bar. We’re not talking about simply eating more vegetables. We’re talking about eating specific vegetables, the ones they didn’t like.

You could tell the children you expect them to eat their vegetables. And reward them with ice cream if they did. You could explain all the reasons why eating their vegetables is good for them. And you could eat your own vegetables as a good role model. Those things might help.

But Birch found one thing that worked predictably. She put a child who didn’t like peas at a table with several other children who did. Within a meal or two, the pea-hater was eating peas like the pea-lovers.

Peer pressure.

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us. Which is what makes culture change particularly challenging because everyone is conforming to the current culture. Sometimes though, the problem contains the solution.

First we have to decide why we want to change the culture. Think carefully because this is not going to be easy. It took a long time to build where you are and the people, even though it may not be pleasant are used to it. The rules are established, changing them now will bring resistance. Want to proceed?

Then you need to change the story.

“You change a culture with stories. Your culture tells one type of story. Those who toe the line get promoted. No value of an employee or their personal life. Micromanaging of projects or no trust . Whatever it is it’s the story everyone knows.

If you change culture change the story. Begin rewarding the behavior you want to see. Let others see the reward and talk about it. Keep moving forward with the new stories.

Here is an example from Bregman: if you want to create a faster moving, less perfectionist culture, instead of berating someone for sending an email without proper capitalization, send out a memo with typos in it.

Or if you want managers and employees to communicate more effectively, stop checking your computer in the middle of a conversation every time the new message sound beeps. Instead, put your computer to sleep when they walk in your office.

Don’t begin by changing  the performance review system, the rewards packages, the training programs. Don’t change anything. Not yet anyway. For now, just change the stories. For a while there will be a disconnect between the new stories and the entrenched systems promoting the old culture. And that disconnect will create tension. Tension that can be harnessed to create mechanisms to support the new stories.

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.

What about your company? Are you changing culture? If you are I would love to hear your stories.

Transforming The Future Part II

 Earlier this month I posted an article by Future of Work that talked about transformation and what fundamental change looks like. It’s irreversible, substantive, changes our identity, and shifts our purpose. This is part two. Addressing the dramatic change that is happening and considers what it may mean for our collective future.

Scotty, Take It Up To Warp Factor 5.6!

We believe that western society (and quite possibly the entire planet) is being transformed in five very specific ways:

• Forecasting and understanding change:  the arts and media
• Individual rights and collective choices:  government
• Buying, selling, and trading:  economics
• What we know and how we think:  education
• Where we belong and are welcomed:  community

This is about as basic as it gets.

Back Story:  The Drivers of Change

Johann Gutenberg’s printing press was by far the most significant change of its time.  It shifted the world at large from an oral means of communication to printed, reproducible documents.

Today we are shifting again—from analog to digital forms of communication. Our ability to communicate with one another has gone from one-to-one(pre-Gutenberg days), through the print-based and “broadcast” media of one-to-many, to a many-to-many model (through the Internet) where everybody has the possibility of communicating with everyone else (at least among those who are on-line). And of course, our notion of “many” has gone from a small number to literally millions of people. Just as importantly we are using multiple kinds of media to communicate with each other—print, sound, and now video (e.g. YouTube and other web-based video systems) being the most common.

In its day the printing press changed basic perceptions of space and time. We went from focusing on the past (what had already happened) and being able to experience only those things that we could directly sense, to being able to experience interactions with people who are completely outside our everyday experience (and in some cases don’t even exist in the real world—ala SecondLife). Today our focus is also changing from the present to the future—a world in which we can now actually create sights, sounds, and even smells that don’t exist anywhere in nature; they “live” only in an explicitly-created digital world.

In addition, our mental energy has moved from being largely automatic (simply reacting to external stimuli) to becoming formally conscious of our place in a larger social context. We believe we are now at the threshold of shifting from ego-based behavior to purpose-directed behavior. That means that with the Internet we’re now learning who we each are (e.g., Facebook), all for the purpose of discovering why we are (e.g., communities of interest supported by tools like Ning, Facebook. LinkedIn, and all the other social networking sites).  Communication technologies have transformed human society several times in the past, and they are doing it once again.

Component	Printing Press	Internet
Technology	Oral to Print	Analog to Digital
Time/Space Perception	History to Present	Present to Future
Mental Energy	Automatic to Conscious	Conscious to Intentional
Behavior	Reactive to Ego	Ego to Purpose

The Deep Dive

Given that, let’s go back to those five big societal changes. The arts and media have changed considerably. In the 1500s, people’s ability to appreciate and understand only those events and objects in their immediate, direct experience evolved into to an ability to appreciate people and ideas outside their “normal” experience (think of the power of a written text to make places, people, events, ideas, and emotions come “alive” to a reader—even they are entirely fictional). The media transformed from one-to-one or person-to-person to one-to-many.

Today we are creating a dynamic, “virtual” environment in which we “live” every day—including many of our social networks. Not only do we have access to many things outside our direct experience, but because of that we must also learn to question the authenticity of almost all of what we see, hear, and sense. We’re now moving into an age in which the media actually lets us construct the environments that we want to be in and experience.  

Fueled by the power of the printed word, governmentsmoved from feudal communities to empires to nation states. Now those nations are struggling once again to take the next step in their evolution, both as independent cultures and as members of a global community.  What does it mean to be a “global citizen?” The Internet is at the heart of this evolution. The last Presidential election in the United States was a prime example; U.S. voters could not avoid taking into account how the candidates and the issues “played out” in other countries, and many non-U.S. citizens played active roles in the online conversations about both the issues and the candidates.

In the 15th century economies shifted from agrarian to mercantile models that were designed to speed up the pace of transactions in the rapidly expanding marketplace. This mercantilism matured into a capitalist structure supported by democratic forms of government. Now the old economic rules of mercantilism, based on scarcity, ownership of private property, and economies of scale are running out of gas.  (Don’t worry; we’ll come back to this assertion at a later date.) Something new is emerging as global financial markets converge and electronic commerce brings everyone into what may soon be a unified planetary marketplace.

Educationhas undergone, and is once again undergoing, equally dramatic change. The informal, almost pre-literate, form of education in the Middle Ages gave way to a centralized structure built upon the printed word and books. The 15th-century model of education (what we now call the University) was spatially centralized; students traveled physically to specific places—centers of learning—to get their education.

Today learning is becoming accessible to “students” wherever they may live and/or work (and the whole concept of “student” has broadened to include just about everyone, all the time). Earlier, basic education was the private responsibility first of families and then of local communities. Now, however, we believe that all sorts of learning venues, funding models, and methods will soon replace, or at least augment, existing public school systems. Education—beyond the very basic level needed just to survive—will be delivered by the extended communities and the work organizations to which we belong.

Lastly, our whole idea of community has changed and is changing once again. “Community” used to reflect the largely homogeneous views of a few relatively authoritarian religious institutions. The printed word began to pull apart those societal structures, and its impact was immediately seen in the way communities began splintering and differentiating. Many new communities arose, often espousing distinctive belief systems. During the Renaissance, many people gained the freedom to move physically into the communities that they wanted to belong to.

Now we have thousands of on-line, virtual “communities” that thrive completely independently of any one geographic location. We can reach out beyond our local neighborhoods to discover other people anywhere on the planet who share our interests, beliefs, fears, and desires. We can then use digital technologies of all kinds to establish communications directly with them and ultimately band together, first electronically and eventually even physically, as a market or political force, if we want to do so.

	Printing Press	Internet
Media	Direct to Indirect Experience	Physical to “Virtual” Experience
Government	Feudal to Nation States	National to Planetary
Economy	Agricultural to Mercantilism	Industrial Capitalism to Supra-National Market Regulation
Education	Informal to Formal and Spatially Centered	Universal at elementary level; work-based and continuous for adults
Community	Cultural or Religious, based on geography and tradition	Cognitive or Spiritual, based on unity of purpose

Why It Matters

Simply  put, if somebody could have told people in the Middle Ages what was about to happen to their lives, they probably wouldn’t have believed any of it. The changes that were about to occur were quite simply beyond their capability to imagine. And we are convinced the same thing is true today.

We are at the very front end of an incredibly broad and fundamental transformation. And we all have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to look for emerging patterns and make important choices about how we shape the future, both individually and collectively. So what are you going to do this Monday morning?

Moving Your Traditional Marketing Online

Everyone’s telling you to do it but you are not sure how. Online marketing is through the roof in popularity for a reason. It is cheap and powerful when used correctly.

Here are twelve ideas from Channel V Media to help you get started.

1. Audience Identification. If you know who your audience is, you’re already one step ahead of the game. The next step is to figure out where they interact online.
2. Platform Development & Design. Figuring out how to engage and interact with this audience.
3. Brand Campaign Integration. It’s possible for a social media program to piggyback off a good brand campaign, but it has to be transformed into its cooler younger brother.
4. Content Creation/Coordination. You must create a consistent message.
5. Goal Mapping. In other words, how do you measure your success? Is it brand mentions? Traffic? Email sign ups? Leads? Sales? 
6. Brand Identity. Everyone that is engaging via social media on your team must understand your goals and messaging.
7. Audience Attraction. Larger brands like to start spreading the word of their new, fancy and glossy initiatives at the outset, but if your social media program is good, your audience will find them on their own and the spread the word for you.  
8. Social Media Listening. If you don’t know what people are saying about you and your products, their related interests and more, how are you going to interact with them?
9. Community & Social Responsibility. Social responsibility is increasingly expected of everyone – and this engagement is an essential part of your online identity. 
10. Internal/External Community Engagement & Response. Be everywhere. All the time. It’s up to you to let people know that you are listening, engaging, helping, and offering solutions.
11. Brand Advocacy. Authenticity and transparency are such huge aspects of social media, your social media and management team must be 100% on board.
12. Customer Service. Good customer service involves listening (within and outside of social media) and responding appropriately.