A Culture Tipping Tutorial
To enact change you need a posse, a place, a plan, and free-will.
If you read this far, you know that big, game-changing ideas are born, more often than not, from challenging beginnings. And once these disruptive ideas catch on and reach peak popularity, they can spur tangential, tiny, new idea ripples that have an even bigger impact on culture.
The same evolutionary process can be applied to organizational culture. If you ever have been tasked with improving a struggling company, you probably found the existing company culture to be part of the problem. Like any changemaker with a disruptive idea, this is that hostile environment you have to push through. But it may be slightly easier than you think if you stop believing you need 100% buy-in and just aim for 52%.
To get to 52%, the key is first to find that small group of innovators like you and earn their support. That’s about 2.5%.
Here’s how you do it.
A Quick, Culture Tipping Tutorial
Let’s say you want your company to be more innovative.
1) Identify your potential posse. Look for colleagues who fit the description of an intrapreneur. Do they look for solutions to roadblocks, like to experiment, Are they creative problem-solvers?
2) Invite your potential posse to engage in an introductory dialogue about innovation and your organization. A good icebreaker session starts with three questions: What are some areas in need of innovation? What would happen to our company if we innovated x? How might we re-design/re-think x?
3) Invite interested parties from the session above to collaboratively develop ideas for Project X. A short-term, development lab works great for this.
4) For your Project X lab, provide space, time, support, resources and a clear process to develop the ideas. Design thinking is great for developing new ideas. This process promotes experimentation, cross-collaboration, and focusing on the user’s needs. (Consider whether to lead the team or let the group make the initiative their own. The latter can speed-up the diffusion process to your network but it requires trust and a more hands-off approach.)
4) Establish a date, time, and place to unveil your first Project X prototype. Setting constraints improves results.
5) Quietly seek feedback on your prototype from a handful of employees who are engaged, early adopters. Make changes where necessary.
6) After you feel the prototype has positive traction, implement Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations — communications channels, time and a social system — to achieve wider adoption. Be prepared for a lot of experimentation and tweaking along the way.
Implicit in any change is one thing — those affected may have to change, too. Even tiny requests for adaptation can throw people off and make them want to dig in their heels. Expect pushback. Sometimes, you may find it is easier to gain support from outside your organization first, or from those who aren’t directly threatened by the change. By leveraging their influence, you may find it prods those within the company to be more open to innovation.
An Important Note to Bosses, CEOs and Leader-Types
No successful organizational change is sustained solely by management decree. You need a posse to support and spread the idea. In fact, the beauty of culture tipping is that anyone, at any level of an organization, has the power to do it. To ensure the best chance for sustainability, remember to provide education, guidance, incentive, and free-will every step of the way.
And that’s about it.
In conclusion, if you want to be an intraprenuer, consider the environment and the culture FIRST and…
- Seek out your own posse — the intrapreneurs, innovators and 2.5% of the world who want to approach life with curiosity, creativity, and engagement.
- Keep your posse close when the naysayers say nay. Fortitude and bravery are requisites to innovating anything but that doesn’t mean you go it alone.
- While your energies should be focused on the 52%, don’t count out the other 48%, entirely. Some may pleasantly surprise you. And even join your posse.
Great things will come if you apply the 52% rule to your life, whether it’s a happy place to work or the next disruptive idea. Be brave and happy tipping!
