A Tale of a Failed Cultural Transformation

Your culture is not aligned with your strategy. There’s a lot that will need to change for your business to survive, and hopefully, to thrive. 

And you don’t even need to create a burning platform - you are standing on it and the sense of urgency couldn’t be more palpable. So you decide to act boldly. Without hesitation, you invest in creating a comprehensive cultural transformation plan.

When the plan is finished, the people who created it step back in awe and exclaim: "It's a masterpiece!" The phrase "state-of-the-art" is thrown around a lot. Hell, even the PowerPoint looks great!

Sure, if someone would like to poke holes, they might say that the plan is a bit esoteric - but you don’t want it to be too prescriptive, do you? You don’t want to stifle people’s initiative. They will know what to do after you communicate it well.

“Communication is KING.” So you are told, anyway. 

And so you have your presentations, meetings, and town-halls. You talk with people, you answer all the questions, you analyze all the project phases and what their involvement is going to be.

Later, HR asks people for their action plans. First, there's a lot of confusion and no one knows what they are supposed to do. You feel exasperated but HR explains everything again. Eventually, the plans are duly created and submitted. Everything goes AP (as planned).

You feel like everyone can go back to the business now. You need to get busy with the pressing stuff. Quarterly targets need your attention now.

Looking back, it all seems to have worked out great. Now it's just a matter of time and you will start seeing the desired changes.

Only that... you don't see any changes. Six months pass, and then a year, and finally, someone asks: “What happened with that cultural transformation project?"

"Oh, that, well, yeah."- sigh, "That didn’t work."

I see this happen over and over again.

Don't let it be you. Don't believe people who tell you that they will help you transform your company culture all at once - and fast. They can't. Nobody can.

You can only evolve a culture. And you can only do it ONE TEAM AT A TIME.

The key lies in working with and within your culture, NOT against it. It's all about developing tiny keystone habits that help teams reach mission-critical goals within their own context - NOT at a global scale. Tiny habits are never a result of a master plan. They emerge as a result of disciplined experimentation: test, learn, refine, repeat. The right tiny habits will have a multiplier effect and act as jet fuel for your strategy. How do I know? I've seen it work.

So, which one will you go for?

• BIG CHANGES and tiny results, or
• TINY CHANGES and big results?

Send me an email if you want to find out more.

? Aga Bajer, 2019

More about me

I work with leaders and teams around the globe to help them bring their vision to life. 

I'm the co-author of “Building and Sustaining a Coaching Culture" - a complete guide on how to embed coaching in an organization’s DNA.

The question at the core of my work is: 

“How can we harness the power of team culture to enable businesses achieve extraordinary results?”

I blend experience as:

• a leader, in companies big and small
• an experienced consultant who worked for Korn Ferry (HayGroup) and PwC
• an executive and team coach
• a researcher and an author 
• a host of one of the most popular podcasts on culture, the #CultureLab

with my unstoppable and insatiable curiosity about what works and what doesn’t work in organizational and social change. 

For more information, you may visit my website.