How can we bring this same energy into our organisations? Dr Leandro Herero says that leaders must abandon traditional management techniques and embrace new ones.
How can you start a social movement in an organization? A good place to start would be by looking at social movements.
This may not be a standard management practice. I think that the best answers to management problems – especially innovative management – come from outside of management science. Where are the new toolkits if the old ones are not sufficient? It is time to reinvent them.
The development and management of a social movement is the key to shaping and transforming workplace culture. It’s a lot like what you learn in political science, political anthropology and sociology. But it is rarely taught in MBA programs.
You must be willing to think outside of the corporate box if you wish to affect change. How can managers and HR teams achieve this within their organisation? Here’s a cheat sheet.
Reframe the narrative
Organizations fall into a trap where they try to appeal to everyone, but only a few people are interested. It is important to understand that different people have different motivations.
Offer different frames to various groups if you want to see your culture develop naturally. Do not cling to one story. The organisation is not a monolith and the same story will not energize every department or person.
Your culture will be more authentic if you allow for nuance. The company can host all motivations by understanding that unconditional “alignment” is a false promise. The goal is having compatible “dreams”.
Accept diversity but set out non-negotiables
Diverse perspectives are a result of diverse motivations. Accept that groups in your organization will experience and see things differently. Within this complexity there must be a guiding principle: behaviours that are non-negotiable and on which everyone can agree.
These are the glues that hold the movement together. While it’s okay to use different approaches, some core behaviors must be consistent. Your culture could unravel if this glue is not strong enough. It is important to identify and maintain those universal elements that are non-negotiable.
Know your tribe
Tribalism is a natural phenomenon in any social movement. Organisations are no exception. The foundation of any organisational culture is peer-to-peer interaction. Let’s forget traditional hierarchies.
The real power lies in tribes, small, peer-driven, self-organising groups. You’re missing out if you don’t understand your tribes or their interactions. Knowing your tribes will give you an insight into the areas where real change occurs. These informal social groups are the foundation of your organisation. It’s not just about departments and divisions.
Clarify expectations
Action is the heart of a social movement. Define expectations and make them public. Activism means action. Clicktivism is a superficial level of engagement. Donating and endorsing are two different things.
These lines are often blurred by corporations. Do not pretend that passive involvement equals activism. Clicking “like” is not enough if your movement demands real action. It’s time to call it out. Clarity in purpose is what makes a movement more powerful. It’s okay if not everyone participates. Make sure to know your real advocates.
Engage the hyperconnected
Influence is not distributed evenly. Find the people who are hyper-connected within your organization if you want to spread your cultural movement. They are the people who can spread values and behaviours more quickly than anyone else through their networks and relationships.
We regularly perform a network analysis of social media to understand the true nature of our audience. Passion is essential, but without influence it is a waste of energy. A group of people who are highly connected but not overtly passionate can often drive change more effectively than a bunch of disconnected enthusiasts. Hyper-connectivity plays a key role.
Take the grassroots to heart
Grassroots movements drive lasting cultural change. Here’s the problem: Many organisations do not understand grassroots dynamics. Many organisations confuse grassroots with corporate ‘engagement’, or believe it is just about receiving feedback from lower levels. The goal of grassroots efforts is to empower self-organising groups so they can act independently.
“Tribalism is a natural phenomenon in any social movement and it also occurs within organisations.”
You’ll be stuck in top-down initiatives that rarely lead to true transformation if you don’t understand the power of grassroots movements. It’s not a metaphor, it’s an actual strategy. Some people say that this is a bottom-up strategy. However, in other organisations, it can be the same as top-down, with just a different geography.
Backstage Leadership: Master the Art
Backstage Leadership is the most effective way to lead cultural movements. Backstage leadership is what we call it.
These leaders do not command the front by making flashy presentations. Instead, they empower those who can multiply the movement and amplify it.
These invisible leaders often play a key role in facilitating, connecting and nurturing hyper-connected grassroots. Their impact is often greater than that of those in traditional leadership positions.
Use unconventional indicators
It is important to track progress of a cultural movement, but do not fall into the traps of traditional KPIs. Ask yourself first: What do you really want to measure exactly? What are you looking for?
It is more important to measure what is standard or easy. Standard metrics can miss subtle nuances in culture. Be creative when choosing your indicators. You should track energy, influence and behavioural changes.
Your glue is storytelling
The thread connecting the grassroots to the leadership is a great storytelling system. It is a two-way process: from top-down formal leaders, who set the tone, and from bottom-up grassroots and tribes that help shape the lived experience.
Good storytelling systems allow these perspectives to come together in the middle, forming a coherent narrative. Here’s a hint: ensure that the person in charge of storytelling is adequately compensated. You may not realize how important they are. In many cases, these people are the cultural architects behind the scenes.
Revisit and refine
The final step is deceptively easy: start over at number one. Culture shaping is a process that continues, not an event. The movement must evolve as the organisation does. The journey includes revisiting, refining and re-framing. Be ready to repeat the cycle. Each iteration will bring your organisation closer towards the desired culture.
In the last 25 years, this is how we have approached cultural change, seeing it as the creation of a social movement within. Our experience shows that when culture is shaped using these principles, this leads to a large-scale, sustainable change.
This is not just a theory, but a practice which has quietly transformed companies across all industries. It shows that true, lasting change can only come from within.
Personnel Today offers a variety of opportunities for people analytics.
Subscribe to our weekly HR news and guidance
Every Wednesday, receive the Personnel Today Direct newsletter.
