Can You Change a Large, Established Company’s Culture? Yes! Here’s How.

Welcome to Leading Disruption, a weekly letter about disruptive leadership in a transforming world. Every week we’ll discover how the best leaders set strategy, build culture, and manage uncertainty all in service of driving disruptive, transformative growth. For more insights like these, join my private email list.

You’ve probably heard something like this before: “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it.”

Large organizations are hesitant to make any changes, even if things aren’t functioning optimally, simply because they’re afraid to rock the boat and change is difficult. 

That’s very true. Change isn’t easy! It’s challenging and complex.

But it is possible. 

On Tuesday’s livestream, I shared how to create lasting change in humongous, slow-moving organizations that have been doing things the same way for hundreds of years.

So why is change difficult?

You might be familiar with John Kotter’s eight steps to creating change: create urgency, put a team together, develop a vision of the change you want, communicate the change, remove the obstacles, set short-term goals, keep the momentum going, and make sure the change sticks. 

Pretty straightforward, right? Definitely works to create changes in manufacturing and physical processes. 

But the changes disruptive leaders need to drive today center on shifting mindsets and attitudes, not just behaviors — which makes it a lot harder to determine if the change is working. (I don’t know about you, but I’m not a mind reader!)

And yet we assume that if we outline a vision, people will automatically buy into it. We’re quick to say, “You’re not on board? You’re not a team player!” 

That’s understandable. Larger organizations have seen a lot of change — and not necessarily long-lasting ones. So, people wait it out: “Let’s see if management loses interest and moves on after a few months.”

If leadership announces change initiatives but nothing really happens, there’s no payoff. People get skeptical. Change fatigue sets in.

So what actually creates change? Sure, processes are one part of it. But in the end it’s culture: the things we do and the things we see. 

This is how you change your company culture

If you want change to happen, especially in your culture, two things have to happen: Your beliefs have to change, and your behaviors have to change.

Let’s say you believe a company will reward you for certain behaviors. You’ll probably act a certain way. If you define success a certain way, you’ll act based on those beliefs.

The same goes for creating change: If you want people to actually change, you have to change their beliefs first.

Great. How do you do that? Here are a few places to start:

• Build trust. Remember: People get skeptical quickly! If people don’t trust you, they won’t take the first step — and that’s the most difficult one. To build trust, try to create some predictability by clearly saying, “This is what we anticipate will happen. Here are our expectations.” And then follow through!
• Make sure you have the capabilities. This one is a bit more boots on the ground, but you still have to have the skills, resources, and people available to make the change!
• Start with leadership. It’s easy to point out the things an organization isn’t doing to make change happen. But how are you as the leader changing? If you’re just creating plans that the organization has to do and not plans you’re going to do individually, the change will never happen. But the more you model the change, the more credibility and predictability you establish, the more people will adopt the change.
• Make it personal. Talk about your feelings and emotions. Acknowledge that change is hard. Share what you’re struggling with. Be transparent about how hard it is for you personally and lead people through the messy middle. That’s when they’ll say, “Oh, okay, good. I'm not alone here.” 
• Communicate about the change. Yes, you want to share your personal experience — the emotion helps people see how meaningful the change is to you. But take it one step further by creating stories and a narrative arc. Why do you believe this change is the right thing to do? How is your personal experience tied to this new belief? How might people tie their experiences to the story? People remember stories, not data points, so communicate the change plan in a narrative way that resonates with people.

It is absolutely possible to create change in organizations — even big, slow-moving companies. But only if you identify the old beliefs and give them no new space to live in

It’s true that beliefs can be hard to change. They’ve kept you safe and profitable. They served you for a very long time. But at some point those old beliefs are holding you back — and it’s time to make a change.

Remember how I encouraged you to make the change personal? I’m going to dig deeper into exactly how to do that next week! Because one of the biggest problems I see is people overusing “we” when talking about change. Where’s the “me?” What are YOU going to do? Join me on Tuesday, October 4 at 9 am PT for a discussion on making change personal as leaders.

Your Turn

We’ve all experienced change. We go from one changement management program to another. There’s digital transformation. HR transformation. Sustainability transformation. Constant change — but how often do these changes actually stick? I’d love to know how you’ve made change happen. How have you been successful (or maybe even unsuccessful!) in creating organizational change and, in particular, making it stick? Looking forward to hearing from you!

This newsletter is sponsored by Workplace from Meta, where culture and technology come together to create a more productive future of work. Check out www.workplace.com/future to learn more.