Deborah Nystrom
Ron Koller & Deb Nystrom
Ron Koller
The new excerpt from the Forbes post below blends aspects of culture change and leadership, as well as the limitations of single-fix changes such as Lean, Agile, or Scrum or knowledge management, that make progress initially, but then fail to create a sustainable culture change.
Excerpted:
Changing an organization’s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. That’s because an organization’s culture comprises an interlocking set of goals, roles, processes, values, communications practices, attitudes and assumptions.
The elements fit together as an mutually reinforcing system and combine to prevent any attempt to change it. That’s why single-fix changes, such as the introduction of teams, or Lean, or Agile, or Scrum, or knowledge management, or some new process, may appear to make progress for a while, but eventually the interlocking elements of the organizational culture take over and the change is inexorably drawn back into the existing organizational culture.
via blogs.forbes.com__________________________________
Compliance can be more dangerous to change than resistance to change, because compliance has less energy to convert action than resistance. ~ R. Loup, R. Koller
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To create sustainable change takes the head, heart and hands all working together.
The Road to Commitment visual features three phases:
1. Expanding Awareness and Understanding
2. Evoking Belief
3. Building Commitment
An example of the heart part of head, heart and hands all working together is:
Phase II, Heart, Belief involves having a tipping point of people in the organization who believe:
- The change is good for the organization
- The change is good for me (What’s in it for me? WIIFM)
- The organization can make the changes necessary to succeed.
This phase involves individual choice to believe or not believe in the change. Without belief, there cannot be commitment. Compliance is not belief. Loup and Koller state, in fact, that compliance can be more dangerous to change than resistance to change, because compliance has less energy to convert action than resistance. The goal is to help everyone become engaged in belief.
