Make Change Social (1/3): Strategy That Sticks

Most change programs fail for a simple reason. They fight the culture people actually live in, not the culture leadership describes. The Norms Shock Test is a quick way to surface that gap before you spend political capital on a rollout.

Here’s the psychology. In social psychology, descriptive norms are what people observe others doing. Injunctive norms are what people hear they should do. In organizations, descriptive norms usually win because they signal what gets rewarded and what gets punished. If the transformation asks for “collaboration,” but the heroes are the lone wolves who save the day at 11 pm, people will copy the hero story, not the slide deck.

Run the test in 20 minutes. Ask three questions in interviews or a team huddle. What gets you praised here. What gets you in trouble. Who gets promoted and why. Then write two lines on a whiteboard. “Old norm we reward” and “New norm we need.” If those lines conflict, call it out plainly. You just found the real blocker.

Consultant move: don’t pitch behavior change until you redesign the rewards. If you need earlier escalation, reward “flagging risk early” with airtime and praise. If you need experimentation, celebrate learning cycles, not perfect plans. Then make the norm visible in routines: start meetings with one example of the new norm, and end with a quick callout that reinforces it. Next in this series, I’ll show how to build a Status Ladder so the new behavior gains social gravity, and a Momentum Map so the change survives handoffs and doesn’t fade after kickoff.