We usually think of a meme as a picture or a video that circulates on the Internet and provides some kind of amusement. Actually, meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his seminal book, the Selfish Gene in 1976. He says it is a piece of information that passes from person to person because it confers some value.

How often have you found processes that are done “because we’ve always done it that way”? Nobody owns them but they carry on being done, whether they make sense or not. By thinking in terms of memes we can start to understand organisational behaviour and change it for the better.