The Performance Culture

CHAPTER 7Cultivating Community

Be a good neighbor to your colleagues.

At this point, you’ve worked through the deep listeningand information gathering that are some of the hallmarks of building awareness. You’ve also clearly defined the desired behaviors to the degree that you can expect a reasonable employee to understand and demonstrate those behaviors. Altogether, you’ve primed a small group of employees with the education, instruction, and presumably the passion to implement an important change.

So how do you send all of that good work rippling outward into a broader group, like a stone dropped into a pond?

The answer is the next step in ABCS: Community.

The Community step of the cycle reflects the need to socialize the culture change to people who weren’t necessarily within the core group of instigators. Those who have been along for the journey are far more likely to understand the need, see how the articulated behaviors help address that need, and be ready to engage to solve the problem at hand.

It’s not a guarantee that everyone who has been engaged will agree with the need, or believe that the behaviors you’re testing are the right or complete behaviors. But when comparing those who have advanced notice and participation in a process with those who are learning about all of this at this stage, there’s usually a noticeable difference in their receptivity, and of course in their comprehension. When you’ve opened yourself to exploring the right problems in the Awareness ...