Culture Last, Not First

I have spoken to many management teams about initiating large organizational changes. After the sense of urgency has been created, the executives want to jump several steps ahead. These enthusiastic execs begin talking about changing organizational culture. While I appreciate their enthusiasm, culture change comes last, not first.

Changing the culture is important to support (sustain) new changes, but in practice you can’t change culture first. New changes in how things are done must be shown to be successful first. These successful new ways of doing things require a minimum of time. Trying to create a new culture before demonstrating success simply doesn’t work anywhere (except in theory). Real people in real organizations demand “proof.”

Kotter and Cohen, in their book “The Heart of Change,” say, “New behaviors will not become the norms, will not take hold, until the end of the process.” I agree. The eighth step in Kotter’s popular change model is anchoring the change in the culture. Please notice that this is the last step, not the first or second. “Anchoring,” “taking hold,” or “sticking” happens only after compelling success stories. Make those success stories as vivid as possible.

For further reading, I recommend Kotter and Cohen’s book, “The Heart of Change,” or my special report entitled “Overcoming Resistance to Change,” which is available on my website www.mikebeitler.com.

Please feel free to send me your questions, comments, and suggestions.