Large scale mobilization and alignment of people, united through common goals yet everybody is in different and diverse roles with a large proportion of volunteers: I am describing a typical social movement. But I want to describe corporate culture in the same way.
We need to think of corporate culture as a social movement. There is a lot to be gained by this. Don’t think of corporate culture as a large classroom where everybody gets messages and is trained. Or the sum of regulations and policies. Or a set of labels that somebody has created: entrepreneurial, mature, authoritarian, engineering, agile, customer focused, etc.
Culture needs a shared understanding, a common language, a common sense of purpose and a shared commitment to action. It does not need a cloning system for people but rather an environment where people can share their dreams; where company dreams are compatible with personal dreams. They don’t have to be the same.
Business organizations who have developed their thinking from the teachings of traditional business schools are at a disadvantage. The best source of inspiration and learning on corporate cultures comes from studying social movements. Many well orchestrated political campaigns have a lot to teach us.
The Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 were fundamental in understanding large scale mobilization. I have dissected them in detail through the lenses of my organizational work. It has convinced me of two things: (a) Viral Change TM (behavioural, bottom-up, peer-to-peer) is the modern answer to organizational and cultural change; (b) 90% of my (large), traditional organizational development library is as relevant as the telegraph is in today’s modern communications.
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Join me and my team for our live webinar, TODAY, as we focus on creating sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change across organizations
To create sustainable changes in company culture, we have to change our behaviours. Behaviours create culture, not the other way around. For large scale behavioural and cultural change, social copying is more important than most of us know or want to believe. We will dive deeper into the topic during our webinar today, on large scale behavioural and cultural change across organizations
1730 BST/1830 CET
‘A Better Way to…create sustainable large scale behavioural and cultural change across your organization.’
The right Organization Operating System can host change, transformation, deployment of values and leadership, mobilization of people, reshaping of a culture, employee engagement and any other day to day need of the organizational architecture.
Viral Change™ provides that platform – creating the behavioural DNA for the organization. With that DNA and the appropriate mechanisms of scale up, change is possible. But change is not a project or a programme, it’s a way of life.
3rd June, 1730 BST/1830 CET
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