Why Corporates Can’t Change
Why Corporates Can’t Change
Why do Analytic-minded organisations (e.g. the typical Corporate) keep trying to change yet repeatedly fail?
- belief in the utility of violence
- belief in the utility of command (and control)
- belief that change can be commanded
- belief in the utility of extrinsic motivators
- belief that change can be effected through extrinsic motivation
- extrinsic motivators reduce performance – longer term, and in knowledge work
- use of extrinsic motivation to effect change longer term, and in knowledge work, fails
- people’s behaviours are a product of their beliefs about how to get their needs met
- people’s behaviours change when their beliefs about how to get their needs met, change
- people will not change their beliefs just because they are commanded to do so
- no knowledge of other means to effect change
Simply put, collective belief in ineffective strategies stymies corporate change initiatives, every time.
Even more simply: The assumptions and beliefs held in common by corporate-style organisations countervail most if not all attempts at change.
– Bob
Further Reading
What’s A Manager to Do? ~ Think Different blog post
Think Different
Absolutely right that these are factors that make it very difficult for corporates to change, particularly if you’re expecting evolutionary change.
It’s far easier with new organisations (or sufficiently independent new parts of existing organisations), and with organisations/parts that have had a shock – a particularly visible/painful failure is a good example.
But even with evolutionary change, organisations can and do change, but maybe not on a timescale that most humans (and certainly most Agile Coaches) have the patience to work with. It’s never a quick fix, no matter what the special unicorns may hope for. There is always a journey. The journey is long and hard, otherwise we’d already be there. It’s tough to start, otherwise we’d already be underway.
What, you only want to do the EASY stuff?
what are the numbers next to some of the points?
Labels, for reference further down the “proof”.
– Bob
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