My great friend Bob Stone, among other things former head of the (largely) stealth successes of VP Gore’s re-inventing government program, dug up a paper of mine which he plans to use in his current professorial job. Bob’s Success Secret #1 (in my opinion) is cultivating change by providing positive role models, rather than focusing on what’s broken (the negative stuff). Here’s my favorite Stoneism: “Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them. I look for things that went right, and try to build off them.”
Love it!
At any rate, we’re attaching here the paper of mine that Bob’s using. It focuses on the peril of a “systems first” approach to Big Change, arguing that systems are of the utmost importance, but mostly fail, or fail to reach their full potential by a country mile, because the organization’s “culture” does not support them. Hence a “culture first” approach is usually/invariably the better bet. The paper is argued via 11 case studies from every setting imaginable.
Enjoy!