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When we ask people about whether they want to change the brand culture, there is ambivalence. In a distressed culture, everyone can see that something is wrong. But the thought of change is not necessarily comforting. To make the commitment to building a more purposeful culture, it’s critical to point to a cultural agitation point: a reason to change now that is compelling.

Realising the need for change

Cultures reach the realisation that they need to change in different ways. Sometimes, the change realisation is externally driven: the brand is not performing, or customers are complaining about service, or the company culture is not aligned with the requirements of the strategy. At other times, the signals are internal: your eNPS takes a dive, or feedback channels show all is not well, or managers and leaders report that things are not going to plan, perhaps there are silos and conflict.

The critical decision then is: improvement or change? Improvement builds on the culture you have but looks to bolster weak points. Change requires a deeper assessment of “Who do we need to become?”

Stick with today or aim for tomorrow? There are a number of ways to answer this, but the one we most often start with is a Cultures Model. This offers a range of brand culture options with different characteristics. By identifying the brand culture you have now and the one you need, and aligning them against the type of culture your strategy needs to succeed, you can quickly identify the gap, if any.

If your current brand culture is fundamentally right, improve it. If not, look to change.

Cultural change is cultural repositioning

Some years back, we did this for a tech company that was not delivering what new owners expected. That was the strategic driver. But we needed to understand why the culture was the way it was. Observation, workshops and feedback revealed that the brand culture was inherently introspective and, as a result quite slow to make decisions, whereas the strategy called for the brand to be much more proactive and performance-based.

Making that change successfully was never going to be about flicking a switch or demanding new behaviours. Cultural change is almost always cultural repositioning, and as such it requires an incentive to move and a place to go to. It also requires understanding what lies ahead to get there.

The emotional change journey

In this wonderful article courtesy of Bain & Co, authors Patrick Litre and Kevin Murphy trace the emotional ups and downs of the traditional change programme. It starts with skepticism and concern about where this journey could go, but that shifts to optimism and even excitement towards the end of the strategy phase as more people come to understand the intentions and see a place for themselves in what’s going on. Excitement climbs as momentum builds and the change develops critical mass.

Inevitably, there are difficulties – and hope gives way to disappointment. Belief plummets. What happens next depends on leadership. Smart leaders create forums for dialogue and push through change and personal development at that level. “Every individual in the organization hears the plan from his or her direct supervisor and is invited to ask questions and provide feedback on the spot. The story is thus told in the best possible way, by the most credible person, the one with the most influence on an individual employee’s work life. The resulting dialogue allows individuals to feel they’ve been heard, and it offers them a greater sense of control.”

The breakthrough point for us was derived from thinking by BJ Fogg: if you want active buy-in, change needs a reason, not just a process.

Everything starts with an agitation

Conscious of the Bain model, we’ve developed a Culture to Thrive brand culture change model that looks to counter the negatives and accentuate positive emotions.

The first step in this Principled Culture Change is Agitation: providing the rational and emotional proof that “we can’t stay here”.

There’s little doubt that people act more positively and decisively when they are presented with a context for actions. A real context. A pain point they can feel. An opportunity that stares them in the eye and says, “Come get me”.

But – and it’s a big but – the strategic drivers for change and the human drivers of change can be very different.

Too often, we watch organisations announce cultural change programmes without referencing and quantifying specific motivations that make sense to staff. Instead, the reasons for change are linked directly with things that most people feel they have no direct influence over – like the economy, or a shift in the share price, or the priorities of the new management team and business plan.

The thing is none of those reasons sound like ownable reasons to embrace change. And because of that, people feel affected or put upon, rather than involved and excited. From that strategic incentive, you need to find a human reason that resonates.

Making the human case for change

There are two parts to establishing a cultural agitation point for change:

Part 1: Address the change resistors

Behavioural science indicates three motivations for not wishing to change:

• Anchoring locks people into conventional thought patterns. To address this, it’s important to agitate for change using terms and ideas that people already know, but to reframe them. In other words, look to change what the anchor could mean;
• The ambiguity effect means people would rather deal with what they know than what they don’t know (yet). To address this, remind them of how what they know is not working for them or for the wider culture. In other words – what we know about what we know; and
• Confirmation bias encourages people to look for evidence not to act and to doubt whether change will work. Counter this by showing what has become locked in and why it is limiting. In other words, acknowledge the resistance and, at the same time, confirm the damage this is causing.

Part 2: Provide an incentive to move

Building a purposeful culture starts with providing people with a purposeful reason for changing the culture they have. You’re looking to answer these kinds of questions:

• What exactly has happened to make upheaval necessary now?
• Why today – and not last year, or next year?
• And what’s in it for *me* to get involved and to do everything possible to make it succeed?

Deliver a trigger that is powerful enough to incite action and not just compliance.

FROG is the key to agitation for purposeful culture

Ours is based on FROG. We’ve all heard the metaphor of the amphibian that dies because it won’t leap out of the heating water. We’ve repurposed this to provide four cues that can act as powerful incentives for supporting a new cultural era:

• Foresight – point to what is coming and the power of being prepared;
• Recovery – help people understand there is a way back to prosperity;
• Oneness – provide reasons for unity and inclusion that are sadly missing right now; and/or
• Growth – paint a future for the brand that is better than what people can currently imagine for themselves.

To be truly effective, your Agitation should come out of a well paced and broadly inclusive Discovery process. Ask people for their views on what is working, what is not and what they believe the future holds for the brand. By analysing what the strategy requires from people and combining that with what people are looking for within the culture, you can arrive at an Agitation that feels both timely and human because it questions the present from within but also from beyond the current brand culture.

A well-paced, well-informed Agitation underpins everything that follows it. By injecting realism and optimism into the first stage of change, you can counter the natural dip that Patrick Litre and Kevin Murphy refer to, and encourage people to look forward to hearing more.

Let us help you build a Culture to Thrive

Culture to Thrive is our strategically focused approach to big picture brand culture change for leaders wanting to align their people, strategy and core principles. You can read more about the range of brand culture services we offer here.

Culture To Thrive helps you find and define what you are striving for as a business, and the culture you specifically need as a brand. Together, we’ll build out why you should be one type of culture rather than another. We’ll also work through what you intend to accomplish and how every person can contribute to that.

Please contact us if you’re ready to change up why you compete.

Acknowledgement
Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash
Graphics designed by Fuller Studio.

Further reading
Inspiration: Step 2 in activating purposeful culture