Can you change your workplace culture?
Yes, of course. There is, contrary to popular belief, a recipe for changing the culture of any organization: it is relatively simple, but quite difficult to execute. The ingredients in the recipe are of utmost importance, and some of them are not easy to find.
Do you remember those fairy tales in which the hero had to find certain very rare ingredients to free the princess from a terrible curse? It was generally something like “the flower of a black strawberry,” which could only be found high atop Desperate Strategies Mountain. It only bloomed once every ten years, and the mountain top was guarded by the Narrow-Minded Dragon, who breathed fire from his Big Ego and had the support of the Seven Hermetic Consultants, who would pluck out the eyes of any unsuspecting business owner who failed to pay the toll to reach the mountain top.
Well, changing any workplace culture is more or less like these heroic tasks, only it requires more courage and more persistence, and the real-life princess is not so pretty.
To guide those heroes and heroines who are still willing to try to change the culture of an organization, the most important thing is to have a deliberately simplifying approach. This is an artifact with nothing magical about it: it is just a way of confronting complex issues…
