Rings of Fire
Culture of Change Show Notes: Episode 66
Hi guys, I have been severely lacking in my Substack lately, what with the trial and everything, and I’m so sorry for that. I’ll be back at it with some exclusive content for subscribers soon.
Thank you so much for your continued support!
~ashe
Bring your outrage, we’re talking all things Olympics tonight, and we’re going to Make Athletics Great Again! God is already winning in Paris. Indeed, He already has. Don’t miss this show at 6pET.
Sources
Olympic surfer forced to remove Christ image from board
"For we wrestle NOT against flesh and blood"
22 Guidelines for Achieving Dramatic Cultural Shifts in Record Time
“Some that recognize the need to change deceive themselves, thinking that they can achieve a cultural transformation without pain and chaos…overhauling the culture is an agonizing process.” - Pritchett & Pound
One: Don’t let the existing culture dictate your approach. “It just doesn’t make sense to try to change culture according to the old rules. The rules themselves are part of the problem.” Defy tradition. Disregard the norms. Flout the values as relics of an antiquated culture.
Two: Focus on the future. “The window to the future gives better guidance than the mirror. This is a time for action, not introspection.” Understanding the existing culture is a fool’s errand – just get started doing those things that help the culture change. All hail progress!
Three: Deliberately destabilize your group. “Culture has a very strong immune system unless you can overwhelm its defenses – weaken the culture somehow – it launches a fierce counteroffensive. It usually wins.” You must be willing to go hard and fast, and you must be comfortable with chaos and destabilization.
Four: Care harder. “All the blame and negative feelings could cause you guilt and self-doubt. Just don’t confuse caring with keeping people happy.” Sometimes love is tough, and it’s impossible to please everyone. “Taking it slow can be the cruelest move of all.”
Five: Disarm the old culture. “Energy dislikes uncertainty and is drawn to determination. So don’t be tentative. Show commitment to the new culture… Don’t try to calm people or settle things down.” The key here is to not let energy and momentum be used as a weapon by the old culture. You must strip the old culture of its power.
Six: Change the reward system. “Change what you celebrate, what you honor, and who you hold up as heroes.” Don’t spend time on whiners, complainers, and squeaky wheels. Ignore them. Neutralize them, and dote on those who are living the values of the new culture.
Seven: Keep score. “Track progress so you can see where the program is bogging down. So you’ll know where the resistance lies.” Surveillance of behavior is important. Monitoring people lets you know where to allocate, rewards and sanctions. Celebrate good behavior. Bad behavior must be spotlighted, the resisters exposed, leaving them no place to hide. Make shame great again!
Eight: Promote the vision. “The change effort needs to become a cause, a crusade, and your job is to champion the vision…Culture change cannot be achieved by the efforts of a handful…The job is too big.” You must engage and recruit the masses.To do that, you need to give the change vision, drama, glory, and excitement. “Make it compelling…like magnetic north”
Nine: Free the people. “A cultural revolution calls for liberation of the people. You must free them from the system, the rules of the establishment, the old habits of the status quo. If you can break the chains of this bureaucracy, you break the back of the old culture.” Bureaucracy in this context is essentially tradition and its supporters. Trads are your number one enemy and should be discouraged.
Ten: Crank up the communication effort. “You need to sell people on the purpose, preach hope…with the zeal of a crusading evangelist.” There can be no communication vacuum when changing the culture. Bad news, rumors, and worst case thinking will fill the void – risking that people will abandon the change and revert to the old ways.
Eleven: Expect casualties. “Where will you focus your attention? Will it be on the main pockets of resistance? That would be a mistake.” Ordinarily in any change effort you can expect 20% champions, 50% undecided, and 30% resisters. Instead of trying to convert resisters, make examples of them. “Casualties cause fear. But that’s better than complacency. At least at fear, ratchets up the emotional energy, and you can use that to fuel the change effort. Be willing to sacrifice those people whose attitude and behavior could sabotage the cultural change.”
Twelve: Demonstrate unwavering commitment. “You have to hit hard or you’ll never overcome the…inertia and the inevitable resistance to change.” You will have setbacks, chaos, disappointments. You may begin to second-guess your approach, but that’s where you need to lean in and push harder. “If you fail to follow through because you grow weary or lose your nerve…any subsequent attempts at cultural change will be even harder.”
Thirteen: Involve everyone. Often people “don’t make any personal connection with the cultural change initiative, and just want to be left alone… But people who aren’t for a change will be against it inadvertently, perhaps but their intent is not the issue.” Their intent is not the issue; the issue is their impact on your efforts. Everyone must be involved – insist upon commitment to the new culture. “The culture change effort can’t benefit from benchwarmers or spectators.”
Fourteen: Make structural administrative changes. “The new cultural ideas must be embodied in new practices that clearly improve…effectiveness.” Make the administration of your new culture incompatible with the old. You’re offering a new way, a new world. Breaking the back of the old culture is a waste of time if you don’t offer something better.
Fifteen: Provide a living example. “Hypocritical behavior will kill your credibility and sabotage the cultural change.” You can show no allegiance to the old culture. You must be all in on the new culture. Any negativism has the ability to legitimize the resistors. That means even when you face challenges in the new culture, you cannot waver in your commitment.
Sixteen: Achieve hard results in a hurry. “Negative effects will proceed the positive. The anti-change crowd will roll their eyes and point to all kinds of trouble, insisting that this is a dumb plan that’s being poorly implemented… Don’t get sidetracked per trying to prove the value of culture change with soft data – morale, trust, loyalty, stress levels, or job satisfaction… Morale craters. Attitudes sour. Trust evaporates.” Remember, rapidly changing your culture is going to hurt.
Seventeen: Bring in a new breed. “ It’s far harder to convert the resistors than to bring in new people who embrace the new culture… Outsiders come in, focusing their energies and abilities on producing results. Insiders meanwhile, worry too much about ‘me issues' and waste energy resisting change.” New people aren’t locked into its traditions, values or beliefs, and in culture change you want to find people who clearly do not fit the existing mold.
Eighteen: Don’t trust loyalty. “Loyalty to the culture can present a variety of serious problems. The bottom line on all this is that loyalty isn’t everything it’s been cracked up to be… Loyalty is a treacherous thing in a world of rapid change.” You want change makers who are comfortable with the goal posts moving. Loyalty is a relic of tradition. That makes it a liability.
Nineteen: Build a power base. “You can develop a reputation as public enemy number one and still prevail if you have a good supporting cast.” You want to make sure you have people committed to the change in the best roles. If there are people who wield power that are resistant to the change, “deal with them such that they are disconnected from their main constituencies. Reassign them. Fire them. Or neutralize them somehow. Remember that money is power. The more you make your average adversaries dependent on you for funding their financial needs, the more you gain control.”
Twenty: Encourage eccentricity. “Do you need radicals. Rebels. Revolutionaries. People who howl at the moon. The old culture is sitting on vast resources, stifling, priceless, creativity, and innovative energies… Liberate [them]... turn their fresh ideas, and initiative loose… You cannot achieve culture change without the influence of ‘deviant’ behavior.” I’ll just leave that there.
Twenty-One: Orient, educate, and train. “If you’re going to break the grip of the old culture, seize control of the schools. That’s one of the basic rules followed by revolutionaries.” Schools are the training ground of the old culture, the established social structure. If you want to train on the new culture, you must control the training ground. From the content to the teachers to how the training is conducted, every aspect “should reflect a sweeping change in priorities, values, and beliefs.”
Twenty-Two: Go flat out. “Start out fast and keep trying to pick up speed. Leave skidmarks. Implementing change at high speeds keeps the old culture off-balance.” Bureaucracy [Tradition] has to eat dust.” Move fast and break things and never waver in your commitment to the new culture. “When you get to the other end of this exercise when you look back and reflect on how it is gone you’ll say you should’ve done it even faster.”
Watch Culture of Change on Badlands Media, Sundays at 6PM ET. All links and references are provided in the show notes on this substack following each show. Find all our work at linktr.ee/asheinamerica and https://linktr.ee/absolute1776.
Thanks, Ashe. We sure missed you last week, but are thrilled you were vindicated in court. Prayers answered!