Cultural Change, Leadership and Social Conformity

I recently saw a fascinating video on social conformity. It shows a dentist’s waiting room with 10 people, 9 of whom are actors. Whenever a beep sounds all the actors stand up momentarily and then sit. The one ‘test subject’ initially looks confused when this happens but after only 3 beeps she starts joining in.

The video is actually a modern version of the classic psychology experiment by Asch (1951) who investigated the extent to which social pressure could affect a person’s behaviour.

In this modern experiment the actors leave one by one until only the test subject remains and, even when alone, she continues to stand up at each beep. The experiment becomes really interesting when a new person arrives. After hearing the beep and seeing the woman stand he asks her, “Why are you standing up?” She replies, “everybody was doing it, I thought I was supposed to.” He then joins her in standing at the next beep.

It seems unbelievable and it’s easy to think, ‘I would never do that,’ but social conformity is often something we are unaware of, it’s below the radar. The video immediately got me thinking about the impact of culture in organisations and the powerful effect this can have on behaviour.

A quick detour - What is Organisational Culture?

Culture is often defined as ‘the way we do things round here’ and typically shows itself through people's behaviour. In reality culture is like an iceberg and it’s the under the surface stuff, the beliefs, assumptions, values and attitudes within an organisation which drive what’s above the surface. Friendship groups, families, communities, businesses and nations all have their own cultures.

Culture has a major impact on organisational success or failure. The Guardian this week reported on the Ian Paterson inquiry findings (Paterson is currently serving a 20-year jail sentence for subjecting more than 1000 patients to needless and damaging operations) which concluded Paterson was able to continue in NHS and private hospitals because of “a culture of avoidance and denial.”

Other companies have been praised for their forward-thinking culture. Retail business Timpson describe their "upside down management" approach where “we give our colleagues total authority to do whatever they can to amaze our customers. If we make a mistake, then we can put it right there and then without the need to speak with a manager. We trust our colleagues to run our business as they see fit.” Timpson are also the biggest recruiters of ex-offenders in the country.

Conformity and Cultural Change

Increasingly, I am finding that organisations want to work with their culture and change it. The conformity experiment highlights how difficult changing behaviour can be but also, once a majority are on board, it shows how a tipping point is created that will bring others along.

The reality is that people have different amounts of influence. Leaders typically have a disproportionate amount of influence and their example is critical. People often follow the example set by leaders (both good and bad) which is why any cultural change has to be wholly supported by a leadership team. The conformity experiment is a powerful reminder that people will follow the behaviour of others.

So What?

Changing organisational culture is complex and when I began writing this I had five themes I wanted to cover. Leading by example is one of those but I'm going to save the others for a future article. For now, let's consider leading by example.

Most of us belong to many groups; families, communities, work teams, whole organisations, our nation, a group of nations (oh no, wait a minute…). Each of these has a culture (whether stated overtly or not) and this below the surface ‘way we do things’ has a major impact.

We each have opportunities to influence the organisations we are part of, in our work, communities and nations and leading by example is a powerful communication. We might not always get it right but our response can become another opportunity to lead by example. It would, of course, be unrealistic to think that we can change everything this way and the world is a complex web of systemic influences but, as Gandhi said, “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. We need not wait to see what others do.”

References

1.      Social conformity experiment video https://youtu.be/o8BkzvP19v4

2.      Solomon Asch’s original conformity experiment https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

3.      Health service culture https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/feb/04/ian-paterson-inquiry-culture-of-denial-allowed-rogue-breast-surgery

4.      Timpson culture https://www.timpson.co.uk/about/careers-at-timpson