A Bad Cultural Change Model

Here is a bad way to change the culture of a company from the top. It works in tandem with a human's basic tribal instincts and creates an effective change while looking like begrudging collaboration.

1: Identify a behavior employees need to emulate.

2: Create a rule, with a clever loophole, against the behavior.

3: Make a big deal about the rule, enforce it lightly around the loophole. (Conversations, not corrective action)

4: Have a relaxed member of support staff encourage the loophole.

5: When behavior becomes fashionable have loophole exploiting contest.

6: Now that the behavior has been normalized remove the rule and reward the rebels as trendsetters.

7: Show them the positive impact the change and how they were right to use the exploit.

8: Make it policy as best practices.

If done right, and never discovered the trendsetters will not only be proud of their accomplishment there will be more buy in to the company due to the acknowledgment of wrongdoing and rule correction. If done incorrectly this strategy will create an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship between the C-suite and production due to the constant social manipulation coming from the top. This does nothing but exacerbate the business life cycle to a point of no return.