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Reading and Changing Culture
Diagnosing what is actually operating, why culture programmes fail, and the small number of levers that move a culture in practice.
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01
The Culture Audit
Five questions, answerable in an afternoon from records the organization already keeps. It reveals the operative standard rather than the stated one, and the findings are usually uncomfortable.
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02
Inheriting a Culture You Did Not Build
A new leader has one period of unusual latitude and almost no information. Spending the latitude before acquiring the information is the characteristic error of a first year.
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03
Why Culture Programmes Fail
A programme addresses culture as a message. Culture is precedent, and precedent moves only when observed behaviour and observed consequences move, which no communications effort can accomplish.
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04
Reading a Culture Accurately
Surveys measure climate and self-report. What you want is behavioural evidence, and most of it is already sitting in records the organization keeps for other reasons.