Got a fun video for you today because I’ve invited in a video guest. A good friend, Michael Deitrich-Chastain who also happens to be the author of a lovely book called Changes and the creator of this really nifty card deck called Changes Cards.
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Today, I’m invited Michael to virtually join us in cyberspace to unpack 3 tips or ideas on how to implement cultural change in an organization. In this video, he talks about 7 elements. I will be sharing 7 elements which I think you’ll find really valuable. We’ll cut to him for 3 really concrete tips. And by the end of this video, if you don’t have some brilliant, clever but simple to implement strategies to make cultural change a little bite easier in your own worlds, then you should send me an angry emaIl because this video didn’t do it’s job. Here we go.
If you’re new to the channel, I’m Chad. This channel is designed for leaders and educators to make connection and engagement really easy. And sometimes a part of that is we operate in organizations that are ever-changing. And in the book Changes: The Busy Professional’s Guide to Reducing Stress, Accomplishing Goals, and Mastering Adaptability which by the way I feel special or something because the copy of Changes that I’ve found is not for resale. I got in advanced copy. Michael sent it to me to review before originally publishing. I’m honored to be sharing this with you now. In the book, he talks about his 7 different dimensions of change.
In the cards, he’s got a bunch of questions that are coded around this. If you are checking this out, think about the way that our cognition affects things. And pay special note to the subtitles here too. Heart. These are not spelling changes as you go through them. As he says, on accident not on purpose. Action. Nourishment. Guts. Love that one –guts.
I think that thing we forget oftentimes as leaders. But there’s a lot of science actually that talks about the gut-brain and has connected. Sometimes that gut response is a very thoughtful and on-point intuition that’s [???]. Then lastly, environment. Let’s talk a little bit in spirit.
First of all, I hope that if your wi-fi cuts out and this video stops that just actually having the language of those seven different dimensions of change allow you much more sophisticated view of how to create and implement change in an organization. Because if you change anyone of those pieces, right? It’s like pulling one string that may impact the others but change operates within a system. Without further ado, let’s invite Michael in to unpack one really beautiful simple tip that lean on the values of your organization or your team or your group.
-Hey, everybody.
Michael here with Arc Integrated reaching out to you to share 3 tips around how to effectively implement culture change.
Before we get there, let’s define culture in the context of an organization. What does culture mean. If you look how society human resource management defines it, it’s basically the expected behaviors of a group as well as their values and belief systems. That’s what a culture is. When we think about how to change a culture, let’s first look at values. A lot of organization have values listed on the wall or maybe they were developed a long time ago and they’re only semi understood, or maybe they haven’t been defined at all.
Tip number 1 is to get clarity about what the values are than of course drive the behaviors within a culture. That’s tip number 1 is get clarity about the values.
-Awesome. Michael, thank you.
Values Clarity
Getting clarity on values is easy to say in YouTube video and it’s harder to do in reality. Feel free at this point… Depending what context your organization is in, what stage organization is, what size your organization is. It maybe a really useful idea to just get a blank piece of paper and write down things that you think your group actually values.
This is interesting, right? Things your group actually values. Not things that people came up with at a strategic planning meeting to say at the organization values. But what do people actually value? Because it’s a really useful idea to be able to tap into what people personally value and somehow weave that into your organizational values. Because if those align, people are going to be much more interested and engaged in whatever change journey you’re taking them on.
Tip number 2 that Michael’s going to share starts to hit on this word. He says the word operationalize. I like the word “Act”. Thinking about to act on something. Feel free if operationalize doesn’t sync to you. Feel free edit the word to think about this dimension of change. Which is how are you going to act to make those values come alive. What do you got, Michael?
Operationalize those Values
What does that mean? That means that sometimes organizations have very clearly articulated values but they’re not living and breathing within the organization’s culture or system. For instance, if you’re one of your values is transparent communication but that’s not really being practiced or it’s not really being identified and checked in on or if you ask an average employee and they can’t really quickly say, “This is one of our core values.
And here’s how it shows up. And here’s the behaviors that are exhibited” which referenced the value, then it’s not really living and breathing inside the organization’s culture. That’s tip number 2 is to operationalize the values.
-Tip number 2, there you go. Love it. beautifully said. I don’t have much to add there.
After Michael shares his third tip which has to do with environment, I’m going to jump on and share one strategy that I found to be brilliantly useful in gaining steam in a change effort. And that is what I call the golden ticket method. Stick around for the golden ticket method. Without further ado,
Michael, take us home with tip number 3.
Define and Utilize Advocates.
What does that mean? In order to create a change, it really acquires an environmental influence. As an example, in the book Changes: The Busy Professionals Guide To Reducing Stress, Accomplishing Goals and Mastering Adaptability which came out last year which I wrote. One of the 7 predictors of effective change-making in that book is titled Environment. And what that means is the people, places, and things that we are surrounded by influence our ability to sustainable change.
As that applies to the organization’s culture change, we need advocates in our environment to drive the change or drive the culture that we want to expect.
We need to define those people that are the cheerleaders for the culture that they know inside and out that they can articulate the values and how they operationalize across the system. We need those advocates in our environment to drive that culture change.
That’s tip number 3. Again those 3 tips are Values clarity, getting clear about what the value are. Tip number 2 is operationalizing those values. And then tip number 3 is defining and utilizing advocates. Thank you so much. I hope this was really helpful.
-Michael, thank you so much for coming in, sharing 3 wisdoms with us. And reviewing them to make it accessible. And now, as promised, I’m just going to share in super brief what this golden ticket methodology.
Let’s say in an organization, you were trying to roll out some change around, trying to build up coaching culture in the organization. You wanted leaders to be coaches rather than command and control, tell me what to do sort of leaders.
You’re rolling out this training on how to coach well. One way to do it would be to force everybody to go through the training.
The way that I would strongly suggest is create this training as an opportunity. Open it up to current leaders and emerging leaders to come who are interested. You’ve got you advocates or your early adoptors that come in to that session. And the golden ticket methodology is very simply, “Hey, thanks for showing up and investing your time here.
Trusting that you had really valuable time.”
The way we’re going to roll up this training is you get to pick 2 to 3 or nominate 2 to 3 other people to receive the golden ticket to be able to come this training next. You have those early adaptors invite people. You have advocates become the influencers as supposed to you as at the top or you as the leader of making that top-down change. It’s more a little bit..
That golden ticket methodology is a little bit more of a invite-only, grass-roots sort of way to spread plant-a-seed-feels-coaching culture.
Eventually, what may happen is people have gotten into training and they’ve raved about it. Now, people start to want to go to the training and like, “How do I get into this?” And trying to figure that out. And that’s a really useful… Creating that drive where that enthusiasm for change is really fantastic. If you want to take a whole another deep dive down change enthusiasm, you should totally check out Cassandra Worthy and her work.
She’s amazing. Has some brilliant ideas on how you not only make change happen but make change happen with enthusiasm.
Before I say what I always say at the end of the videos, if you want to check out Michael’s card decks or books, Amazon is the place to do it. It’s a brilliant deck with questions that relate to each of the seven dimensions of change. There’s ways to use them individually, in pairs in with groups. Even though we make cards decks and these We! Connect Cards, We! Engage Cards and other things, these changes cards are awesome. They are so good. They are so good to spark conversations around change and make change and experience rather than something that people have to either choose like, “Am I going to get on board with or not?” Like involve people in the change process makes so much magic happen.
Alright.
Have an awesome day.