Chapter 9A Change-averse Culture
‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay.’
Harold Wilson29
A change-averse culture is one of the most difficult change barriers to overcome. If your organisation's culture is averse to change, if your organisation's leaders are averse to change, even the best Change Catalyst doesn't stand a chance.
This aversion to change is most commonly found in large and highly successful companies that have been the dominant player in their market for long periods of time – and, of course, in government departments where the desire to look busy often triumphs over the need actually to be busy delivering productive work.
In the case of the market leader, while at first this may appear to be counter-intuitive, it is an entirely real and understandable phenomenon. It is extraordinarily difficult to change a successful organisation, as the approach and skills that have made it successful are often the very things that can so easily blind its employees to the challenges posed by new technologies and nimbler competitors.
It takes a brave CEO indeed to turn a market leader on its head in order to react to future market forces that have yet to affect the company to any significant degree. Bill Gates did this at Microsoft in the 1990s but ...
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