Greetings! I write about: Release Risk for the AI Age 🌊 Structuring QA for AI-Native Teams 🔧 Building With AI as a Non-Coder 🛠️ With a sprinkle of leadership, writing, & entrepreneurship
3 Mistakes People* Make When Trying To Change Their Team's Culture.
I've been leading teams for 10 years now and I definitely have not made these mistakes**. That would be daft.
So to help you also not be daft, I'm sharing some here.
No measurable result
How will people know that they're successfully "doing the thing"?
What I... Excuse me... What people... tend to do, is turn into a cheerleader or talk about things that are intangible.
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"You can do it!"
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"Use AI more."
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"Ask better questions."
None of those is particularly actionable or helps people decide what to do in a given moment.
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"Whenever you doubt yourself, here's where/how you can get support & help..."
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"Use AI to explore the support pages and summarise the coverage gaps"
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"When you pair, use questions that start with Who, What, Where, When, or How, rather than Why."
Now folks can objectively say if they did or did not do the thing.
Unidentified vital behaviours
You don't need to change allTheThings, just the one or two crucial behaviours that lead to the outcomes you want. But how to find them?
The book Influencer describes four ways to do this:
1.
Notice the obvious. Recognise obvious but underused behaviours.
2.
Look for crucial moments. Find times when behaviours puts success at risk.
3.
Learn from positive deviants. Spot the people getting amazing results while dealing with the same constraints and do what they do.
4.
Spot culture busters. Notice which behaviours reverse cultural norms and taboos
Using all four of these together should uncover the few vital behaviours we need to create time impact we're looking for.
Too much telling, not enough influencing
You can't preach your way to culture change.
Instead create an environment where the behaviour you want/need is the most likely outcome. This needs to cover the personal (people understand what's in it for them & skill acquisition), social (healthy peer pressure and strength in numbers), and structural (rewards are aligned with goals and remove environmental friction) aspects.
If you only handle a couple of these things, it won't work.
*It was me. I am people 😅**One of the statements in this sentence may not be true...
Vernon Richards | Writer | Coach