Brief 

Discover a deceptively simple approach to aligning your company’s culture with its new strategy through the power of storytelling. Learn from the insights of over 60 business leaders who have effectively transformed their organisational cultures.

 

Insight

Organisational culture and business strategy often seem to be on a collision course. Companies find that a new strategic direction is incompatible with their existing culture, triggering a critical decision point: should they abandon their strategy or change their culture? Given that a strategy is fundamental for gaining a competitive edge, abandoning it usually isn’t sensible. But how does one go about changing an entrenched organisational culture?

This article sheds light on this dilemma, offering a novel solution based on extensive research and interviews with over 60 business leaders who have navigated this challenge successfully. The solution starts with a deceptively simple question: How is your firm’s current culture shared and reinforced among your employees? The answer lies in the stories employees share with each other, which reflect and perpetuate the company’s values, beliefs, and expectations.

To change an organisational culture, therefore, leaders need to change these stories. This doesn’t mean merely tweaking the existing narratives; it means building new ones. Leaders must engage in actions that starkly contrast with the old culture and illustrate the values of the desired new culture. These actions, then, become stories that spread through the organisation, helping to shift the cultural paradigm.

The article provides enlightening examples of such leaders in action, from a CEO who altered the customer service narrative by bringing a call centre employee into a top-level meeting, to a leader who took her team to India to better understand the consumers’ perspective.

Research identified six essential attributes that every effective culture change story must possess:

  1. Authenticity: The stories must be genuine reflections of the leader’s personal values to avoid hypocrisy.
  2. Leadership: The stories must star the leaders themselves, showing their personal investment in the change.
  3. Break with the Past: These stories must clearly depart from the old culture, creating a path towards the new one.
  4. Emotional and Rational Appeal: The narratives must resonate with employees’ intellect and emotions.
  5. Memorability: Craft stories that are vivid and theatrical, so they stick in employees’ minds.
  6. Story Cascade: Leaders should empower other members of the organisation to construct and share their own culture-changing stories.

In summary, changing a company’s culture to support a new strategy is challenging but feasible. The key is crafting compelling, authentic narratives that lead the way to a new organisational identity.

 

Highlight

  1. Leaders must engage in actions that starkly contrast with the old culture and illustrate the values of the desired new culture.
  2. In summary, changing a company’s culture to support a new strategy is challenging but feasible.
  3. The key is crafting compelling, authentic narratives that lead the way to a new organisational identity.

 

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