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Anna is the head of human resources at a leading, global design firm and she faces a challenge. Despite the overall economic climate, recent growth has led to hirings and an influx of new mid-career employees. Many new hires are struggling to navigate the firm's flat, autonomous, and team-based culture. "They just aren't asking for help," she remarked to a colleague, "In the orientation we're clear on what's expected, but when they work in groups they don't seek out peers and mentors to give them a hand." After a few months many new hires become frustrated and feel alienated. How can Anna help them learn to change their ways?
Supporting change across an organization, whether it be helping employees to seek help and share knowledge, or influencing them to lead healthier lifestyles, relies on leaders like Anna to have a deep understanding of how to best affect collective behaviors. Altering deeply entrenched practices is no simple task. Too often leaders fail to effectively motivate and engage their audiences. Or they misunderstand the cultural forces that keep these behaviors in place. Even the most sensible and seemingly simple initiatives, such as changing recycling behaviors or e-mail etiquette, can falter. What then can we learn from research that explains how changes in collective behaviors occur?
This article draws together three interconnected strategies that emerged from multidisciplinary discussions among top practitioners and researchers at Harvard's Learning Innovations Laboratory. Like a bridge across a powerful river, successful approaches to change enable people to make the journey from one place of action to another. To help make this crossing, emerging research is revealing the power of affective, social and structural bridges in supporting such change.
Building emotional bridges
"It's the emotional barriers that are often the biggest challenges for changes in collective action," suggests Dr Marshall Ganz of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Ganz draws on his decades of work with a diversity of large-scale organizations, such as the US civil rights movement, the Sierra Club, and the Obama presidential campaign. He believes that in order to motivate people to adopt new attitudes and actions, leaders must be skilled at creating specific kinds of emotional narrative that enable change. "If your living in fear, you're in no place to...