Recently, Dr. Sam Walton spoke at Brain Based Business of traditional organizational culture that tends to work against innovation… 
Breakthroughs in brain research increasingly explain how to transform organizational culture in a way that innovations will succeed. Jerry is the CEO of a steel industry with too much organizational culture and too little change to compete with the leading steel competitors. With the patents on of his firm’s discoveries due to expire, his organization needs more creativity to survive. The steel firm also lacks collaborative teams that could reduce time-to-market.
Back in the 80s Jerry set his business up around highly competitive teams that secretly created against one another. Back then it worked, but no more… The industry is losing the lion’s share of the market to a smaller, younger and more innovative group one city away…. Jerry faces the task of changing how thousands of employees think… work … and create every day…. The daunting transformation seems far beyond Jerry’s ability…. Is it?
Perhaps your organization faces a similar problem. Growth or creativity simply isn’t possible without change that impacts the daily thought and behavior of a company’s personnel. Still… anybody who tries tells you that … changing behavior is hard … even when new practices can keep an industry alive in a tight market. We build cognitive maps for the way we do business and until you get in and alter these neuron pathways… you’ll tend to slip back into familiar patterns…. Has that been true for you…?
So how can Jerry begin to change the way the steel organization creates again at the cutting edge? His persistent poor track record so far has further complicated Jerry’s courage and confidence to change…. What would you advice to keep his business alive and pull it back on track…?
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