My revised 12 rules of social change at a scale. These very simple laws apply to any large scale change including the one inside organizations, cultural change and transformation and any other labels.
- Cater for many motivations. Don’t kid yourself everybody will join in with the same motives. Super-alignment is overrated. You need to aim at ‘compatible dreams’. But, be very clear and ruthless about the non negotiable, no matter what motivations may be behind. A good focus for the non negotiable is behaviours.
- Create a compelling narrative, one that explains ‘the cause’ and ‘the success’. In organizational terms, use ‘the cause’ as well as term to frame purpose and direction. Success does not have to be articulated in numbers (only).
- Segment, segment and segment. One single overriding, top down narrative of mission/vision/strategy that comes down from the top in monolithic form does not make sense. Be aware of the tribal listening. Who expects to hear what? This is normal in political marketing, and very unusual in organizational internal marketing.
- Engage as many people as you want but the key ones, if you are into scale (and you should be) are the hyper connected, the ones who have a natural pull effect, and can influence many. It has nothing to do with hierarchy. If you don’t know who these people are, you have a big problem.
- Fix role assumptions, expectations, labels. Advocates, activists, volunteers, passionate, mavericks, rebels, doers… these are very different types of people. Obvious as that may seem, we mistake them all the time
- Passion per se is overrated. It’s hard work first! 50 passionate people in the room exhibiting passion won’t change many things. Passion is a great bonus when associated to 24/7 commitments
The other half tomorrow, to end the little list of social change rules.
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