Climate Climate Culture Behavior Climate Performance Performance Innovation Culture change - the fast & viral way More and more companies realize that the most important thing to have in place in order to pursue a change towards a more innovative company is to look at the Innovation culture. The question is how this is done the “best” way and how do we know what is the most suitable culture for us? What works for Company A does not necessarily work for Company B. Change to promote innovation is a constant process. Some say that “The only thing that is constant is change.” Hmmmm... What I like better is that “Everything has changed. Even Change has changed.” We change all the time. Change is not a one-off situation, it is ongoing and has a new look every day. Let us – again – use some metaphors to clarify the situation. Imagine we have a seabed. Deeply grounded in the bottom sediment we have some stones that represent our personal Values. These are what makes up you and me. Put all together these values constitute the company Culture that rules the place, a culture made by people. Unless there are very hard storms at the water surface, these stones stay in place and do not easily change. From these stones/personal values our personal Mindsets slowly stretch up like ropes leading to our personal Behaviors, i.e. the buoys floating on the water surface. All our personal behaviors pulled together form the Climate, what can be observed, in which we are working and this lays the foundation for a good company Performance. However, I cannot really say what Your mindsets are or even less what Your Values are. This is because the water is often murky and what remains to be seen is what is floating on the surface and what effect that has. The buoys, the different behaviors, is what we see and what we see we can influence. If we influence things well, this in its turn can have a backward effect and via the mindset ropes change the values in the right direction. If we pull a buoy consistently and hard enough , we sure can move the anchoring stone too. Just as we have 2 competing schools in psychology, i.e. the believers in therapy based on thorough Freudian psychoanalysis and those advocating use of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy instead, we have a similar split between the believers on what works best in the organizational world. We have those that believe in the Cascading Change where we by using a strict Top Down approach, resembling what I would call the Tsunami way. However the remaining effect of a Tsunami is hardly visible after a couple of years and they do seldom reoccur at the same place. They are truly one-off happenings. The cascading, tsunami, principle also demands that you really know in advance what way to change. If you are uncertain of what the most suitable innovation culture is for your company, you must allow for experiments and let different groups try out what works best. Success speaks for itself and the obviously successful changes of behaviors of some groups are contagiously adopted by other groups. This is called Viral Change. Viruses mutate all the time, often have fast effects and are not one-off happenings. One propagator of the “fast & viral way”, is Leandro Herrero, who in his book Viral Change TM talks about three steps; Describe the characteristics of the current culture. Describe the changes you would like to see being established. Identify three behaviors that exactly represent the culture changes you want and promote these behaviors. Takeaway: By primarily focusing on key behaviors we like to see by rewarding them, both in intrinsic and extrinsic ways, we achieve a cultural change faster than by primarily focusing on values and mindsets. When preferred behaviors occur somewhere in the organization (we cannot tell in advance where it will start) we support and promote these new behaviors to expand virally to eventually encompass the whole organization. As 3 key behaviors for increased innovation to start with I suggest 1) failing often, but cheap and early – hence learning for success, 2) making external collaboration efforts (with external I mean everything outside the own department) and 3) showing responsibility in initiating actions instead of waiting to be told to act. Climate Behavior Behavior Cascading cultural change – Tsunami way Management decide what and why cultural change is needed The cultural programme is pushed down. Motto: Either you are on the train or you are not… Behavior Behavior Mindsets Viral climatic change – Shortcut way Describe the characteristics of the current climate. Describe the changes your would like to see being established. Identify three behaviors that exactly represent the climatic changes you want and promote these behaviors. Mindsets Mindsets Culture Mindsets Values Values Values Values