90 | Thinking about change from the bottom up | Shorts by BBC

Building Better Cultures

Peter Senge, the American systems scientist and author said, "People don't resist change; they resist being changed." And we've all heard the McKinsey '70% of change programmes fail' stat hundreds of times (largely because of a lack of buy-in from people and leaders).

Most corporate 'big change' is agreed by CEOs and senior teams and then pushed down through the organisation from the top, often without sufficient explanation or 'linking and labelling' back to purpose or strategy.

So what about if we turned that on its head? What if we drove change from the bottom up, by empowering people across organisations to make hundreds of micro-changes that, when rolled up, result in that big change the organisation was trying to create all along?

Yes, you'd need to ensure that everyone knew where you were going, why and how you're going there. And you'd need to ensure that everyone was pulling in the same direction by having:

1. A strategy but making it more compelling by turning it into a narrative that talks to head and heart.
2. A really emotive WHY - what's your purpose and is it compelling enough.
3. Lived values that are celebrated when they're live and people held to account for when they aren't.
4. Engaging Leaders that support and clear roadblocks and can contextualise and translate strategy.
5. Really clear objectives that cascade from organisation --> division --> teams --> individuals.

Something to just mull over perhaps?

'Shorts by Building Better Cultures' is a short-form podcast in which we share our tuppenceworth on subjects in the areas of leadership, employee engagement, organisational culture and internal communications.

#buildingbettercultures #BBCShorts #inspiringchange #creatingconnections