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Viral Change™ is a behavioural based cultural change programme that is ‘designed’ so that a small set of behaviours is spread by a small set of ‘influential’ people (usually around 10 per cent of the workforce). If done wisely, with experienced Viral Change™ practitioners it creates an internal infection of success that is spread through peer to peer networks.

The Law of Influence

These influencers are not drawn from management, instead they are those employees with a large social network of ‘loose’ ties, those people who are natural influencers. (This could mean that your receptionist becomes your most ‘powerful’ leader – a pre-warning here to organisational leaders: Viral Change™ means letting go of control!).

In this respect Viral Change™ works with the natural law of influence : social proof.  People want to follow the lead of people just like them and people will do things that they see other people are doing. (Have you read Herd?). People are more motivated to follow their peers (people like them) than they are to ‘obey’ a command-control leadership (this is especially true of Generation Y’ers).

Make Best Use of Limited Resources

Rather than seeking to change the whole organisation, which is what traditional change management programmes typically do (of course, this is guaranteed to fail, as you will never have enough resource to achieve this). Viral Change™ makes best use of limited resources and, like a chemical reaction, assembles the key ingredients and uses a catalyst to causes a reaction and a rapid spread of change to create a ‘Tipping Point’ whereby the whole system becomes the change.  Bear with me if your brain is aching, it seems that leaders like things simple these days; but too simple and you really do miss the boat!

Designed Informality

The premise behind Viral Change™ is that organisations are not linear, mechanistic machines but complex, multi-centre organisms. The ‘designed informality’ of Viral Change™ takes the reigns of this complex organism in a remarkably simple way (at least from the outside looking in!), so that employees in the organisation become the catalysts of change and sell success internally.

Leaders Need to Let Go

Feeling uncomfortable? So you should! Because the biggest barrier to Viral Change™ success, is leaders who can’t let go. People at the top of organisations are used to being in control. But Viral Change™ is not lead by the people at the top; it is enabled by internal ‘leaders’.  Your admin person, service operator, salesman, these people become the ‘leaders’.  And you have to allow them.  You have to prepare them, support them, engage them … and then let them go.

All you have to do then is reap the fruits of their actions.  Which could be numerous: cost savings, reduction in duplication of work, improved processes and efficiencies throughout the organisation, better customer service, increased sales, reduction of waste and damage, increased safety, increased value added service for the customer … and on it goes.  This all adds up to improved customer loyalty, greater profitability and a more innovative organisation with a sustainble competitive advantage: an ongoing, fluid learning organisation.

Viral Change™ is not a ‘Change Management Programme’ – that dreaded ‘c’ word!  But it is the only alternative to the traditional, mechanistic, process driven, top down change management. It delivers sustainable change faster; it is a far less painful process and is by far more cost-effective.

Other posts you might enjoy:

• How to implement Viral Change TM
• Interview with Dr Leandro Herrero about Viral Change TM
• Cultural Change is behavioural change
• When it’s not working – go Viral ChangeTM

Comment, argue, get involved:  we’d love to hear your comments on this post!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, social media is a great way to help build and develop brands online. However, finding the right type of social media is critical to developing your brand successfully.

Social media is about interaction and dialogue and the conversations your audience have about your brand. It is extremely important you choose a social media site which your audience use and has the key features that you require.  Choosing the most popular social media site may be ineffective if it doesn’t include the features which you need. Also, not every brand is a conversation starter so social media may not be for everyone.

The key things to consider when choosing which social media sites are right for you are:

• Target Audience – It is important to find out which social media sites your target audience use.  By researching the user’s demographics in their profiles on different social media sites, you can find out which social media to target to reach your specific demographic.

If your brand is in a specialist industry it is important to choose a social media site aimed at that niche market as it will help build high quality relationships with the relevant audience.  For example, if you want to develop you restaurant online a popular social media site you may choose to use is: http://www.fohboh.com/

• Choosing relevant content – Make sure your content is relevant to your target audience by looking at the content on the social media sites which your audience use.  If your content is interesting and relevant to your audience they are more likely to join your online brand community.

• Your objectives – Find out what features different social media sites offer and whether they will meet your objectives. If your main objective is to network, you may want to choose a social media site that allows you to send messages and share links with other users and create groups. As social media is used to interact and develop conversations, it is important that this is a key objective.

These important considerations will help you decide which social media site is appropriate to build your brand. Ideally, choose a general social media aimed at a large audience to increase your brand awareness but also focus on a niche site to help build your brand and relationships.

Tiger Woods' mental toughness gets success

Mental toughness, or resilience, is the key to peformance, behaviour and wellbeing. It is defined as a state (which can be learnt), rather than a trait (inherent in personality) and is embodied by people who seek challenges,create change, dislike routine, and like problem solving. It is key to instigating and managing change.

Mental sensitivity is the opposite of mental toughness: it means you let things get to you. Mentally tough people DON’T: adversity happens and they remain calm: instead of getting stirred up they are inspired to achieve despite setbacks.

When it comes to mental toughness, men and women are equally tough. And it can be learnt. You can develop mental toughness: NLP is a powerful tool, as is YogaNidra.

Mental toughness when combined with emotional intelligence leads to wise resilience – which I think is essential for every leader. If you want to get to the top, get mentally tough: one common thing is top people are all mentally tough. The higher position they hold the more mentally tough they are.

The components of mental toughness are commitment, control, challenge, confidence.

Commitment refers to being energised by goals and challenges and ‘staying power’.

Then there is control over one’s emotions and one’s life (self efficacy).

People who seek challenges create change, dislike routine, and like problem solving. They actually seek out difficult challenges because it energises them.

Finally confidence has an external and internsl dimension: self belief and interpersonal confidence.

Mental toughness can be developed through the following six aspects

1. Thinking skills
2. Visualisation and mental rehearsal
3. Control of anxiety – fretting can tax the body and promote cardiovascular problems.worry elevates heart rate and lowers HRV. Learn to let go
4. Attention control – my friends tell me that my 30 min YogaNidra sessions give them-stamina, energy and focused performance.
6. Biofeedback – for example, heart waves entrain brain waves; physiologically the heart is a regulator of the ‘bodymind’ system, it entrains the system to coherence.

Viral Change is not Tsunami change

Have you been through significant structural change recently? Or implemented new IT systems perhaps? Have you undergone a number of clever strategic initiatives yet something is still stuck?  People aren’t quite doing what they need to?  The culture isn’t where you would like it to be?  Many of the best organisations we work with suffer from a blame culture where fear of failure and silo mentality is rife.  Others see a lack of ownership and an attitude of ‘it’s not my responsibility’.  And many are frustrated with the wasted time in meetings and not being productive and of course, the time it takes to make effective decisions and get things done.

If you are 80 per cent of where you should be – is that good enough? Of course not. That extra 20 per cent (like Pareto said) is difference between ‘also ran’ and blue oceans. Yet traditional management or change management programmes won’t get you there. But Viral Change TM will.

Viral Change is Not a Change Management Programme

Despite having ‘change’ in its title, Viral Change is not a ‘change management programme’. You may be familiar with most organisational change programmes: mechanistic, big, driven from the top, expensive, a big set of complex actions with lots of ‘push’ corporate style internal communications. Well guess what? It doesn’t work.  

‘It’s the old problem of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic! Superficially, one can create the impression of making a lot of changes; but at the base level, nothing of significance may have really changed.’       Morgan, 1993

Remember what Gandhi said: “We need to become the change we want to see in the world.”  It is people who change other people: not processes, not systems, certainly not Village Hall corporate comms meetings! As a spokesperson at Pfizer told Dr Leandro Herrero, pioneer of Viral Change, “Change only happens when people see those around them changing” .

Creating Tipping Points

Viral Change is butterfly change (my words) – in that, like the butterfly effect, small changes at individual level end up having a far-reaching, ripple effect on the larger system. In Viral Change a small set of behaviours is spread, imitated, endorsed by a small network of people and this spreads new ways quickly through influential peer to peer .  The overall effect is sustainable changes created mainly by the internal ‘infection’ of success, and the achievement of tipping points.

Instead of focusing on processes and what is visible and manageable (the traditional linear, left brain approach), Viral Change recognises that the most important ways that change needs to occur cannot be controlled.  This is because an organisation is not a machine, it is a collection of individual human beings: a living system.  And living systems cannot be controlled like machines, not for long-term well being anyway, but rather have to be disturbed with impulses that will cause the system to react and make choices about what to do.

Living Systems Need Disruptions to Initiate Choice

Ever come across the concept of ‘self organising systems’?  Rather than change being driven from the top down, individuals and their individual actions create big change in the system.  This way the system is self organising.  Watch how these starlings roost – it looks like chaos but small behaviours lead to massive system change:

Small impulses in these massive flocks of birds, are interpreted and acted upon by the system and, out of what looks like chaos, a single impluse (ie ‘roost’) initiates massive change that tips the whole system into roost. Viral Change approach directs meaningful impulses into the system to influence large and sustainable changes.  We’ll talk more about those impulses in our next post.

Please comment and contribute to this discussion by posting your own thoughts and comments!

Other posts you might enjoy:

• How to implement Viral Change TM
• Interview with Dr Leandro Herrero about Viral Change TM
• Cultural Change is behavioural change