Our research for The Secret of Culture Change: How to Build Authentic Stories That Transform Your Organization found that stories need an additional content element if they are to be successful in changing an organization’s culture: They must appeal to your employees’ heads and their hearts. 

Your stories appeal to your employees’ heads when they draw a direct causal line between the new culture you are trying to create and your firm’s financial performance. They appeal to your employees’ hearts when they see how a new culture will benefit people associated with your company—people about whom they care, including coworkers, subordinates, and customers. Appealing to your employees’ heads is about rationality and economics; appealing to their hearts is about emotions, loyalty, and personal relationships.

Why both heads and hearts? 

People tend to have mixed reactions when we discuss heads and hearts in building culture-changing stories. Some are confused by—and perhaps personally uncomfortable with—the affective dimensions of culture change. These people reason: “Isn’t the purpose of organizations of all types, including public and private for-profit firms and not-for-profit firms, to create sufficient economic value to compensate their critical stakeholders for investing their time and treasure in these organizations?”

The answer to this question is, of course, “Yes.”

So, if almost all organizations need to focus on creating enough economic value to compensate their stakeholders for investing in them, why do culture-changing stories need to appeal both to your employees’ heads and hearts? Wouldn’t it be enough to demonstrate—through the stories you build—that the new culture you are co-creating is going to generate economic value that will benefit your employees and your other stakeholders? Why all this emphasis on trust and friendship and teamwork and the emotions that are associated with these affective dimensions of organizations?

The answer to this question is that organizational cultures are, at their core, social in nature. They exist because your employees have come to accept certain values, beliefs, and norms of behavior that define what are—and what are not—culturally consistent ways of interacting with each other. Changing these values, beliefs, and norms is not just a matter of rational calculation, it is a matter of changing the way that your employees think about themselves and their relationships with each other. To make these kinds of changes, your employees must be engaged in culture change, not just intellectually and rationally but in a deeply emotional and personal way.

Of course, focusing only on the “heart” portion of culture change can be just as problematic as focusing only on the “head.” After all, the point of changing an organization’s culture is to do so in a way that enhances your organization’s ability to implement its new strategies. If culture change helps everyone in an organization get along with each other, but getting along with each other does not create economic value, then this kind of culture change is difficult to justify economically. Culture change that focuses only on the heart is easy to interpret as a manifestation of a leader’s ego rather than an attempt to create a more effective and efficient organization.

The tension between head and heart in culture change.

So, changing organizational cultures must involve both the head and the heart. But aren’t these elements of culture change—to some extent, at least—antithetical? Well, there certainly can be tension between rational economic reasons for changing an organization’s culture and emotional and interpersonal reasons to do so, but skilled leaders can build stories that appeal to both.

Whether you alternate between appealing to the heart and head of culture change, start with an emphasis on the head and then move to the heart, or start with a focus on the heart and then move to the head, one thing is clear: Successful culture change requires both an appeal to the rational economic interests of your employees—their heads—and to their emotional and social interests—their hearts. Do the first (head) without the second (heart), and it is difficult to build the personal enthusiasm and commitment necessary for culture change. Do the second without the first, and it is difficult to realize the economic benefits of culture change.

Are you willing to appeal to both the heads and the hearts of your employees in your effort to change your organization’s culture?