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We are taught about (and I lecture on) the cultural web and this model certainly has relevance when we talk of organisational culture but one thing is missing.  What is the evidence of culture? What is the real tangible measure of culture? It has to be behaviour. 

Behaviour is the outcome from the inputs of those elements of the cultural web, such as symbols, structures, rituals, values.  And when we talk about cultural change we are really meaning behavioural change anyway.

I went to the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Annual Conference in Birmingham on 11th November and was inspired by some of the speakers there.  Evan Davis was fantastic as the Chair of the event. And several of the key speakers alluded to using employees as champions of cultural and strategic change. John Smythe, founder of Engage for Change, talked about sharing power and adopting a ‘co-creation’ approach to engagement where employees are involved in decision making and building the strategy (the ‘how are we going to get there’ element). I loved what John had to say because it takes the approach of employees as champions of change, perhaps seeing employees as directors of strategic and cultural change from the ground floor.

John listed five routes to engaging for change:

1. Engage the leaders (them as role models)
2. Interventions
3. Transforming communication
4. Build capability
5. Identify measures and drivers

Rather like in the hero’s journey (from Joseph Campbell’s amazing book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’), they need a strong ’call to adventure’ to get them bought in to this process. I can see the hero’s journey applying to organisational change where the hero’s journey starts in the ordinary corporate world, and the employee receives a call (a challenge) to enter an unusual world of strange events.

Glenn Manoff from O2 told us the about the O2 story – a massive employee engagement exercise culminating in the opening of the O2 arena.  And this gave me some ideas for how to get this call to adventure across.  Using an almost trance-like process (akin to Anthony robbins!), a manager cleverly used ‘appreciate inquiry’ as a tool to help people visualise, imagine and connect to a future that is different and more successful than the present.  This is exactly like the ‘Imagine If’ sessions in Viral change.  It helps people step out of their current frame and put on a new, exciting frame that opens them up to possibility. From here we can use facilitated sessions to elicit ideas and connect to a new reality.

“If you can imagine it,You can achieve it. If you can dream it,You can become it.”
William A. Ward

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Einstein

Internal segmentation of employees is sometimes needed to help target different audiences by attitudes, values and potential behaviour around change. It can be useful in a collaborative change programme. We need to consider the outcome and use this as the basis for the segmentation, otherwise it is meaningless. But as part of this process, which doesn’t have to be onerous, we can ask employees where they can add value and what the likely blocks to success will be.  And this is just the start of the co-creation process.

Comment on this article or email me (sue@changeworkscom.co.uk) with your thoughts.  Changeworks Communications helps organisations achieve behavioural and cultural change.

I am in the middle of a Viral Change project for a large organisation and, as part of this process, I am talking to employees. I prefer to call these ‘thinking workshops’ rather than focus groups, because I think that the latter term has become cliched. And without encouragement, people perhaps may not think deeply enough about what we ask them.

On that point, I would highly recommend a book that I am reading: ‘Marketing Metaphoria’ by Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman uncovers the deeper metaphors that work behind our deeper thinking.  Zaltman has developed an innovative process for depth interviews and focus groups to elicit people’s unconscious layers of thinking.  You can watch a video of Zaltman talking about this process, with a live example at HBR’s site.  There is also a ‘mock’ written case study to illustrate Zaltman’s point about the risks of failing to think deeply about what consumers are saying.

Whether we are planning internal or external communication, marketing principles apply. However, most marketing practice is based on outdated or incomplete knowledge of how the mind works.  By studying disciplines such as cognitive and behavioural science we can augment and enhance our marketing tools significantly and far apace of our competitors.  But more importantly we can add significant value to our clients in our change communication with them.

I love Zaltman’s book because it is about understanding the deeper structure and meaning behind the words that customers use, and using this to produce deeper level and higher quality managerial thinking. As a coach, I am fully aware of the importance and significance of metaphor in the change process.  For me this book gives me lots of ideas as to take this approach overtly into focus groups and depth interviews as part of a research process for internal change.

Whilst the book relates the concepts to brands and brand development, but there is plenty of application in developing internal communication programmes and certainly in change management.

But remember, deep thinking is hard work: have you got the courage to face the deep?

If strategy is to be successfully executed, and bring effective turnaround in business performance, we need to communicate what it is that we want employees to do.  In other words how to behave.  This is obvious. But organisations often find this hard to implement in practical ways. Perhaps this is because communication is, by definition, open to interpretation.  Encoding and decoding, rather like the raft of confusing codex in any multimedia environment, is a fluid process and open to errors of configuration.

behavioural influencers

The Viral Change approach to organisational change is refreshing in its ‘bottom up’ approach: what will strategic excellence look like for us as an organisation and what will people be doing?  What are the 5 or 6 or so, critical behaviours that are going to achieve this for us? Sounds easy perhaps. But this needs careful attention and consideration (worthy of separate post).

Then as part of this ‘viral’ spread of change, we need to find those people who are already demonstrating this behaviour, for this is ‘excellence’ based on our future strategic needs.  Strategy is, after all, about where we want to be, and behaviour is about how we are going to get there.

So, given that we want to spread a certain set of behaviours, those that are deemed as excellent or noteworthy – those worth copying – modelling is one of the fundamental ways of ‘communicating’ that behaviour. Of course, I am talking from an NLP modelling perspective here and whilst this might present a rather lengthy process in its full programme, there are certainly useful learnings in change to be drawn from the formal modelling process.

The two elements to consider in modelling skills and behaviour are the observable, externally presented behaviour and also the internal mechanisms and strategies that individuals have developed (often subconsciously), or ‘what makes people tick’. 

The individual’s external behaviour is influenced by the higher logical levels of learning and change, such as capabilities and beliefs/values (see earlier posts on this topic), so it is to these that we must look for the deeper strategies for change.  The first step in the modelling process is usually implicit modelling; through that state of ‘not knowing’ an observer models the externally presented behaviour of the subject to gain insight (through the feeling mind) into state, thought processes, beliefs and attitudes. 

Then explicit modelling – the formal, interview type structure – is used to build on this model. Viral Change is focused on influencing external behaviour; external behaviour is observable and we can describe it accurately through language. However, if a successful behavioural change agent’s most important capabilities are internal (ie. thinking and feeling processes) – and often unknown to them – it is probably important to spend some attention in this area too.

Most people today accept that their ability to behave effectively is influenced by their feelings, way of thinking, beliefs, values and sense of identity. It therefore becomes crucial to identify thinking strategies and other ‘intangibles’ that are so important in ensuring these ‘change agents’ have the resources to maintain the momentum that the struggling organisation needs.  The problem is that often people are not conscious of what is going on for them – they are ‘unconsciously competent’ at the behaviour and have never picked apart what it is they do.

Here, a process of ‘macro modelling’ can be useful to help the individual understand what it is they do, and therefore facilitate transference of this behaviour overtly to others (through viral and other communication channels) but also to help the individual being modelled to demonstrate those strengths more of the time, especially when under duress or when facing difficulties.

For example if a required behaviour is ‘keeping customer promises’, macro modelling is undertaken in the following way:

1. Locate a time and space representing the context in which the person manifests ‘delivering on

macro modelling

promises’.   Find the beliefs and values which guide him in this context.

2. Locate another space for a context in which the person is not able to manifest ‘delivering on promises’.  Find the beliefs and values which are different in this context.

3. Establish a new location for a third position in which the person can view both the effective and the ineffective contexts.  From this perspective evaluate the similarities and differences between 1st and 2nd contexts with respect to beliefs, values and anticipated consequences.

4. Have the person return to each of these positions and from each one, move to action, or see the next steps he or she would take, as well as consequences related to those actions or steps.  This helps them to consider the ‘larger system’ in which they demonstrate this behaviour.

5. Add a 4th perspective, from which to consider all three.  From here, evaluate the presuppositions, assumptions, skills and capabilities operating in the evaluations that were made in the 3rd position space.  Are they appropriate? How did you select what constituted ‘delivering on promises’? What did you presuppose about values and beliefs in those contexts?  etc

This process helps to build up the model of how that person ‘does’ this behaviour both in terms of actual behaviour as well as mental processes.  And the simpler this model is, the more effective it will be in application.  The understanding gained (through this and other tools), can of course, be used to develop a profile by which to ’recruit’ similar behavioural change champions for the programme. 

Whilst a formal modelling process is not required for a Viral Change programme, an understanding of the tools and benefits of modelling is very helpful in ensuring the programme’s success.  Changeworks Communications undertakes regular modelling and viral change programmes for large and medium sized organisations.  Contact Sue (sue@changeworkscom.co.uk) for more information.

Viral Change is an innovative and highly effective approach to managing change in organisations. At Changeworks we are currently using it alongside internal communication programmes, and viral communications especially, to help organisations more quickly realise a vision of success. Whilst ‘big splash’ internal communications can serve to act as a frame for change, often this approach alone won’t effect sustainable cultural change.  A viral change based process can work as a stealth weapon, working effectively in the background with no big company wide launch, to change behaviour and hence culture.

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 cultural changes and spread an internal infection of success. Viral Change is closer to infection of ideas or behaviours than to the traditional rational appeal and cascaded down initiatives of change.

The concept of Viral Change was pioneered by author and speaker, Dr. Leandro Herrero, an organisational consultant who specialises in organisational change. I recently met Leandro at the Chartered Instute of Public Relations Internal Communication conference, and interviewed him about some of the key things to consider when implementing Viral Change programmes.

Podcast

Changeworks Blog

You can read more about Viral Change on Wikipedia or visit Leandro Herrero’s Viral Change Blog.

Changeworks Blog will be focusing on the processes and ‘management’ (ah ah!) of Viral Change and related considerations over the course of the next month.

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.