Story Telling & Culture

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.