Changing Culture
Make Others Do The Right Thing When No One Is Watching
Many leadership teams think that publishing an "AI Code of Conduct" or a “Health & Safety Policy”, will make sure everybody acts in the way you wish and that compliance box can be ticked. I for one know that policy doesn’t always impact behaviour…!
Policies don’t change habits. Culture does. We therefore are in the business of changing company culture, not only updating and amending policy.
So how do we change workplace culture? I’m going to use the case study of my excellent colleague Owen Dobbing as a great example of changing a workplace culture. (As I’ve personally benefitted from this cultural change).
Owen, the Head of IT at my workplace, has been tasked with embedding a culture of purposeful and meaningful EdTech across the school. Let me start with the caveat that, if you want to meet a group of professionals who are fiercely protective of their time and deeply cynical about "new software" look no further than overworked teachers.
I’m sure that Owen knew that if he just handed them a 30-page policy document and a login password, nothing would change. Our school’s culture would not change.
So, he focused on the culture. He didn't mandate massive workshops; he embedded technology into the daily, natural rhythm of the school. He created low-stakes, peer-to-peer sharing sessions. He even invited me to share in a staff-meeting on how I had been using Quizzizz to create summative assessments for my lessons. He celebrated small wins, normalised safe experimentation, and provided bite-sized, continuous support. It must be said that Owen is the sort of guy who would help anyone out, at all times, any time.
He didn't force a policy; he built human agency. Today, EdTech isn't a "tool" we are forced to use; it is seamlessly woven into the fabric of how that school operates.
Most businesses are doing the exact opposite of Owen.
They write a strict policy, usually filled with legal jargon like "Staff are prohibited from entering proprietary data into unvetted LLMs" , make everyone sign it during onboarding, and assume the risk is managed.
But when a middle manager is staring down a deadline at 6:00 PM on a Thursday. They follow their habits, not policy.
Policy tells people what not to do. Culture dictates what they actually do when no one is watching.
AI is evolving way too fast for a static document to keep up. You’ll need to change your staff’s innate behaviours to ensure that they act within the necessary (constantly changing) parameters.
You have to change the daily habits of your workforce through habitual learning. Watch this space, as I am in the process of creating something that’ll help you change your company’s culture, whilst keeping the procedural elements ticked.