CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Changing Company
Culture Requires a
Movement, Not a Mandate
y Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule
JUNE 20, 2017
Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in you
direction, it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult.
For organizations seeking to become more adaptive and innovative, culture change is often the most
challenging part of the transformation. Innovation demands new behaviors from leaders and
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employees that are often antithetical to corporate cultures, which are historically focused on
operational excellence and efficiency.
But culture change can’t be achieved through top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and
habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here.” Someone with
authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity.
At IDEO, we believe that the most significant change often comes through social movements, and
that despite the differences between private enterprises and society, leaders can learn from how
these initiators engage and mobilize the masses to institutionalize new societal norms.
Dr. Reddy’s: A Movement-Minded Case Study
One leader who understands this well is G.V. Prasad, CEO of Dr. Reddy’s, a 33-year-old global
pharmaceutical company headquartered in India that produces affordable generic medication. With
the company’s more than seven distinct business units operating in 27 countries and more than
20,000 employees, decision making had grown more convoluted and
anches of the organization
had become misaligned. Over the years, Dr. Reddy’s had built in lots of procedures, and for many
good reasons. But those procedures had also slowed the company down.
Prasad sought to evolve Dr. Reddy’s culture to be nimble, innovative, and patient-centered. He knew
it required a journey to align and galvanize all employees. His leadership team began with a search
for purpose. Over the course of several months, the Dr. Reddy’s team worked with IDEO to learn
about the needs of everyone, from shop floor workers to scientists, external partners, and investors.
Together they defined and distilled the purpose of the company, paring it down to four simple words
that center on the patient: “Good health can’t wait.”
But instead of plastering this new slogan on motivational posters and repeating it in all-hands
meetings, the leadership team began by quietly using it to start guiding their own decisions. The goal
was to demonstrate this idea in action, not talk about it. Projects were selected across channels to
highlight agility, innovation, and customer centricity. Product packaging was redesigned to be more
user-friendly and increase adherence. The role of sales representatives in Russia was recast to act as
knowledge hubs for physicians, since better physicians lead to healthier patients. A comprehensive
internal data platform was developed to help Dr. Reddy’s employees be proactive with thei
customer requests and solve any problems in an agile way.
At this point it was time to more
oadly share the stated purpose — first internally with all
employees, and then externally with the world. At the internal launch event, Dr. Reddy’s employees
learned about their purpose and were invited to be part of realizing it. Everyone was asked to make a
personal promise about how they, in their cu
ent role, would contribute to “good health can’t wait.”
The following day Dr. Reddy’s unveiled a new
and identity and website that publicly stated
its purpose. Soon after, the company established two new “innovation studios” in Hyderabad and
Mumbai to offer additional structural support to creativity within the company.
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Prasad saw a change in the company culture right away:
After we introduced the idea of “good health can’t wait,” one of the scientists told me he developed a
product in 15 days and
oke every rule there was in the company. He was proudly stating that!
Normally, just getting the raw materials would take him months, not to mention the rest of the
process for making the medication. But he was acting on that urgency. And now he’s taking this
lesson of being lean and applying it to all our procedures.
What Does a Movement Look Like?
To draw parallels between the journey of Dr. Reddy’s and a movement, we need to better understand
movements.
We often think of movements as starting with a call to action. But movement research suggests that
they actually start with emotion — a diffuse dissatisfaction with the status quo and a
oad sense that
the cu
ent institutions and power structures of the society will not address the problem. This
ewing discontent turns into a movement when a voice arises that provides a positive vision and a
path forward that’s within the power of the crowd.
What’s more, social movements typically start small. They begin with a group of passionate
enthusiasts who deliver a few modest wins. While these wins are small, they’re powerful in
demonstrating efficacy to nonparticipants, and they help the movement gain steam. The movement
eally gathers force and scale once this group successfully co-opts existing networks and influencers.
Eventually, in successful movements, leaders leverage their momentum and influence to
institutionalize the change in the formal power structures and rules of society.
Practices for Leading a Cultural Movement
Leaders should not be too quick or simplistic in their translation of social movement dynamics into
change management plans. That said, leaders can learn a lot from the practices of skillful movement
makers.
Frame the issue. Successful leaders of movements are often masters of framing situations in terms
that stir emotion and incite action. Framing can also apply social pressure to conform. For example,
“Secondhand smoking kills. So shame on you for smoking around others.”
In terms of organizational culture change, simply explaining the need for change won’t cut it.
Creating a sense of urgency is helpful, but can be short-lived. To harness people’s full, lasting
commitment, they must feel a deep desire, and even responsibility, to change. A leader can do this by
framing change within the organization’s purpose — the “why we exist” question. A good
organizational purpose calls for the pursuit of greatness in service of others. It asks employees to be
driven by more than personal gain. It gives meaning to work, conjures individual emotion, and
incites collective action. Prasad framed Dr. Reddy’s transformation as the pursuit of “good health
can’t wait.”
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https:
www.amazon.com/Primer-Social-Movements-Contemporary-Societies/dp/ XXXXXXXXXX
Demonstrate quick wins. Movement makers are very good at recognizing the power of cele
ating
small wins. Research has shown that demonstrating efficacy is one way that movements
ing in
people who are sympathetic but not yet mobilized to join.
When it comes to organizational culture change, leaders too often fall into the trap of declaring the
culture shifts they hope to see. Instead, they need to spotlight examples of actions they hope to see
more of within the culture. Sometimes, these examples already exist within the culture, but at a
limited scale. Other times, they need to be created. When Prasad and his leadership team launched
projects across key divisions, those projects served to demonstrate the efficacy of a nimble,
innovative, and customer-centered way of working and of how pursuit of purpose could delive
outcomes the business cared about. Once these projects were far enough along, the Dr. Reddy’s
leadership used them to help communicate their purpose and culture change ambitions.
Harness networks. Effective movement makers are extremely good at building coalitions,
idging
disparate groups to form a larger and more diverse network that shares a common purpose. And
effective movement makers know how to activate existing networks for their purposes. This was the
case with the leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement, who recruited members through the strong
community ties formed in churches. But recruiting new members to a cause is not the only way that
movement makers leverage social networks. They also use social networks to spread ideas and
oadcast their wins.
Leadership at Dr. Reddy’s did not hide in a back room and come up with their purpose. Over the
course of several months, people from across the organization were engaged in the process. The
approach was built on the belief that people are more apt to support what they have a stake in
creating. And during the organization-wide launch event, Prasad invited all employees to make the
purpose their own by defining how they personally would help deliver “good health can’t wait.”
Create safe havens. Movement makers are experts at creating or identifying spaces within which
movement members can craft strategy and discuss tactics. Such spaces have included beauty shops
in the Southern U.S. during the civil rights movement, Quaker work camps in the 1960s and 1970s,
the Seneca Women’s Encampment of the 1980s and early 1990s. These are spaces where the rules of
engagement and behaviors of activists are different from those of the dominant culture. They’re
microcosms of what the movement hopes will become the future.
The dominant culture and structure of today’s organizations are perfectly designed to produce
their cu
ent behaviors and outcomes, regardless of whether those outcomes are the ones you want.
If your hope is for individuals to act differently, it helps to change their su
ounding conditions to be
more supportive of the new behaviors, particularly when they are antithetical to the dominant
culture. Outposts and labs are often built as new environments that serve as a microcosm for change.
Dr. Reddy’s established two innovation labs to explore the future of medicine and create a space
where it’s easier for people to em
ace new beliefs and perform new behaviors.
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Em
ace symbols. Movement makers are experts at constructing and deploying symbols and
costumes that simultaneously create a feeling of solidarity and demarcate who they are and what
they stand for to the outside world. Symbols and costumes of solidarity help define the boundary
etween “us” and “them” for movements. These symbols can be as simple as a T-shirt, bumpe
sticker, or button supporting a general cause, or as elaborate as the giant puppets we often see used
in protest events.
Dr. Reddy’s linked its change in culture and purpose with a new corporate
and identity. Internally
and externally, the act reinforced a message of unity and commitment. The entire company stands
together in pursuit of this purpose.
The Challenge to Leadership
Unlike a movement maker, an enterprise leader is often in a position of authority. They can mandate
changes to the organization — and at times they should. However, when it comes to culture change,
they should do so sparingly. It’s easy to overuse one’s authority