Cultural exchange about cultural change

Continuing the In Control International theme of my previous posting, the two-day international meeting covered topics that are relevant across a range of cultures. Amongst other things, the meeting covered:

• cultural change (in terms of service planners, agency staff and the broader community)
• planning and renewal
• safeguards
• the connection between rights and responsibilities in people's lives
• the changing role of service agencies
• the challenges of collaboration.

I can easily imagine that these topics will be of intense interest to people living with disability, families, service agency staff, and government staff. If you would like more information, or want to hear more about any of these topics on this blog, then do get in touch, either via the comments section of this blog or via the email address on our website.


For this post I'm focusing on the first one - culture change. The word 'culture' is used in a number of ways. It can be something you grow in a petri dish especially if you haven't cleaned under the kitchen sink in a while. It can be used to describe ethnicity, for example when you visit a different country or community and encounter people who have a different shared experience to you. Or it can be used to describe the arts, where apparently you are getting culture when you watch ballet.


It can also be used to describe the main features of people's attitudes and behaviours in an organisation or system. This version of 'culture' covers the shared ideas about how work gets done It's about "the way we do things around here". From the international conversation it was clear to me that culture change is an important consideration for every country represented at the meeting, and why wouldn't it be?  People live in every country, and people are complicated, especially when they organise themselves into groups.  This is because rules and guidelines have to be figured out so that everyone knows what to do.  Usually those rules and guidelines are designed to reflect the values and attitudes and goals that brought about the group enterprise in the first place. 

Unfortunately, unless people are particularly vigilant, this connection between values, attitudes and goals and the associated rules and guidelines can, over time, become less clear.  People follow the rules and guidelines without checking back why they were installed in the first place, and changes happen to the rules and guidelines without checking back to see if such changes make sense in terms of the original goals and values.  this often happens with the best of intentions, for example when new opportunities come along.

Eventually, the prevailing rules and guidelines that are driving people's behaviour have very little connection with the original values, attitudes and goals, and become simply "the way we do things around here".  Just like the proverbial dog that gets wagged by its tail, the rules and guidelines install a new set of values, that people may not have chosen in the first place had they known it would come to this.

Across all kinds of human endeavour, many organisations and systems have this problem.  This includes organisations and systems that support vulnerable people.  For example, I have encountered a number of organisations that began from a value base of wanting to see vulnerable people have a fairer go at what life has to offer.  Move forward a number of years and we find those same organisations providing services that in fact have largely achieved the opposite, by separating people from the wider community, rendering them invisible and much more vulnerable to neglect and abuse.  This is happening today, as we speak, probably at an organisation near where you live.

Yet, despite the increasing signals that we are failing vulnerable people in our communities, we seem to struggle to achieve widespread positive change.  Why?  Culture.   Within our support systems for vulnerable people, the majority of behaviours uphold the status quo, such is the strength of 'the way we do things around here'.  

If we are to achieve genuine helpful changes in the lives of vulnerable people, then paradigms like Individualised funding, National Disability Insurance, Person-Centred Planning, Active Support, and a multitude of others, will not have the impact we might hope for, because by themselves they won't necessarily change culture. 

Culture is changed when enough people make it known that 'the way we do things around here' is not good enough.  Culture also changes when those people in positions of power, responsibility and leadership, have the courage to recognise that the systems they administer are failing people.

These people include the leaders within service agencies, and the leaders within governments, and the leaders within communities.  Such people can play a pivotal role in changing culture.

This is the essence of leadership.  If we are agreed that vulnerable people have the right to choice and control in their lives, to be active contributors to their communities, to grow into rich, valued lives, then every leader in every support system needs to guide their resources towards this, to 'change the way we do things around here'.  They need to do this today and tomorrow and the next day, and so on until it's done.

A Quick Thought On Slow Change

In Transit

Have been on the road the last few days with a dodgy laptop, so no blogging. I am still in transit but have some time at this airport to go blogabout - the free internet access terminal gives me 15 minutes only so I'd better get to it.

I finished out the UK trip with a couple of meetings, the first about the role of social workers/case workers in the world of personalised support, and the second with a support agency who have been focused on personalisation for years. I intend to blog separately on both points, so watch this space. Instead, for this brief, almost airborne blog posting, I thought I'd share a sleepless thought about change.


I have had the immensely good fortune in my life to have lived and worked in a number of different countries, and in roles characterised by the forces of, or the need for, change. In the same way, the topic of change has also been a recurring feature of this work trip, so its now on my mind.


At various points in our lives, we each get the need for, or otherwise are confronted with, the forces of change. Sometimes we want it, sometimes we don't, sometimes it feels like it's for the better, sometimes not. Whatever the reason for its presence, it's hard to ignore and harder to avoid.


In the world of citizenship and disability, one thing stands out in respect of change. Change can come from all sorts of places and for all sorts of reasons. However, it is my experience, such as it is, that the most helpful and sustainable change for people living with disability has been initiated by those same people. Change initiated by politicians or policy makers, by bureaucrats or businessfolk, is far less likely to be helpful and sustainable unless those initiators have in turn been influenced by...yes you guessed it...people living with disability and the families and friends of those who need more assistance to give voice.

If helpful sustainable change ultimately comes from such grassroots, then one's attention is inevitably drawn to what helps and hinders such voice.  As I discovered from the Loop conference called Why Is It So Hard To Speak Up And Be Heard, there are many reasons why people feel they cannot, or choose not to, give voice in pursuit of helpful change.  These are well-documented, and contact http://www.juliafarr.org.au/ if you want a copy of the Loop proceedings.  For the purpose of this blog posting, one particular reason comes to mind - "lack of a collective voice".  For me, this is less about formal advocacy and more about the power of numbers.  The more people who together passionately and actively give voice in pursuit of a common interest, the more likely it is that the interest will be fulfilled.  History has shown this again and again and again.

So for example, if you feel strongly that people living with disability should have genuine access to personalised support arrangements so that they can get on with a life of choice and citizenship, then connect with others who feel the same way and speak in concert. 

It seems the case that the voices within the disabilty community can often get preoccupied with the perceived differences between them.  At the very least this leads to a lost opportunity and, at worst, acrimony, bitterness and hurt, and with the common interest dismally unfulfilled.  Given the common barriers facing many people living with disability, and therefore a shared interest in helpful change, it seems a better idea for folk to focus on what they share in common rather than on what sets them apart.