Seeing the warning signs
Hybrid working culture, reputational risk and groupthink.
A half day on seeing the warning signs: culture in hybrid working, cultural failures, public and private sector risk, reputational risk and normalised deviance, groupthink and problem structuring.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Serving the public
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Senior leadership teams, board members and risk leads in councils, housing, health and the voluntary sector
Overview
Most public failures are visible early to someone. Taken from the Immerse When things go wrong, this half day opens with culture in remote and hybrid working, with GitLab and Automattic rebuilding culture on purpose. It then reads four cultural failures, at Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, Theranos and Uber, through Schein, psychological safety, and Asch and Milgram on why decent people go along. It compares public and private sector risk through Thurrock Council's solar investments, and explores reputational risk and normalised deviance with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It concludes with Irving Janis on groupthink and the Bay of Pigs, and four problem structuring methods, including Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology.
Aims
The course is there to help senior teams and boards hear the warning before the headline: spotting the early shape of a cultural failure, testing a risk before it becomes a crisis and designing dissent into how they decide, so that someone's early concern is acted on in time.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Identify the early signs of cultural failure, drawing on Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, Theranos and Uber and on why decent people go along.
- Assess reputational risk and normalised deviance, comparing public and private sector risk through Thurrock Council and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
- Design dissent into how your board or team decides, using lessons from the Bay of Pigs and a problem structuring method.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Explain why agile is a culture bet rather than a project method, using the cultural assumptions behind the Agile Manifesto.
- Explain the shared shape of the Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, Theranos and Uber failures by using several culture frameworks together.
- Explain how the consequence of failure, accountability and purpose of risk taking differ between public and private organisations.
- Explain why reputational risk is a consequence rather than a category, and describe its three distinguishing features.
- Describe groupthink and identify its four symptoms while a decision is still open.
- Identify the signs that a situation needs problem structuring before any option is chosen.
- Identify what remote and hybrid working remove from a culture, including the risks of proximity bias and a two-tier workforce.
- Identify the early warning signs common to all four cases, including silence, and the psychological reasons decent people go along.
Built from 6 modules.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Culture, Agile and Remote and Hybrid WorkingCulture in Organisations43 min
- 02Cultural Failures: When Culture Goes WrongCulture in Organisations43 min
- 03Risk in the Public and Private SectorStrategic Risk40 min
- 04Reputational Risk and Risk FailuresStrategic Risk39 min
- 05Groupthink and the Discipline of DissentSolving Complex Problems and Decision Making39 min
- 06Problem Structuring Methods: Making Sense of Messy ChoicesSolving Complex Problems and Decision Making40 min