Leading Cultural Change That Sticks

We know that cultural change is incredibly tough, messy, and fraught with difficulties, however this does not mean that it should be avoided. If the culture of a management team is no longer enabling the growth and successful development of the organisation, then simply avoiding the elephant in the room may be a temporary coping strategy but the pain does not go away. It merely intensifies and traps the managers and their teams in an intolerable situation that can lead to the rapid decline and eventual failure of the business.

If management teams are open to exploring deeply how culture gets formed, and how it may be changed then they can intervene and change their culture if they want to. I feel that there are two areas of development that managers require if they are to tackle cultural change in an informed and effective way: (1) They need a conceptual framework and a congruent change methodology, and (2) they need to be open to reflecting on their ‘soft’ leadership skills and what is involved in improving these so that the actual leadership process has an increased probability of flourishing. These learning and development resources can go a long way to creating cultural change that sticks. 

Driven by my interest in these two aspects of cultural change work I have co -authored ‘Leading cultural change’ (https://www.koganpage.com/product/leading-cultural-change-9780749473037)  a text on the conceptual framework and change methodology; and authored ‘Neuro Linguistic Programming for Change Leaders;’ ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Neuro-Linguistic-Programming-Change-Leaders-Butterfly-ebook/dp/B07D3CWXHZ) a text homing in on the soft leadership skills required to build engagement and with key stakeholders during cultural change. Then to add to our writing I co-authored 'Bulding  a Culture of Conscious Leadership'   Building a Culture of Conscious Leadership - 1st Edition - David Pott (routledge.com)

Through our experience as change managers and trainers we draw on many areas of best practice demonstrated by those who have influenced our own development to  present a wonderful set of tools that managers can access and adopt which can most definitely improve their soft leadership skills; and they can also utilise, in a complimentary way classic cultural change ideas and tools rooted in the OD movement. Building upon these ideas we have developed an in-depth action learning programme  Cultural Change Consultancy and Leadership Certification       that brings these areas of practise together in a very dynamic way. You can check out our course brochure under training products at https://culturalchange.co.uk/ Please contact [email protected] if you would like to chat about your own cultural change management requirements.