Tag: Power

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Capitalism/woodalism

Some days I get to work in the big city; others I get to work in the woods – lucky me!

The feeling I get in approaching these two venues couldn’t be more different.

I approach the city excited by the conversations I will have, by the projects we can work on. I grew up in the city. It’s a place I love. But I also increasingly feel the scale of the place and the disconnection from what makes life like this possible.

I approach the wood excited by the calm and the sense of life surrounding me. By the lessons that I know the place can teach me. But I also know how far this place is from where big decisions are made, and far from where many people live.

For me regenerative design is about building a much stronger connection between these two worlds. From where we make and where we take so that both places can thrive.

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All change or no change

How do we know if an organisation is really committed to change?

A big clue is to look at the culture of the organisation. Because in organisations, culture is how things get done.

The Johnson Scholes Culture Web gives us six lenses to read an organisation’s culture. Each gives us a way to test if they are really committed to change. 

Stories — Are they telling different stories about who they are and what they value?

Routines and rituals — Have day-to-day practices shifted? Has what they celebrate changed ?

Symbols — Has the visual language shifted? What’s being shown — or hidden?

Control systems – What are they measuring? Has the weight of KPIs shifted? How much R&D is allocated to this change? How are they measuring their supply chain?

Organisational structure — Where is the work of change located? Is it is the delivery teams or in the marketing team?

Power structure — Are senior leaders backing the change, asking questions about it and backing it even when it’s not the easy option?

These six lenses help us spot shifts in culture. 

What the culture is doing is a strong clue about whether the organisation is really committed to change — or actually planning on changing nothing.