One of the primary sources of resistance to change is the organization's culture. CKOs and other KM professionals involved with organizational learning are typically well aware of this. But unless senior staff and leaders understand what organizational culture entails, very little can be accomplished in dealing with resistance to change. By definition, organizational culture is a pattern of common and shared basic assumptions that the organization has learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Furthermore, it has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those challenges. David Drennan simply states it as how things get done around here.

When dealing with the need to change, to know who or what caused the need for change is important; not so important, however, if you look at it proactively, as illustrated in Figure 6.1. Of course, it is important to know who or what moved your cheese, so you can both run after it or them and compete to get it back. This is what I call a reactive approach to change, which does not necessarily lead to innovation, as chances are your cheese was moved as a result of innovation, only not generated by you or your organization. Thus you must move your cheese before someone does it for you, or as Jack Welch once said, change before you have to.