5 Principles for organisational culture change

1.    Copying principle. Homo imitan copies whilst homo sapien wonders. Homo sapien declares himself in charge of novelty but doesn’t necessarily see how much of that is a copy of the environment. We copy each other, mostly unconsciously. We are shaped by what we copy, good or bad. Homo imitan does not have an intrinsic fixed morality.

2.    Behavioural  principle. If you are in an environment with positive and enriching ‘things’ to copy (highly positive, highly copiable) these are what you will get most of the time. The opposite is also true.  Viral Change™ is based upon the pivotal role of a small set of behaviours that need to become highly positive and highly copiable. They need to be ‘found’ first.

3.    Scale Principle. A set, even if crafted well intellectually and with high power of copy-ability needs a scale mechanism as soon as you talk about a culture (‘a culture of X,Y,Z’). The strongest engine of scale in the organization is not communication, it’s not training, it’s not enlightenment of the few at the top it is peer-to-peer. Those who manage to engage peer-to-peer networks (often small initially) will end up winning the culture aim.

4.    Connectivity principle. You can accelerate the copying by firstly engaging the highly connected (which is not the same as the best role models or the bravest volunteers, let alone the box-occupying declared leaders).

5.    Infection principle. In this approach, culture change is closer to epidemiology and infections (both prevention and management) than to standard management practices. Your ultimate aim is to be able to say ‘we’, here, have an epidemic of A,B,C (those being good things).

For a deeper dive into organizational culture change contact our team: viralchange@thechalfontproject.com

Viral Change™ because only behavioural change is real change.