Changing Culture One Horn at a Time

When I was a young adult, we lived for 2 years near New York City. One of our favorite activities was to spend Saturdays in Manhattan. One less-than-pleasant memory of those outings was the constant sound of car horns. So I was surprised at the absence of honking when I returned to NYC a few years ago. In contrast, during a recent trip to Washington DC, the blare of horns was a constant irritation. What’s the difference? Both are congested cities with lots of busy people trying to get from one place to another by every means possible – foot, bicycle, subway, bus, personal car, and taxi. But a number of years ago, New York passed a city ordinance that made honking a horn a punishable offense in most cases. And they enforced it. Cab drivers, who were some of the biggest culprits, were an early target of these efforts. As the cabbies changed their habits, others notice and changed their behavior. When leaders talk about changing the culture of their church or ministry, I hear two common concerns. The first is that culture is too difficult to define. If you can’t define it, you can’t change it. The second is that even when they can clearly identify elements of the culture, leaders often throw up their hands and say that it’s impossible to change culture. The streets of New York offer insights to dispel both of these beliefs. It’s vague and unactionable to say that a city’s streets are an unpleasant place to be. But if you say that the noise on the streets is one of the reasons that they’re unpleasant, and that car horns are a major contributor to that volume, that’s something that can be addressed. Then by creating and enforcing the ordinance, focusing on the biggest offenders, the city actually made progress toward making the streets a little more pleasant. Can you identify one aspect of your culture that needs to change? Perhaps your church isn’t spiritual enough. That’s pretty vague. You might be more specific by saying that important decisions seem to be based more on personal preference or cost-benefit analysis than spiritual discernment. Could you change this culture by shifting your criteria for selecting leaders or in the ways you train those leaders? Culture change is never quick or easy. But it is possible, often just one horn at a time. It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>