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The elasticity of culture

You can liken the culture of an organisation to an elastic band – you can stretch the culture to a different shape (ideally the shape that it needs to be), but as soon as you stop putting the effort in the culture will spring back to what it used to be, just like an elastic band. It’s a reasonably sound analogy; cultural change isn’t something that will happen overnight, you’ve got to put the effort in and keep on putting the effort in for a good long time for the cultural elasticity to wane, before you can safely walk away knowing your job is done.

 

The challenges are somewhat more obtuse than our humble elastic band. Often there is no real understanding of the culture, what needs to be done to change the culture, or where the culture needs to end up. So, even when the will is there, a lot of effort can be put into stretching a mis-shaped elastic band, into a shape it shouldn’t really be (and it will never really spring back to where it was originally, but may well end up somewhere worse). The diagram attempts to relay this state of affairs:

 

One moral of this analogy is that when implementing new technology put resource aside to understand the culture, don’t make lots of assumptions, objectively talk to your people. I’m sure there are many more.

 

P.S. Any suggestions on how I can weave Young’s modulus into this elastic band theory would be gladly received.

Tags: Culture, organisational change, technology implementation