Change

We were sitting in a room in a foreign country: 20 executives were waiting for the CEO to arrive. I was present to facilitate the first part of their workshop on culture after they did the OCAI culture survey. People were checking their laptops, smartphones or talking softly to their neighbor. The CEO was ten minutes late.

I checked the time with the HR manager who was my contact at the company. Should we call the CEO to remind him? No, he said, he’ll arrive shortly.

What is positive change? What is a positive organization? Why would we bother to practice positive leadership, and create a positive culture? For some, the answer is obvious, for others not at all.

As we have seen in my blog post on positive leadership: the why is rather obvious. We want to help positive change succeed and create a positive organization because it makes people happier and more productive. The performance of a positive organization can be astounding.

In this series about Culture, Change, and Leadership we’ve discussed how organizational change can fail or be successful and how organizational culture can help or hinder. This article provides an overview of what we’ve covered thus far - including my Change Circle approach.

You probably know about the 70% failure rate of organizational change. One of the reasons is that change programs don’t align with the current culture. A more fundamental cause is the conventional command and control mindset and linear worldview of many leaders and employees.

Of course, positive leadership as discussed before entails more than asking questions. But let’s focus on the art of asking questions to facilitate successful organizational change. I’ll share one question based on the OCAI and the Competing Values Framework that helps people define what successful change would mean for their organization.