{"id":4879,"date":"2023-04-13T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T06:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/?p=4879"},"modified":"2023-11-27T10:33:39","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T08:33:39","slug":"internalisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/13\/internalisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Internalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a fascinating new book available titled \u201cThe Wisdom of Crowds\u201d by James Surowiecki. In what appears to be a counter-intuitive line of argument, the author proposes that if you want to make a correct decision or solve a problem, large groups of people are smarter than a few experts. The book cites various experiments, one of which is summarised below…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the 1980s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram set up a fascinating experiment. He asked a class of graduate students to ride in the subway and simply ask people, in a courteous but direct manner, if they could have their seats.<\/p>\n

One student agreed to give this a go. To the surprise of all, around half of the people he asked gave up their seats. Remember, no reason was provided for this request.<\/p>\n

This was such a revelation that other students, and indeed Milgram himself, undertook to do the same thing. Incredibly, all reported similar results – with around half of the people giving up their seats.<\/p>\n

Of the many things that emerged from this experiment, one issue seemed prominent. It was not hard to convince people to give up their seats – the hard thing was summoning the courage to ask in the first place.<\/p>\n

Milgram described the whole experience as \u201cwrenching\u201d. On many occasions, students were unable to summon the courage to ask.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the point? The norm of first-come, first-served was so ingrained in people that violating it caused terrific angst. And this is a key issue when it comes to changing the culture of a team or organisation.<\/p>\n

Cultures are often internalised to a point where people do not realise it. As an example, I recently ran a program where we trained a group of internal change agents, giving them skills and resources to use the UGRs concept to boost culture.<\/p>\n

Soon after the program, I received the following as part of an e-mail from one of the participants:<\/p>\n

\u201cYour workshop was an eye opener as it made me realise how entrenched UGRs are in the workplace. This really hit home when I got back to work the following day after the seminar and I could sense the occasional negative UGRs that were flowing in the workplace. I would not have noticed this if I didn\u2019t attend the 2 day workshop. I must also add that with every negative UGR that I was seeing, I could think of a positive UGR to replace it. WOW!!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In a sense, we need a new set of glasses through which to view our organisation\u2019s culture. It is worth noting that the longer one has worked in an organisation, the more those glasses are required!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a fascinating new book available titled \u201cThe Wisdom of Crowds\u201d by James Surowiecki. In what appears to be a counter-intuitive line of argument, the author proposes that if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,81,87,88,82,89,90,80],"class_list":["post-4879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workplace-culture","tag-corporate-culture","tag-culture","tag-leadership","tag-leading","tag-organisational-culture","tag-ugrs","tag-unwritten-ground-rules","tag-workplace-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4879"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}