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I found Stephen’s post (below) to be a welcome challenge to accepted wisdom. Our brains are highly efficient and look for patterns and the short path to understanding. Sometimes this means that it is easy to become entrained, through habit and pattern, into accepting rather than challenging the status quo.  And how fantastic is it when someone does challenge you, when someone argues or comes into conflict with you? I generally look on such conflict as a highly positive signal and embrace it. Usually it means that there is new learning here.  Consider how leaders in organisations would truly benefit from this frame on conflict. And conversely, consider the reality of this. Many leaders discourage challenge and conflict out of insecurity perhaps, fear even.  But surely this is to the detriment of organisational success.

I lecture at a leading University on a professional postgraduate marketing Diploma; my specialism takes me into the realm of strategy, culture, business orientation and analysis and evaluation of business performance and strategic options.  The theory is clear: have a clear mission i.e. goals and strategy of where you want to be and how you are going to get there. Make your strategic intentions clear, but as Stephen alludes to, not blinkered by too narrowly defined vision. The leadership vision may capture employees minds but perhaps not their hearts.

Components of Mission

(diag compliments of Hooley et al from ‘Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning’)

This requires a looser style of communication, a more collaborative approach that taps into the  social networks that are the powerhouse behind organisational communication. But it is a braver and rarer type of leader who is comfortable letting go of the command-and-control style of communications leadership. All well and good to have a well-founded strategy, but how many of these strategies have you seen fail? For me, its a lot. The virtuous relationship between the 3 components of strategy, leadership and culture is critical in successful implementation of strategy and organisational change. Leadership and culture are intimately related.  More often than not, culture operates at an unconscious level, and at an unconscious level these two elements influence and drive each other.

Culture, strategy and leadership

But culture can be consciously adapted and shaped. Both as part of my lecturing work and as part of organisation facilitation sessions around culture and organisational change, I use a very effective simulation exercise.  (I have the great Judith DeLozier, one of the founders of NLP, to thank  for this). This exercise brings to life how culture is essentially collections of behaviours. Of course these behaviours are influenced by values, beliefs, structure, norms, processes etc etc, but it is the behaviours themselves which are the biggest influencing factors in culture and certainly the most visible elements. During the exercise, delegates have a direct experience of how behaviour shapes culture; and also how it serves strategic intention, for better or worse. Through raising awareness of the power of behaviour, delegates can then start to work on the ‘intention’ gap and the behavioural change required to move to a better way of working.

Perhaps through a more ‘embodied’ style of leadership (more next week) a platform for a more collaborative culture can be developed. I have certainly seen this in a few organisations i have worked for and with.  One example is at Briggs Equipment, where CEO Richard Close, effected cultural change almost overnight and is co-creating a market oriented company.  Click here to hear a recent podcast that I did as part of internal and external comms programmes with Briggs Equipment.

As you know, I am up for a challenge. Argue with me, take me to task. Comment on this post or email me on sue@changeworksblog.com.

Next post – Embodied Leadership.

This is one of a series of regular guest posts that I am running at Changeworks Blog. Today’s post is from Stephen Billing and provokes thought as to the effectiveness of vision for driving behavioural change.

Guest author: Stephen Billing, Management Consultant, New Zealand. Stephen is a facilitator of organisational change. He has significant experience in implementing dramatic change keeping business performing as usual. He helps his clients to be successful in restructuring, changing company culture, introducing new technology or new ways of working, and developing leaders, development of sales and sales management capability, and people development and training.
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Developing a sense of vision is seen by many as a key leadership task. It is commonly thought that a clear vision will drive behaviour if people buy into it. A vision is said to help people to tap into a higher sense of purpose and bring inspiration that will guide their behaviours and their ‘discretionary effort’ in support of the company’s goals.

It is also thought that employees can align their behaviours to a shared vision and this will lead to better results for the company. Some also say that if you have a vision, employees will synthesise this into their own personal vision that is in harmony with the organisation’s vision and their behaviours will then align with the company’s vision.

Famous gurus like Tom Peters and Peter Senge along with many others advocate that a shared vision has an almost mystical ability to motivate employees – to galvanise them – to bring not only their skills to work but also their hearts and minds, if not their souls.

In terms of tapping into the discretionary effort of employees, it is thought that individuals who are committed to a vision beyond their self-interest find they have energy not available when pursuing narrower goals. Organisations that tap this level of commitment will then be able to access from their employees more energy for achieving the company’s goals.

I might be going against the advice of A list gurus and common managerial thinking, but I have to say that I think that shared vision is overrated as an explanation for successful organisations. More often than not, creating a shared vision simply enables the senior managers to feel satisfied that they are following ‘best practice.’ In other words, everyone else is doing it so we should too.

It does not take much to realize that the actions of employees are driven by much more complex and individual things than the organisation’s vision, such as their individual backgrounds, their interactions with others in the organisation and their own intentions. Not to mention the specific situation they find themselves in at the time. The leader’s vision, whether or not it is created through a process that has wide involvement from the employees, can not become a ‘shared vision’ and drive employees’ behaviour. As a leader, you can only interact with a limited number of people during your day. Even when you do large-scale road shows to present your vision, your speech amounts to an intention, a provocation to your staff, and you cannot control how they will respond, what themes from your presentation they will take up and which themes will be ignored.

Further, the most important conversations in the organisation are not those that occur in the presentation’s formal (and intimidating) large group arena, or through the other official channels you provide. The most important conversations are those the most senior people can not control – those that happen in the cafeterias and around the water coolers. The Chief Executive’s speech about the vision is only one of many things that influence the important everyday conversations through which employees make sense of their world as people working in the organisation. The things that are important to particular employees cannot be controlled by the CEO, whether it is family obligations, peer opinions, their manager’s influence or their personal values.

The vision represents an ideal, what George Herbert Mead called a cult value. The vision is an abstraction that can only have meaning as it is taken up in everyday situations. So employees are daily negotiating what the ideal might mean as they choose between, say, spending time to help the customer in front of them or hurrying on to the next customer to meet their targets for number of customers assisted.

Rather than waste time and money paying consultants to help you come up with beautifully articulated vision statements, leaders should discuss with people what their intentions are, what they want to achieve. And then encourage them to tell you about their everyday experience as they grapple with your intention. Listen and observe their responses closely. Then respond accordingly.

You may feel this is risky because you won’t have control of where the conversation goes. You are right, you won’t have control of the conversation – the employees may say difficult things that you find hard to hear. They may say things that are plain wrong from where you stand.

The reality is that even with the most well crafted vision statements and well planned change initiatives, 70% of them fail.

So don’t worry about it – you weren’t in control anyway.

by Stephen Billing, Management Consultant, New Zealand

Blog: www.changingorganisations.com

Communication is often more about what we do than what we say. When it comes to behavioural change we communicate more effectively by living and breathing the behaviour that we want to see in others. Albert Bandura, a leading social psychologist, has spent his entire life proving this.

Bandura proposed that people learn by observation, rather than by taking direct action and being given rewards or punishments. Back in the ’60′s, when he was doing his research with the Bobo doll experiments, his opinion was sidelined but through a lifetime dedicated to proving his theory in every conceivable field he has become the leading proponent of the role of social modelling on human motivation.  His model stresses the importance of cognition and self regulatory/self reflective processes in adaptation and change in human beings.

Bandura’s theory has been used in everything from phobia cures to social transformation.  And it is certainly useful to consider in organisational change and change communication. A pivotal concept is the influence that positive role models have over the behaviour of others; particularly when those role models are considered to be ‘people like us’. This is also highly motivational in application because it essentially gives people control back over their choices concerning behaviour and action. This is highly empowering giving them the self efficacy where they will believe (or come to believe) they have the ability to influence and change things by changing their own behaviour.

Positive role models can be used to overcome established norms and culture and new behaviours, attitudes and beliefs will ensue, which will ultimately result in a tipping point in cultural change. This is by no means recommending a ‘brain wash’ approach, because it is critical that people have a choice in change. However through modelling a variety of behaviours, both good and bad examples, and influencing and rewarding the right behaviour, individuals can find their own path to the end journey.

Certainly Bandura’s theories are useful when applied to the Viral Change approach.  In particular, by sharing the stories of those who have struggled with change and bringing their journey through the process of struggle to successful change to life, others can see that ‘people like me’ have had their own challenges and this encourages them to persevere. This sharing of experiences and journeys instills the belief that people have the efficacy to overcome their own challenges.

Here is a interesting broadcast on BBC Radio 4′s Mind Changers programme talking about the work of Bandura and how his theories and principles are being used in mass communication, such as Radio and TV, to produce society-wide changes based on social modelling and thereby bringing about dramatic changes to global problems.

Talk about this topic through commenting on this article.

Whilst managers are important in the communication of change and in modelling behavioural change, they also play a criticial role in opening up dialogue within the organisation.  Managers do not always have the coaching skills to open up coaching conversations, even less so to encourage those crucial conversations (instead of shying away from them). If managers can be coached to open up such organisational conversations, dialogue, involvement and engagement will follow soon enough.

Coupled with this, viral change is an innovative and highly effective new approach to managing behavioural change in organisations.  Essentially, a small set of non negotiable behaviours are defined and a process to encourage and spread these behaviours is adopted. These behaviours are imitated, endorsed by a small network of people, and this spreads new ways of doing things, quickly and effectively.  Its strength lies in peer to peer networks, supported by dialogue and conversation, to create sustainable changes and spread and internal ‘infection’ of success.

The approach, masterminded by Leandro Herro, relies on the organisation behind the org chart.  75% of work conversations occur in the social networks and collaborative space that are active behind the scenes.  And relies for its ‘infection’ on the small number of people who have LOTS of connections (we all know one of those).

Coupled with use of metaphor, storytelling, logical levels of change and other tools, this is truly a powerful way of changing culture in a positive (and almost fun) way within a few months (honestly).

You can find out more at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations internal comms conference.  Go to our facebook event:
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=37381415459

Or the CIPR’s event page: www.cipr.co.uk/internalcomms

Watch and listen to Leandro Herrero on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pNsgyFJNYU

Or visit Leandro’s blog: http://www.viralchange.net/

And let’s open up debate, argument, dialogue, share you approaches, thoughts to open up conversation about this topic.  Email me on sue@changeworksblog.com or simply post a comment.