10 biases that prevent culture change
One of the questions that I’m regularly asked either by senior leaders at the start of a culture initiative or by delegates at conferences is ‘What have you seen at other organisations that we can learn from?’
I have many stories and case studies that I share. I always start with the positive ones (there are some good examples here), but it’s the negative ones that they are often most interested in!
These are the stories where organisations needed my help but somehow found ways of talking themselves out of it. This then led to issues further down the road, which - many times - saw the organisation and its leadership make it into the media (not positively!) for their culture and their lack of attention to it.
There are, in my experience, generally 10 reasons leaders chose not to act and they can all be linked to a particular bias. I’ve listed them below:
‘The costs are too expensive’: Numeric anchoring effect - the tendency to focus on a reference point (the cost of something) rather than the value that it could create
‘Culture change is hard’: Illusory truth effect - the tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity
‘There’s nothing wrong with our culture right now’: Availability heuristic - your most recent cultural experience dictates how you think about it
‘We don’t need to worry about a toxic culture here’: Normalcy bias - the refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before
‘We’ve always had a great culture’: Confirmation bias - to interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions
‘As leaders, we don’t see any real issues’: Egocentric bias - the tendency to rely too heavily on one's own perspective relative to others
‘We’re looking to culture change within the next month’: Planning fallacy - the tendency for people to underestimate the time it will take them to complete a given task
‘We just need to train everyone on [topic of the day]’: Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs
‘We’ve done it ourselves’: IKEA effect - the tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on an object that they partially assembled themselves (even if it's rubbish!)
‘This is not the right time’: Status quo bias - the tendency to prefer things to stay relatively the same in the short-term
And maybe an additional one…
11. ‘We’re aware of all of these!’ - G. I. Joe fallacy, the tendency to think that knowing about one’s bias is enough to overcome it!
Which of these have you seen or heard in your organisation?
If you’re tired of excuses and are looking for culture change that encompasses global good practice AND that builds in-house capability to deliver it, then email me at colin@colindellis.com to set up a time to talk or else you can book a time here.
The benefits you can expect to gain by working with me are as follows:
Leaders and managers develop the capability to build and evolve culture themselves
We develop a common language to help all leaders talk about culture
The capabilities directly link to the day-to-day demonstration of values
We emphasise that culture is everyone’s responsibility
The work becomes self-sustaining within your organisation for years to come and thus reduces future reliance on external help
You can find case studies from organisations that have achieved this by clicking here.
