Ideas Change Culture or Culture Changes Ideas

Do ideas change culture, or does culture change ideas?

Jeffrey Phillips wrote a very interesting article on Innovation Excellence: Do ideas change culture, or does culture change ideas?

I had always been inclined that an idea had all the strength required to change a culture, but this article made me re-think my statement.  I used to believe that all that was needed for a culture to change was a strong thought, and well communication, but Jeffrey does make a good argument by stating that in some cases, the idea won’t be as strong as the culture, and therefore it will not be successful.

“If you have interesting, radical, truly different ideas, then you either have a culture that embraces ideas and innovation, or your innovation team has been isolated from the decision making and priorities of the rest of your business.”

It is kind of shocking, once you think about this. How many companies have actually considered this? Embracing ideas and innovation requires embracing change, and companies get terrified with this concept sometimes.

 “Your culture will both embrace interesting, disruptive ideas, and shift its attitudes and behaviours to engage those ideas, or it will ignore, reject or ridicule the ideas until they fall into line with expectations or are summarily dismissed… If the culture can’t embrace it, it won’t allow it. Even if the idea is modified to become acceptable, the culture, in the end, changed the idea.”

This quote reminded me of a webinar hosted by Pure Insight last year on Change Management and Culture Change. In this webinar, it was stated that 70% of changes in organisations have failed which means that less than 1/3 of all ideas ever succeed. So, by this it can then be implied that 70% of the time companies lack the culture needed to support new ideas? It shouldn’t be this way...

In the same line as Jeffrey, the webinar leader focused on people. He said that when making the case of a new idea people must categorically ‘get it’, ‘like it’, ‘trust the owner of the idea’. He concludes the webinar by saying ‘Embrace the resistance and search for ways to engage people in turning opposition into support.’

Could this be a way out for people trying to implement new radical ideas in conservative organisations? Even if resistance is embraced, will culture still change the idea?