Resilient Culture

A Commentary on Bard Papegaaij's IMPROVE THIS framework

For a sustainable and resilient culture…

As many of you may know, I've been an advocate of building-in the softer aspects of organisations into the design of change and Enterprise Architecture - as illustrated by the VPEC-T and more recently its younger sibling, VIPER. And, boy do I know how hard it is to come-up with an acronym that sticks! So, hats off to Bard and his colleagues for their framework IMPROVE THIS. The only advantage of VPEC-T is that it comes up tops in a Google search, that's if you can remember it to type it in!

Having said that, this post is about the content that Bard shared. Starting with the goal of developing a 'Sustainable Resilient Culture'.

IMPROVE THIS — A framework for conversations about culture by Bard Papegaaij.

Bard starts off with this...

"Cultures live in people’s hearts and minds. They are the set of beliefs, assumptions and behaviours that make it possible for those people to operate collectively, work effectively together, and achieve outcomes they could not achieve alone. Because the defining characteristics of culture are emotional and mental constructs, the only way to change a culture is through the hearts and minds of the people in it. That’s why cultures form, settle, and change only when people communicate with each other, formally and informally, but definitely in all directions".

Though the leadership has a strong direction-setting influence on a culture, a strictly top-down approach will never reach every member of a culture on the personal level needed to make them shift their internal model of the culture they believe they live in.

"Cultures are complex and emerge from the interplay of