25 Inconvenient Truths About Management of Change
By Dr Leandro Herrero
- Communication, per se, is not change. There is no change unless there is behavioural change.
- Culture change is a behavioural epidemic, not an information tsunami. Bombard the organization with campaign messages if you wish, but there will be no change unless there is behavioural change.
- Change does not start with ‘changing mindsets’. Mindsets are not a ghost inside the brain directing behaviours. Focus on behaviours or you’ll be running in circles all the time (in search of the mindset).
- Behaviours create culture. Change behaviours, get culture. The Mindset Cult doesn’t like this. Start with behaviours.
- Behaviours are an input in culture change. Culture (‘where things grow’) is the output. Imagine culture as a Petri dish. Trust, ownership, accountability etc, are outputs, not inputs.
- Large scale is not small scale repeated several times. The laws of large scale (culture) change have little to do with the laws of individual, group, or team change. Change at scale or there is no culture change.
- Individual change interventions, from coaching to team development, are not scalable. You can’t tackle broad organizational change with them.
- Behaviours scale up by social copying, by imitation. Good or bad, they will scale up. We copy what is around us.
- Cultures are not created by training. No revolution ever started in a classroom.
- Culture change does not usually start at the top. ‘The individual (or top leaders) needs to change first’ is an alibi for not starting a transformation.
- ‘Change yourself first’ is an entrenched social belief. As entrenched as wrong. Very often social change is first, individual change follows.
- Culture is not a destination, it’s the journey. On this journey, the hardest part is sustaining. Triggering new behaviours and habits is the easy part.
13. Individual or top leader role modelling is welcome but not enough. It needs scale. Leadership development does not completely ‘solve culture’.
14. Peer-to-peer, not top-down hierarchy is the strongest engine of culture shaping, beating hierarchy by 2:1.
15. Employee engagement is an outcome, not an input, certainly not a score. You don’t inject engagement; you create cultural (behavioural) conditions.
16. Grassroots, bottom-up change needs a mobilizing platform. This is what Viral Change™ is. ‘Bottom-up’ is not the same as more workshops at the bottom.
17. ‘Readiness to change’ is a red herring. No revolution started when everybody was ready.
18. Passion (as an all-things solution) per se, is overrated. It’s incredible how much damage a group of highly passionate people can do.
19. People are not resistant to change. Managers are resistant to accepting that people are not resistant to change.
20. New processes, systems or technology will not create lasting cultural change. Put behaviours in place first, then bring in the systems.
21. The formal and the informal organization are twin sisters. Both shape culture (sometimes they fight).
22. The informal organization is the culture oxygen. Suffocating it is a bad idea. The whole Management Theory is, however, largely focused on the formal organization.
23. Storytelling drives and accelerates change. Bottom-up storytelling spreads like fire. Top-down storytelling stops when the campfire ends, or when a strong wind blows, whatever is first.
24. Today there is no way to understand large scale behavioural and cultural change without the lenses of a social movement. Social movements are the model, not business school PowerPoints.
25. The laws of company culture change, social change, institutional change, or social movements are the same. Misunderstanding this has created HR bubbles, Big Consulting profits, and an alibi for slow and painful change.
The principles behind the Inconvenient Truths are at the core of the work we do with organizations to create large scale behavioural and cultural change and also in our organizational design and Leadership work. Want to know more? Email [email protected] .
Alternatively you can visit The Leandro Herrero Institute where you can purchase our digital seminar on The 25 Inconvenient Truths, delivered by Dr Leandro Herrero.