E-Culture Change "The major human resource challenge to companies today is how to take the human remains from the businesses of yesteryear and turn them into e-business acolytes" The Times, May 24 2001 The challenges of culture change have not gone away. However two things have changed. The need for timely and successful change to a more customer focused e-business culture is vital to the survival and growth of many companies. And our understanding of 'people technology' has moved just a fast as computer and internet technology and we have many more powerful and innovative tools, underpinned by research and practice, in our armoury. In a recent report called The Quiet Revolution produced jointly by the CBI and KPMG Consulting, employers name one of their main business concerns today as being the lack of an internal internet culture or awareness of its internal benefits within their organisations. However, the received wisdom of how to tackle this is old and tired. Andrew Main Wilson, Chief Executive of the Institute of Directors says " Generally any resistance to e-business among employees is due to a lack of information and training". This outdated approach to culture change will not work in today's organisations. It is questionable whether this top down 'tell and sell' approach every worked at all! His advice to leaders is that ".. at a senior level, the company's management is completely briefed as to the processes, impact and longer term ramifications". Again, the patterns of behaviour are usually so deeply ingrained that the supply of information alone will not bring about the desired change. As Gandhi said "you have to be the change you want to see". Until the leaders are the customer-focused  'e-business acolytes' why should anyone else in the business bother? So if the old, traditional approaches to culture change will not create the fast, flexible, innovative, customer fixated cultures what will? Firstly, a change from a 'tell and sell' approach to one of co-creation. People need to be actively involved in the learning and redesign of their work to embrace an e-culture. Consultation is not enough. Most people in most organizations are more than capable of working out together what is needed and creating the dialogue and action plans to create the desired future. People resist what they don't know or understand and information alone will not overcome this resistance. Engaging large parts of the organization in co-creating its future can. Modern approaches including Open Space, Future Search, Wisdom Council and Wisdom Space, have proved very successful for fast-paced, participative change where diverse groups work together on issues and areas of common concern. These processes are excellent means of planning large-scale systems change in real time, and generating excitement, energy and purposeful behaviour. These approaches, coupled with leadership and personal development can help bring about the cultures that today's organisations' need to get the most from their technology and stay competitive and ahead of the game. © Mike Bell 2001 Top © The Wisdom Meme 2007