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What is "Cultural DNA," when should you change it, and how do you change it? |
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- Cultural DNA is the accreted structure of a successful culture that recreates internal and incoming leaders and employees in its own image. This means that they tend to take on the values and beliefs, interests, and mental models and information of the organization or community over time.
- Cultural DNA is useful as long as it fits its operating environment. When the environment changes, however, the Cultural DNA tends to continue to replicate itself even though its behaviour will doom the success (and often survival) of the organization and the people within it. Environmental changes include political, social, economic, value chain, and legal/regulatory shifts as well as the effects of M&As with other organizations. When the Cultural DNA no longer fits its new environment, it is time to evolve that Cultural DNA into a new Cultural DNA that does fit its new environment.
- Since cultures are self-perpetuating, there are only two proven methods of changing Cultural DNA. One is through a comprehensive, integrated, system-wide process that is designed specifically to transform the Cultural DNA of an organization or community to fit its new environment. The other method is collapse. Although devastating and painful, individuals (and sometimes an entire organization) will emerge from a collapse with new values and beliefs (“what is right”), interests (“what is good”), and mental models and information (“what is true”). Often these are taken from successful examples in the new environment (usually developed through a painful and time-consuming process of trial and error) and therefore fit that environment.
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