This question goes beoynd just programming, but I'd like to get some input on this, if that's okay with the community. Preferably from people that do a lot of coding themselves but also manage other people coding.

My problem is this. We have all these ideas that we know is good for the overall strategy of the company and the problem is not figuring out what to do, it's to come about this change. Just telling someone to do things differently isn't enough and it's hard to promote a mind set that is shared within all of the company, (this will take time). If I could jump forward I'd like it if we could create a very nurturing company culture that promotes these ideals cross all areas but I'm not sure what tools to use. And by tools I mean anything I'm legally permitted to do.

e.g. we could talk about, we could arrange traning sessions, we could spend more time in meeting (talk about it more), we could spend more time designing, we could spend more time pair-programming, we could add/remove incentive or we could encurage more play. Ultimately if we did all of these things what will be the recurring theme that ties this together. I'd like to be able to answer the question -- why should we do things like this? -- and come up with an answer that explains how important it is to think about our ideals from begining to end.

I've puposly avoided to talk about or specifics of the situtation becuase I believe that it narrows things down too much. But I guess, by know you either know how to answer this question or you're as confused as I am ;)

I'd love to hear from people who had to bring about a change in order to go from chaos to order, or fix something in the organization which wasn't working. And I'd like to hear it from the perspective of the developer and designer.

-- or --

You could simply weigh in on what are the most important qualities in an organization encurage or stimulate rigid fun development cycle from start to finish?