The importance of changing Behavior & Culture - Session 5

I think that the section "The Real Goal - Change in Behavior and Culture" in Leading Change brings up a really important point. Changes in programs, policies and procedures have very limited effects if there is not a real change in the behavior and culture of an organization. My previous experiences have shown me how important an organization's culture can be. I spent a couple of years as a NYC public school teacher. One year, my school on the Lower East Side had an inexperienced principal that made some poor choices, and upset some of the teachers. The teachers (myself included) responded to this poor leadership with lots of complaining and negativity. Later on, when certain our administrator tried to introduce new programs or strategies, they failed because teachers did not make enough effort to get behind them.

When I look back at my time at that school I really blame a lot of our struggles on the negative culture that we let set into the school. While I think most of the teachers were individuals that would generally consider themselves as motivated to work hard and focus on the kids, we all found ourselves instead focusing on the parts of our job that we didn't like, and complaining whenever we thought that some new policy was going against the union contract. When I look back at some of the things I fought against, I don't think I agree with some of my actions at the time, and I attribute that to the culture that had settled in at the school. It's clear to me that if any real improvements were to be made at that school, more effort first needed to be made to try and change the culture.