Senior leaders need to take a look at organizational culture change if they have a sense that their key strategic initiatives are stalling. A common conflict that we see is when senior leadership teams decide that innovation is an absolute requirement for them to grow or to be competitive. However, if innovation runs against their current culture, by way of the natural way they do business, there could be trouble. For example, if people do not feel safe sharing their points of view in a meeting, it is going to be pretty hard to create and innovate. If people are not allowed to fail, that is counter to a strategic initiative around innovation and new ideas. Thirdly, if people are running so hard and so fast that there is no time for research and reflection, innovation is tough. These are examples of when the culture could run counter to a strategy.

Culture change is difficult; however, there are proven steps to securing a successful pathway to changing the culture. The first step is to understand what you have, right now, by getting a snapshot of the current culture. In this way, senior leaders can see the degree to which their culture is working for them or against them. Secondly, once they have that snapshot, they can understand it at a deeper level and see what questions need to be asked and answered in order to pinpoint the kind of action plans or initiatives that need to be created. Step three is to prioritize the initiatives that will be required to change the culture.

There is a bad news-good news piece to culture change. The bad news is it is hard work and it is long term. You do not change the culture in a matter of a quarter or two quarters. However, we have seen culture change in as little as twelve months because the good news is that there are very clear and specific structures that senior leaders can put into place that will help them actually shift the culture.