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.

Why would you bother with Culture? Simple: if you don't work with culture, it might work against your organization's much-needed change. And you'll never know what hit you... Or, maybe you have your suspicions - as we can see from the research findings below:

Let’s continue the workshop with our thirty Library staff in the room. Read the first part of our OCAI culture workshop if you haven’t already.

We understand what current culture entails from values down to behaviors and we have identified the “shadow side”: the less-effective behaviors that we would like to stop, do less of, or change in any way.