{"id":3731,"date":"2014-08-30T09:05:29","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T09:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=3731"},"modified":"2014-08-30T09:05:29","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T09:05:29","slug":"see-and-share","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=3731","title":{"rendered":"See-and-Share"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stick_figure_liking_it_150_wht_9170\"<\/a>Common-sense tells us that to achieve system-wide improvement we need to grasp the “culture nettle”.<\/p>\n

Most of us believe that culture drives attitudes; and attitudes drive behaviour; and behaviour drives improvement.<\/p>\n

Therefore to get improvement we must start with culture.<\/p>\n

And that requires effective leadership.<\/p>\n

So our unspoken assumptions about how leaders motivate our behaviour seem rather important to understand.<\/p>\n

In 1960 a book was published with the\u00a0 title “The Human Side of Enterprise<\/em>” which went right to the heart of this issue.\u00a0\u00a0 The author was Doug McGregor who was a social scientist and his explanation of why improvement appears to be so difficult in large organisations was a paradigm shift in thinking.\u00a0 His book inspired many leaders to try a different approach – and they discovered that it worked and that enterprise-wide transformation followed.\u00a0 The organisations that these early-adopters led evolved into commercial successes and more enjoyable places to work.<\/p>\n

The new leaders learned to create the context for change – not to dictate the content.<\/p>\n

Since then social scientists have disproved many other ‘common sense’ beliefs by applying a rigorous scientific approach and using robust evidence.<\/p>\n

They have busted the culture-drives-change myth …. the evidence shows that it is the other way around … change drives culture.<\/p>\n

And what changes first is behaviour.<\/p>\n

We are social\u00a0 animals …. most of us are much more likely to change our behaviour if we see other people doing the same.\u00a0 We do not like being too different.<\/p>\n

As we speak there is a new behaviour spreading – having a bucket of cold water tipped over your head as part of a challenge to raise money for charity.<\/p>\n

This craze has a positive purpose … feeling good about helping others through donating money to a worthwhile cause … but most of us need a nudge to get us to do it.<\/p>\n

Seeing well-known public figures having iced-water dumped on them on a picture or video shared through multiple, parallel, social media channels is a powerful cultural signal that says “This new behaviour is OK”.<\/p>\n

Exhortation and threats are largely ineffective – fear will move people – it will scatter them, not align them. Shaming-and-blaming into behaving differently is largely ineffective too – it generates short-term anger and long-term resentment.<\/p>\n

This is what Doug McGregor highlighted over half a century ago … and his message is timeless.<\/p>\n

“.. the research evidence indicates quite clearly that skillful and sensitive membership behaviour<\/strong> is the real clue to effective group operation<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

Appreciating this critical piece of evidence opens a new door to system-wide improvement … one that we can all walk through:\u00a0 Sharing improvement stories.<\/p>\n

Sharing stories of actions that others have done and the benefits they achieved as a result; and also sharing stories of things that we ourselves have done and achieved.<\/p>\n

Stories of small changes that delivered big benefits for others and for ourselves.\u00a0 Win-win-wins. Stories of things that took little time and little effort to do because they fell inside our circles of control.<\/p>\n

See-and-Share is an example of skillful and sensitive membership behaviour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Effective leaders are necessary … yes … they are needed to create the context for change. It is we members who create and share the content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Common-sense tells us that to achieve system-wide improvement we need to grasp the “culture nettle”. Most of us believe that culture drives attitudes; and attitudes drive behaviour; and behaviour drives improvement. Therefore to get improvement we must start with culture. And that requires effective leadership. So our unspoken assumptions about how leaders motivate our behaviour … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “See-and-Share”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,41,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improvementology","category-stories","category-three-wins-r"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}