One of my dreams for the last 2 years is to change a large company's culture. For the better of course!
And as a newly appointed "Training and Development Manager" of the division of a large corporate I now have at least a bit of a chance of having a go at it.
I've read a lot about changing companies for the better, over the last few years, I have all the books, read all the blogs, discussed all the discussions online.
So armed with my Tom Peters' books, my Fish, my Improv, my cool ideas, I entered the corporate world last week. Boy am I going to change things!
But after a week and a half, I am left scratching my head. What to do next?
Firstly, if a company and a division has a good market share, why should it do something radical? If you're in the top 5 suppliers, you may want to gain a few percentage points and certainly not lose a few points. If you're an executive earning a good salary, why do something radical? You already have market share. Sure some of the customers may hate you, but then they hate everyone else in the market!!
If you do something radical, then it has to be so good, that your competitors can't immediately copy it. Otherwise there's no point in doing it. Unless of course you say to hell with the competition where going to do our best.
It's not as though many big corporates aren't trying to improve, and of course everyone holds up, Dell, South West Airlines, Cisco, Microsoft, Starbucks etc etc, as prime examples of the way to do it. But if it were so easy then everyone would be doing it.
The trouble is that a big company has many people and types in it, who are already used to the culture that exists, or the culture in their part of the world and any panacea passed down to all the employees, only seems to last as long as the 2 day workshop you attend and posters you stick on the wall.
I had a look at the FISH video last night. I like what it's trying to achieve, but there's something I didn't feel comfortable with. It seemed to suggest you have to be happy all the time. It's a state of mind. And how often have we seen this come along in various guises. (I was also wondering if the video I saw was the original film about the Seattle Fish Market, or an adapted follow-up video). I really don't know what the answer is. The whole corporate I'm with (or most of it) has immense goodwill to change and improve, from the CEO down. They have a whole change programme happening. But what I observe is that people are people, and behave as they always have.
I'd like to try a few things out and see what works and is sustainable. I don't have the answer yet, but it sure is interesting being on the inside looking out, and realising how difficult it is when handed the opportunity, to change things.
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