So how does a cultural norm like meeting habits change?
A Cultural change is the dynamic process whereby a group of people change and adapt to external or internal forces. It can be:
1. Deliberate or clearly decided upon or
2. A natural adaptive process. the adaptive process has not been evolving fast enough to keep up with the rapid fire pace of change in our work environments. So it is time to take the first choice to be deliberate about this cultural change in meetings.
If it is going to change. . .it needs to change across the board! It needs to change with the whole culture. Am I talking organizational culture or wider culture? I am taking organization culture first. You need to first deliberately change the culture of your organization by tapping the desire to make the adaptive change. To get people on board with changing meetings to be more effective, you can use existing motivators like reduce stress, make better use of time, and get out of meetings and back to other work sooner. Develop a clear new way that people can see and adopt without a lot of disruption to their current workload.
The larger cultural change in corporate and government organizations comes later after a wide acceptance of the new meeting practices has taken place in a critical number of organizations. Eventually when a critical mass have made the change, the" Tipping Point" that Malcolm Gladwell talks about comes into play. Or if you understand physics, it would be a fine example of Morphic Resonance. (later blog)
"Tipping points are the levels at which the momentum for changes becomes unstoppable" Malcolm Gladwell
To make a real difference, don't change your meetings one meeting at a time. Maximize gain and make sure the change sticks by changing them through an across the board change. Change your meetings as an organizational cultural change and "keep the change".
