Introducing Organisational Culture

How to introduce culture in a familiar context

To introduce the idea of how difficult it would be to change an organisation's culture, I've run an activity called "Finish at 5".

The first activity is to discuss the prevailing culture at school using three adjectives for each different group of stakeholders, including cleaners, parents, admin staff.

Students are told that they are the Senior Management Team at our school (we finish school at 3.30) and want to implement a change - they want school to finish at 5pm. Each group has to produce a plan on how they would implement such a change and specify groups of stakeholders each tactic would be aimed at.

Once we have debriefed as a class, we vote on which we think would be the most effective and then analyse in more detail, looking at pros, cons, resource implications and the importance of key A2 concepts such as change management and leadership.

The next step is to get the students to apply this knowledge to different businesses to build a portfolio of examples. Then they are hit with an essay: "Assess the importance of the prevailing culture of organisations you have researched on the likely success of a change in strategy"