Driving Organizational Change — Without Abandoning Tradition

When new leaders are given a mandate to create change — by organizations that say they want it — they are often confronted with variations of “that’s not how we do it here.” This organizational response, in which members of a group try to preserve its traditions against outside attack, is called “social defense.” Researchers have tracked many ways in which social defenses keep organizations from implementing good ideas; they have also found the key to helping organizations lower their guard enough to accept new ideas: Expressing care for a shared organizational intent.