Culture, scale and friction
Culture change and understanding conflict.
A focused around four hours on why change stalls and what it stirs up: culture, public legitimacy, programmes at scale and the early signs of conflict.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- Leading through Change and Conflict
- Price
- £69
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
Leaders running change programmes in public service
Overview
Change becomes whatever the culture allows once it leaves the plan, and in public service it happens in public. This programme uses Schein's levels of culture and the McKinsey 7S to show why changes stall, then explores legitimacy through Mark Moore's strategic triangle and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act. It considers appreciative inquiry, positive deviance and distributed leadership, and the National Audit Office's lessons on programmes at scale, including Birmingham's Oracle programme. It then turns to the friction change creates: Jehn's types of conflict, Coser's functions of conflict and Glasl's nine stages of escalation.
Aims
This programme aims to help leaders steer change through culture, public accountability and scale, while reading the conflict that change generates early enough to act. It develops the judgement to earn permission for change, draw on what already works, avoid the familiar traps of major programmes and intervene while conversation still works.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain how culture, public legitimacy and programme scale shape what a change becomes, using Schein, the 7S framework, Moore's strategic triangle and National Audit Office evidence.
- Apply appreciative inquiry, positive deviance and the outside view to plan change that builds on existing strengths and guards against optimism bias.
- Diagnose the type and stage of a conflict using Jehn and Glasl, and choose practical moves to de-escalate while dialogue is still possible.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain Schein's three levels of culture and why change aimed only at artefacts and espoused values tends to fail.
- Explain what makes public service change different and why legitimacy must be designed into a change from the start.
- Describe the 4-D cycle of appreciative inquiry and assess when it produces transformational rather than merely positive change.
- Use the NAO's four root causes of scope, planning, interdependencies and oversight as a health check on any programme.
- Distinguish task, relationship and process conflict and explain what the meta-analytic evidence says about each.
- Identify the stage a conflict has reached using Glasl's nine stages and recognise the move from win-win to win-lose.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Where culture meets changeOrganisational culture and public sector changeBitesize2 modules
- 02Change with people, not to themEmployee engagement and large-scale changeBitesize2 modules
- 03Where conflict comes fromUnderstanding workplace conflict and escalationBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Leading through Change and Conflict topic, also sold whole as Through change, together.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 4 hours, £69
- The whole topicImmerse, Through change, together, 11 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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. Prices per person. Read the full terms