I really like what Peter Bregman has to say in his latest post entitled, “The Best Way To Change A Corporate Culture“.

In essence, he states that it’s not only systems, packages, programs, etc. that might need to be changed (which I argue, they most definitely need to be at some point in time) rather it’s story telling that will be your first point of affecting cultural change.

His theory is about peer pressure.

By flooding the ecosystem of an organization with positive stories, you will undoubtedly create a groundswell of cultural change.

My additional argument, however (in addition to the marriage of how culture, systems and structure bring us to the Work 2.0 panacea mantra) is that we need senior level champions who are walking the talk.

It’s great to have ground-up, organic and mid-level leaders driving some of the stories and examples, but there will be the need to have senior level leaders providing examples that can in fact be turned into stories.

2 Responses to “Story Telling & Culture”

1. Jon Husband says:

   08/22/2009 at 1:29 PM

   Hey, Dan .. take a look at http://www.storygarden.ca … StoryGarden

   … and imagine how the process of gathering stories about an issue and filtering (signifying) them according to peoples’ perceptions can turn the perceptions into data points which can be visualized (using Dave Snowden’s Sensemaker software) to seek for and identify emergent patterns (namely, the issues that matter to those doing the signifying.

   The StoryGarden system is effectively a shell, waiting for stories to be input and signified. Very useful for exploring in depth all sorts of corporate issues and initiatives.
2. dan.pontefract says:

   09/07/2009 at 9:24 PM

   very, very cool