FedTalk: Changing organizational culture through mindsets and behaviours
Last week I had the privilege to deliver a FedTalk at the NCR Innovation Fair. The presentation entitled “Enough talk, time to launch the second act: Changing organizational culture through mindsets and behaviours” is available on my YouTube channel.
You can’t afford
32-minute watch but you would totally dedicate your full attention to a
2-minute read? Here’s the short version!
What did I
posit in the talk?
- Bold idea #1: The Public Service Employee Survey (PSES) is not about employees; it's about leadership: organizational leadership and good people management. Reframing the PSES as a leadership development tool might help get buy-in into this idea.
- Bold idea #2: Talent management is not something we do, but rather the resulting product of what we do well with regards to people management, when the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
So what can data
(such as the one coming out of the PSES) do for you?
- Remove gut feeling, self-interest, and opinions (that are based on nothing but opinions) from decisions;
- Inform management decisions and orient action (e.g. isolate pain points, show where to double-down, determine when and where to expand the strategy);
- Push the agenda forward, gain momentum, accelerate the pace of change.
And by the way, this what the actual results of the change can be...
Now what should
you with the insights I shared?
- Takeaway #1: Expect resistance. “Whenever you tell a story that contradicts someone’s core story, they will usually get angry. This is a natural defense. [...] People 'fight for their limitations' because it is what they know. If you choose to tell empowering stories, you will encounter anger as people defend they 'victim stories'. When a new story demands courage, extra effort, or invalidates past choices, people usually get defensive.” - Annette Simmons
- Takeaway #2: Logic would have it that mindsets come first, and behaviours follow. True. But just as it is possible to think your way into new ways of behaving, it is also possible to behave your way into new ways of thinking. “Behaviour first, mindsets later” equally works. What matters is less which of the two – mindsets or behaviours – comes first, and more about ensuring the congruence between leadership and execution.
- Takeaway #3: The problem isn’t out there! In order to change the culture, mindsets and behaviours, taking ownership is critical. Changing yourself leads to change.
What did you think
of the FedTalk and the ideas I shared? Comment below or on my GCcollab page.
P.S.: Here’s
the story and data that served as a backdrop
for the talk. It was a concrete application of the ideas discussed in a paper
entitled “An Inconvenient Renewal” that I published
around the same time on the topic of people management and organizational
renewal. A little old, but still relevant!
