The power of norms

Hi,

That’s week 2! Congratulations – half way through.

This week we looked at the cultures and norms around us that support or hold us back from making change. They can be so powerful … and they are often also invisible to us. So it’s great that you spent the week investigating and building awareness of the culture around you and how it responds to you making a change.

It’s been really fascinating to read your updates. Some of you have the support of family and friends, some of you feel that the people around you aren’t that engaged in your change, and some have been influencing others outside their closest circles and observed others adopting the change too. The whole gammut.

About invisibility of culture, I have a favorite quote from the author David Foster Wallace:

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What’s water?’”

So, because culture can be like the water we swim in, it’s so important to build our awareness. When you have awareness and can name what is happening, then you can be more specific about what you think needs to shift.

David Snowden is someone who developed a tool to map culture. Below is his TED talk about how he helps organizations map culture and devise small changes. He talks about changing stories (narratives) to build fractals that can make change, at all levels. (It’s a bit like what the cCHALLENGE aims to do).

In Week 3, we move on to systems. We’ve already seen some great posts coming through!

Good luck and keep going 🙂

The cCHANGE Team