Monday, May 19, 2014
In any organizational change, people are the most critical players in making that change happen. If you want to increase your chances of success, you need to embed the change in your organization?s culture. We often use the metaphor of an iceberg when describing the two levels at which the culture of an organization manifests itself: there?s the formal culture which consists of the visible aspects of your organization such as process, tools, organizational structure (the top of the iceberg) and the informal culture which consists of your beliefs, language, values and behaviors (the hidden, bottom of the iceberg). A sustained change would mean that you need to address both. Just changing the processes and giving new tools to people would be a superficial and ineffective investment. You need to influence people?s underlying values, behaviors and actions too. This would mean investing in developing the capabilities of your own people. From what we have experienced, most organizations are very good at creating a vision for change and taking a few steps forward? but a large portion of organizations fail to sustain it. We have found that developing leaders to seed change is a powerful way to make that change stick. Who are these leaders? Well, they?re people who work for your organization, and who have the skills and knowledge required to implement the change. They buy into the vision and are enthusiastic about making a difference. They have the credibility and ability to inspire others by communicating the reason for …
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