Change Course: The Podcast

S1 E29: Plus ça Change

8/2/2022

“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" coined by Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1848 is as true then, as it is today. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's culture month at the change course podcast! Tune in all month as we bring you amazing content on organizational culture and culture change.

Culture is one of my favorite subjects to discuss and one of the 5 elements in Connected Change (TM) for a reason. One of the central tenets of organizational culture is that it is stable. It has a gravitational center that remains the same over long periods of time and is difficult to shift! That's why our theme for this month is "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" or: "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

The key resources that I talk about are linked below. The Insider’s Guide to Culture Change is a great manual for understanding and building culture change. It also has my preferred definition for organizational culture.

The organizational metaphors are also what I most often use to identify and describe the organization. I had the privilege of studying with Dr. Gareth Morgan many years ago, and his work on the Images of the organization are ones that I still refer to today. Fons Trompenaars’ and Charles Hampden Turner’s work in Riding the Waves of Culture is also important foundational work and the four archetypes link to observed behavior which is another level of analysis I use.

Lastly, I mention the Denison Organizational Culture Survey – linked below. This is a tool I use to quantify and analyze the organization’s culture.

Fully captioned videos are available on YouTube

Links to resources:

Les Guêpes: Karr, Alphonse, 1808-1890

Denison Organizational Culture Survey

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