Cheap and fast culture never works

Organisations that treat culture change like a procurement exercise always fail.

They want it cheaper. They want it faster. They commission a large firm of consultants to do the work for them, run some ‘listening sessions’, print some values on the wall and declare it done.

Yet culture is the sum of every decision, conversation and behaviour in your organisation. It belongs to and is driven by every employee and doesn’t magically change as a result of a detailed report completed in 4 weeks.

The research is unambiguous on this. So is my own experience of having worked with over 120 teams. The fastest that I’ve ever seen a culture fundamentally change is 4 months, yet most have taken 9-12. The change starts at the top of the organisation, continues in the middle and spreads from there. 

Sustainable culture change requires leaders to role model what’s expected. Culture will always start here. It requires unity and commitment at the top, not hubris. If employees see leaders working as one and demonstrating what they expect of everyone else, the process becomes easier.

The next step requires managers to have the human skills to motivate people to do their best work, whilst committing to building great subcultures. Middle management is where culture change happens day-to-day. When employees have good managers, the results take care of themselves.

Of course, this work takes time, costs money and always (certainly in my client’s experience) delivers value far in excess of what was expected. 

Trying to do culture change cheap and fast has the opposite effect. Good people - the ones you need to keep to meaningful change - will quickly see through the ‘culture signalling’ and move to organisations who are serious about change. Gallup estimates that the global cost of disengagement is US$8.8tn and employees won’t stay to become part of it.

Cheaper and faster are the right goals for logistics. For culture, the only currency that works is commitment over time.