strategy+business

FORTHCOMING IN ISSUE 62 SPRING 2011

Stop Blaming Your Culture

Start using it instead to reinforce and build
the new behaviors that will give you the
high-performance company you want.

BY JON KATZENBACH AND ASHLEY HARSHAK

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features organizations & people

by Jon Katzenbach and Ashley Harshak

Start using it instead

to reinforce and build the
new behaviors that will
give you the high-performance
company you want.

features organizations & people

STOP
BLAMING
YOUR
CULTURE

Illustration by Michael Klein

When Alfred M. (Al) Gray Jr. became commandant

(the highest-ranking officer) of the U.S. Marine Corps

in 1987, most knowledgeable observers believed that the
Corpss fabled warrior spirit culture was already damaged beyond repair. During the Korean and Vietnam
Wars, the Corps had grown from its historic level of
75,000 regulars to more than 200,000, and its values
and discipline had eroded. It would have been easy for
Gray to blame the damaged organizational culture for
the problems he inherited, and to launch a formal, fullscale change initiative. But instead, he began to praise
and seek out elements of the old Corps culture, such
as its ethic of mutual respect. For example, he regularly
slipped into the mess halls without insignia, so he would
be served the same meals as the privates. To this day, Al
Gray is the only Marine Corps commandant portrayed

in battle fatigues in his formal portrait in the Pentagon.

He is one of the most respected leaders in the Marines
250-year history.
Leaders like Gray understand the value of an organizations culture. This can be defined as the set of
deeply embedded, self-reinforcing behaviors, beliefs,
and mind-sets that determine how we do things
around here. People within an organizational culture
share a tacit understanding of the way the world works,
their place in it, the informal and formal dimensions of
their workplace, and the value of their actions. Though
it seems intangible, the culture has a substantial influence on everyday actions and on performance.
Organizational cultures dont change very quickly.
Therefore, if you are seeking change in your company
or institution, you are most likely to succeed using your

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Ashley Harshak
[email protected]
is a London-based partner
with Booz & Company. He is
part of the firms organization,
change, and leadership practice, with a focus on the public
sector and financial services.

existing culture to help you change the behaviors that

matter most. Bit by bit, as these new behaviors prove
their value through business results, the culture you
have can evolve into the culture you need.
Blame and Its Alternatives

When a new leaders strategy puts the culture of a company at risk, the culture will trump the strategy, almost
every time. There are good reasons for this. Every companys identity the body of capabilities and practices
that distinguish it and make it effective is grounded
in the way people think and behave. Deeply embedded
cultural influences tend to persist; they change far more
slowly than marketplace factors, and cause significant
morale problems when not addressed effectively. When
your strategy and culture clash visibly, more likely than
not, the culture is trying to tell you something about
your own leadership philosophy.
But many leaders overlook this message. They
blame the companys culture for the resistance they
encounter. In the most extreme cases, they assume an
explicit mandate for wholesale cultural change. This
leads them to remove key leaders and old practices,
restructure operations, set in place new rewards and
promotions, and announce other across-the-board programmatic changes. This approach is costly, disruptive, and risky. Moreover, it takes years to accomplish.
Working in a culture that is under attack reduces employees energy and de-motivates them. It may require
a major marketplace or economic disruption to get
people to buy in. Clearly, this is not a game for the faint
of heart. Worst of all, it is rarely successful; few
major corporate transformations, especially those involving a wholesale change in the culture, achieve their

intended performance goals.

Alternatively, leaders may try to ignore their culture
and act as if it isnt important. But when overlooked,
the hidden power of a companys culture can thwart
any leaders strategic aspirations. No matter how many
top-down directives you issue, they will rarely be executed, at least not with the emotional commitment and
consistency needed to make them successful.
This is not to say that your existing culture is sacrosanct. Indeed, many companies need some kind of
culture change. There are passive-aggressive cultures
where people routinely fail to follow through on their
agreements, creative but undisciplined cultures where
talented people pull in different directions, and highly
politicized bureaucratic cultures that must bear the expense of their heavy-handed management style.
But when you fight your culture head-on or ignore
it altogether during a change initiative, you lose the
chance of reviving some of the attitudes and behaviors
that once made your company powerful and might
do so again. Several studies (including one conducted
by Booz & Company and the Bertelsmann Foundation
in 2004) suggest a correlation between financial results
and a strong, inspiring organizational culture. The correlation is hardly surprising; after all, cultures influence
and energize the behaviors that matter most. Procter &
Gamble, Southwest Airlines, Apple, Tata, Starbucks,
and FedEx are among the household-name companies
noted for unique cultures that contribute significantly
to their competitive advantage.
Fortunately, there is an effective, accessible way to
deal with cultural challenges. Dont blame your culture; use it purposefully. View it as an asset: a source
of energy, pride, and motivation. Learn to work with it

strategy+business issue 62

Jon Katzenbach
[email protected]
is a senior partner with Booz
& Company. Based in New
York, he leads the Katzenbach
Center, which focuses on innovative ideas in leadership,
organization, culture, and human capital. He is the author
or coauthor of nine books,
including Leading Outside the
Lines: How to Mobilize the (In)
Formal Organization, Energize
Your Team, and Get Better
Results (with Zia Khan; JosseyBass, 2010).

Myths of Culture Change

Why dont corporate leaders naturally respond to culture in this productive way? Because of several myths
about culture change that have become prevalent in
the business world. Each of these assumptions leads to
treacherous pitfalls.
Our culture is the root of all our problems. This
becomes an all-purpose, convenient excuse for performance shortfalls. Our process-oriented culture inhibits
collaboration, managers say. Or our long-standing beliefs about nurturing people make us coddle weak performers. Underlying this myth is a view that attitudes
and beliefs shape peoples behavior. This view ignores

the realities of organizational culture. As well see, behavior can influence beliefs at least as much as the other
way around.
We dont really know how to change our culture, so
lets escape it. Theres a long tradition, going back to

Lockheed Aircrafts Skunk Works in the 1940s, of creating pockets of entrepreneurial activity for high-performance results. These are explicitly intended to operate
outside the prevailing culture. They may thrive for a
few years, but they are typically treated as outliers by
the rest of the company. Eventually, they are either spun
off or absorbed back into the mainstream, succumbing
to the companys cultural malaise. Our culture kills
even our most innovative efforts thus becomes a selffulfilling prophecy. One of the most famous of these
efforts was General Motors ill-fated Saturn brand,
modeled after the culture of Japanese automakers and
set up to run separately and independently but eventually overtaken by GMs culture.
Leave culture to the people professionals. Executives with an engineering, finance, or technology
background often feel ill-equipped to deal with cultural
issues. They delegate them to their human resources,
organizational development, or communications teams.
Its all about the soft side, say the executives. We
have to improve our employee engagement scores. But
the quality of the culture is as much a product of the
hard side of the organization (strategies, structures,
processes, and programs) as it is of the soft side (beliefs,
opinions, feelings, networks, and communities of common interest). Although your internal professionals can
measure and monitor behavior as well as advise line
management on culture issues, they cannot motivate,
execute, or implement strategic or performance imperatives. Ensuring behavior change that drives competitive
advantage is the role of line leaders at multiple levels.
Culture is the job of the top leaders. It is very
powerful when the CEO and other top executives
take explicit personal accountability for the companys
culture. But senior leaders cannot change cultures by
themselves. They operate at such a large scale, and with
such broad visibility, that they cannot directly motivate
people to implement the specific practices and behaviors
that are required. To succeed with a culture intervention, top leaders need the support of many leaders down
the line particularly those who have daily contact
with the people whose behavior change is most critical.
Sometimes, this myth manifests itself at the board
level. Directors assume that the only way to improve

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and within it. Discern the elements of the culture that

are congruent with your strategy. Figure out which of
the old constructive behaviors embedded in your culture can be applied to accelerate the changes that you
want. Find ways to counterbalance and diminish other
elements of the culture that hinder you. In this way,
you can initiate, accelerate, and sustain truly beneficial
change with far less effort, time, and expense, and
with better results, than many executives expect.
Edgar H. Schein, author of The Corporate Culture
Survival Guide (rev. ed., Jossey-Bass, 2009) and a leading authority on organizational culture, tells a story that
illustrates the unexpected leverage this approach offers.
(See A Corporate Climate of Mutual Help, by Art
Kleiner and Rutger von Post, s+b, Spring 2011.) Three
senior executives of a large manufacturing company
the CEO, chief operating officer (COO), and head of organizational development visited him, seeking advice
on building a more dynamic culture. Just yesterday,
said the COO, I had my regular meeting with subordinates. We have a big circular room, and everybody
sits in the same place each time. But get this only
four people were present this time, and they still sat at
the far ends of this great big table. Do you see what Im
up against?
What did you do about it? asked Schein.
The executives responded at first with blank stares.
Then they realized they were part of the system they
were blaming. The COO could have made a small but
significant change simply by asking the four of them to
move their chairs. Better yet, he could ask the full team
to vary their seating at the next meeting. The executives
spent the next several hours figuring out other minor
actions of that sort, which they put in place the following week, with great success.

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performance is to replace the current CEO with another top leader who can bring forth a new and better culture. Because they are looking for someone who
promises major change, the company inevitably gets a
full-scale culture overhaul with all the expense, risk,
disruption, and likely failure involved.
Working with and within Your Culture

Each of these myths plays out differently. But underlying all of them is a big dose of defeatism. Culture is
thought to be too big to ignore, too tough to conquer,
and too soft to understand (at least by typical managers).
Thinking this way, especially when there have been previous culture change disappointments, is enough to sap
your energy and enthusiasm for change. It can squelch
any realistic effort toward high performance before you
gain the momentum necessary for sustainable success.
By contrast, working with and within a culture is
sensible, practical, and effective. Thus, it is inherently
energizing. When leaders learn to operate this way, their
employees tend to become more productive and their
own efforts become more rewarding.
The first thing to change is the view that, as a leader, you can fix your culture by working on it directly.
Rarely is that the case. Just as you typically cant argue
someone out of a deeply held belief, you cant force people to change the way they think and feel about their
work. Instead, you need to focus on specific behaviors
that solve real problems and deliver real results. This, in
turn, enables people to experience the results of thinking differently. Experience becomes a better teacher
than logical argument.
Imagine that you were an advisor from an industrialized nation, sent to a remote island village to help lo-

cal farmers improve their productivity. Would you start

by trying to overhaul their culture to be more like your
countrys culture? Or would you set out to learn more
about the way they thought, looking for connections to
your ideas, giving them reasons to feel confident about
trying something new? The former approach might
make you feel more important at first, but it would
likely fail or at best, take years to accomplish. In
contrast, offering a few new methods might generate
an approving early response, and those practices would
spread as they produced results. The same is true in
your company.
As Schein puts it, Always think first of the culture
as your source of strength. Tapping into the emotionally gripping aspects of your existing culture can accelerate performance. For example, a deep commitment
to customer service may exist, even in companies that
are losing customers. This can be drawn upon in efforts
to improve customer retention rates. The ability to diagnose the beneficial attributes of a culture, and then
use them to motivate strategically important behavior,
is one of the key factors that differentiate peak-performing organizations from the also-rans in their field.
A corporate culture takes some of its attributes from
the professional and educational background of participants. An electronics engineeringdriven company like
Hewlett-Packard has a very different cultural ambiance from a pharmaceutical firm like Pfizer, a bank like
JPMorgan Chase, or a metal-bending manufacturer
like GM. Culture is also influenced by the attitudes of
the founders, the location of the headquarters, the types
of customers that the company serves, and the experiences people have together. Thats why different companies in the same broad industry, such as HP, Apple,

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Senior leaders cannot change

cultures by themselves.
They need the support of many
leaders down the line.

Turning Around Mother Aetna

One executive leader who worked expertly with his existing culture was John W. (Jack) Rowe, CEO of Aetna
Inc. from 2000 through 2006, chairman from 2001
through 2006, and currently on the faculty of Columbia Universitys Mailman School of Public Health. A
former gerontologist at Harvard Medical School, Rowe

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Microsoft, Intel, Acer, IBM, and Dell, can succeed with

such different cultures. Within an overarching corporate culture, there are generally several subcultures,
each with its own unique elements. Schein writes that
these can include an operational culture, spurred by line
managers eager to get the most out of their people; a
senior executive culture, grounded in financial insight
and training; and an engineering culture, in which attention is focused on the technology.
To understand your culture, you need to pay close
attention to its quiet, sometimes hidden, manifestations, such as the side conversations in the hallways,
the informal consultations behind closed doors, and the
incisive guidance that people get when they ask one another for advice. It is also evident in the formal lines of
the organization chart and the ways in which directives
are worded. Cultures can be diagnosed best by the work
behaviors they promote. Do people collaborate easily?
Do they make decisions individually or in groups? Are
they open with their information? Do they reflect on
successes and failures and learn from them?
As you move from diagnosing to improving behaviors, focus first on the few critical changes that matter
most and support getting the work done, thereby accelerating the results you want. Make use of both formal
and informal mechanisms.

along with Aetnas then president, Ronald Williams,

who became CEO upon Rowes retirement and is now
the companys chairman led one of the most successful turnarounds in U.S. corporate history. In five years,
Aetna went from losing $1 million per day to earning $5
million per day.
The Rowe/Williams effort was the fourth attempt
to transform Aetnas strategic performance in 15 years.
The previous three efforts were derailed by the culture,
which was known within the company as Mother Aetna. This mind-set pitted the 40,000 employees of Aetna against everyone else the company had to deal with,
for example, doctors, patients, medical providers (such
as hospitals), and the employers who bought insurance.
This us-against-them attitude had given Aetna a reputation as the most suspicious, recalcitrant, and bureaucratic health insurance company in the United States.
All three previous top-down change interventions tried
to increase the staffs empathy for customer organizations, sensitivity to doctors, and responsiveness to patients. Two efforts basically ignored the culture, and the
third tried to smash it apart. All failed.
Rowe often describes himself as the least likely person for the Aetna board of directors to pick as CEO.
I never ran a business, he says. I had never been to
business school, or had any commercial management
experience. The only thing Id ever done was take care
of patients and try to make hospitals do better. That
willingness to admit he didnt know everything served
him well. He started by identifying about 100 people
throughout Aetna as nonhierarchical influencers. He
sought them out informally, asking them to help him
understand how employees felt about customers and
patients, about their own work, and about the goals of
the company. These people acted as what anthropologists call key informants: cultural guides who could
help him get to know the company more intimately
than he ever would through purely formal channels. He
stayed in touch with them continually, through e-mail,
one-on-one visits, and group discussions. They gradually became the core of a group of people who shaped
and supported Aetnas new strategic direction.
Second, he set out to reconsider the companys

The Power of Behavior Change

The notion that behavior change leads to attitude

change can be traced back to the 1950s, to psychologist
Leon Festinger and his theory of cognitive dissonance.
Festinger argued that when people are induced to act in
new ways, even if those new behaviors feel unfamiliar or
wrong at first, their need for consistency will gradually
affect the way they think and feel. They will seek out
reasons to justify their new actions both rationally
and emotionally.
Behavior change affects attitudes most powerfully
when it is supported by empirical evidence and real-life
observation of better results. Direct experience trumps
the old beliefs of an established culture. If that experience is reinforced by a group of people, then it is far
easier to change a culture than most people believe. But
you must focus on changing the behavior rather than
engaging with the culture directly.
In emphasizing behavior, you are looking for those
few actions, conducted again and again, that will lead
to better values (and thus to better results). Make clear
the distinctions among the values you want to develop,
the one-time actions you are changing, and the recurring behaviors you hope to instill. A commitment to
service, for example, is a value. When a retail salesperson expresses that value by helping a customer exchange
a purchase, thats an action. When the salesperson does
this routinely, knowing that over time it will help solidify customer loyalty to the store, its a behavior.

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shared values. Aetna had been in business since 1819

(in its current form, since 1853), and its company statements about such values as honesty, caring, truthfulness, and teamwork were long established. But they
werent congruent; he uncovered at least a dozen different formal values statements that various leaders had
put forth over the past decades. So Rowe set up dialogues in Aetna offices around the U.S., on the subject
Why arent our shared values practiced in interactions
with our customers? People discussed this question in
groups of about 30, defining specific ways in which they
(and others) might act differently.
After 20 or more such events, Rowe worked with
several of his colleagues to write up a new statement
of values and behaviors. He also set up what came to
be called purpose-driven councils cross-functional
groups designed to find ways to make critical changes
happen. Rowe and his team designed these councils
with three distinctive characteristics. First, they assigned each an explicit purpose, such as organizational
effectiveness (developing a plan for restructuring the
company) or strategic direction (developing a plan for
prioritizing customer opportunities). Second, they enlisted members who were well respected by their colleagues and who had many informal connections.
Third, they gave the councils decision authority over
the areas they were investigating. The strategy councils
efforts eventually led Aetna to spin off its financial-services businesses and discontinue some unprofitable offerings, such as health insurance in certain countries.
The new formal practices were congruent with the
values in the culture. For example, the executives laid
off about 15,000 people, or almost one-third of the
workforce. But they did it in a relatively transparent,

compassionate way, with a clear rationale for those chosen to leave, and with pay increases and stock options
(along with an increased work week) for those who remained. Rather than worrying that their jobs might be
next, the remaining staff at Aetna now had a culture
that they had helped define, in which they felt more a
part of the growth direction.
Rowe and Williams also commissioned a crossorganizational effort to build motivational capability
among the most respected frontline supervisors in the
company. These master motivators were respected by
their peers; they connected widely and virally in ways
that energized many of the changes.

Repeated behaviors have

cultural impact because they are contagious.
People unconsciously imitate
what they see others do.

In moving people to change behaviors, you will

need to rely on both rational arguments and emotional
appeal. On the rational side, you need to make a case
for change: Heres why this particular behavior is needed. Help people recognize, for example, how the new
behaviors will support the firms business strategy, will
improve customer retention rates, or will be received by
Wall Street analysts.
But emotional factors will undoubtedly matter
even more. Compassion, fairness, and environmental
responsibility are very convincing motivators. So are
relief from anxiety and the opportunity to work more
congenially with other people. Many employees will
likely be concerned about how the changes will affect
their peers, their own ability to take pride in their work,
their worklife balance, and their familys and communitys reactions, as well as the firms reputation. These
issues must be addressed at a gut level, to ensure that acceptance of the change will be genuine, enthusiastic,
and widespread.
Understanding without acceptance and commitment will not suffice. Nor will acceptance and commitment suffice without discipline, alignment, and the
right capabilities. The rational and emotional elements
need to align to yield sustainable change.
Pragmatic Practices

Numerous principles for changing culture through behavior have become evident through ongoing practice.
Start pragmatically. Dont try to change everything at once. Focus on a few critical behaviors that
resonate with your current culture, but that will raise
your organizations performance. Explicitly identify
the target group the employees whose behavior needs

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Similarly, frugality in government is a value. When a

prime minister flies on a commercial airline once (as
U.K. leader David Cameron did to the U.S. in July
2010, shortly after his election), thats an action. When
the prime minister does this consistently, as Singapore
leader Lee Hsien Loong does, thats a behavior and it
is likely to have much more cultural impact.
Thus, if you are seeking more accountability, identify the types of ongoing behavior that embody that
value. You might have to be specific: I expect you to
read, record, and respond to every customer complaint
and I will reward or penalize you accordingly.
These new behaviors can be startlingly simple. Years
ago, Shell Oil Company (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/
Shell PLC) had a reliability problem in the global refinery system. It was traced back to the safety and quality
control processes, which were designed at the central
office but not followed consistently at the refineries.
Instead of launching a broad accountability initiative,
a peer group of managers convinced the executive leaders to institute one new behavior. Before initiating any
new process, central office managers had to ask local
people how they could best introduce it. That simple
behavior change, conducted by just a handful of corporate executives, ensured consistent implementation of
the new process.
Repeated behaviors have cultural impact because
they are contagious. People unconsciously imitate what
they see others do. This is particularly true among respected colleagues; mutual respect is a powerful source
of influence. Even small changes in behavior, if they
are picked up by more than one individual, can ripple
through an organization as others see their value and
begin to act accordingly.

 Reinforce the new behaviors through formal and

informal means. Provide formal metrics, incentives, and

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process guidance that lead people to practice these new

behaviors again and again, until they experience their
value. For example, set up appraisals, salary reviews,
and training to reinforce and reward the new behaviors
you seek. At the same time, develop informal connections that foster the responsiveness and emotional commitment needed to deal with the unexpected. When
theres a challenging situation, like Shells reliability
issue, cultivate support networks of people who can assess it and put in place actions not prescribed by process
and procedure.
Seek out role models for the new behavior. Start
with the most effective practitioners, the people who
distinguish themselves by the way they act. We often
call these individuals pride builders because their example helps instill pride about the behavior change. They
can also help you find ways to get others to adopt the
same behavior. This work is sometimes known as looking for positive deviance.
Several years ago, Bell Canada a 35,000-employee telecommunications company owned by BCE
Inc. started with a dozen such pride builders. They
rapidly became exemplars for others, and they helped
explain to the executives why people did not always
adhere to the critical behaviors. The CEO then asked
the group to help develop at least 1,000 more exemplars by the end of the year. Each member of the first
group identified 10 or more other pride builders, and
the group took off exponentially. With several more iterations, this effort directly touched more than 15,000
employees more than a third of the entire workforce
by the end of the year.
Enlist your current cultural carriers. These are
the people who are well positioned to transmit behaviors
to others, and who can be developed to spread the positive elements of the existing culture. In the early 2000s,
Reliant Energy recognized the value of cultural carriers
during an operational performance improvement program. After defining a small set of behaviors for collab-

orative work across functional silos, Reliant identified

the people who had to act differently in order for the
new behavior to take hold. Then, through a combination of training, incentives, and peer-to-peer reinforcement, Reliant induced these individuals to change first.
This effort enabled the company to capture $600 million of value during the first nine months.
Any leader can do something similar, but take care
that the effort is simple, clearly focused, collectively reinforcing, and not threatening to those who arent included. Suppose that youre the head of strategy, frustrated at the way such new directives are executed. Have
the top leadership identify 10 people who are linchpins
of strategy execution whose participation is critical
to any serious strategic effort. Bring them together to
talk about the barriers they face when trying to execute
new ideas, and the ways that they might overcome those
boundaries. Look for places where resources can be organized differently, and develop an agenda accordingly.
Use the culture you already have. Take pains to stay
within the most essential tenets of the existing culture.
Make sure you understand clearly the reasons that current practices exist before you try to change them. In
the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010,
many oil companies are being forced to change their
safety and environmental practices. It can be surprisingly difficult to do so, because the existing performance
contracts include strict requirements about timing
and deadlines. The only way around this is to explicitly rethink those restrictions, taking on the difficult
challenge of designing new behaviors that can improve
safety while maintaining an acceptable pace. What is
required here is an integration of process discipline and
individual initiative and the courage to step up when
the unexpected occurs.
Model what matters most. Be a visible and consistent role model of the behavior change you want to
see in others. When he was interim CEO of General
Motors leading the companys remarkable transformation after the U.S. government bailout in 2009, Fritz
Henderson repeatedly admonished his staff to be individually and collectively accountable, which meant
focusing only on activities directly linked to business

strategy+business issue 62

to change and bring the necessary changes to life by

demonstrating them.

results. Hendersons remarks didnt have much impact

until he provided examples. He posted e-mails with typos, showing that quick decisions were more important
than painstaking attention to appearances. There were
also more dramatic examples, like making nearly every
major decision on the spot himself rather than waiting
for consensus.
Perhaps the most telling moment came when Henderson was handed a 300-page binder of backup information as part of his preparation for testifying before
the U.S. Congress. The next day, he asked his chief
of staff to tell the research team to stop. It must have
taken 20 people a month to produce this report. And
Ill never use it. Id rather have incomplete information
[than this unnecessary work].
Clarify the specific implications of the new behavior.

Culture Consciousness in Times of Change

Every corporate culture has behaviors that will help you

enable the change you want and others that will hinder
it. As you become skilled at picking the enablers out and
developing them, this kind of adaptability will become
part of your own distinctive corporate identity. This is
critical to the lasting success of peak-performing enterprises. Your culture can thus become a major factor
supporting your strategy. Its overall strengths are one of
your companys intangible assets, and it should be fac-

Reprint No. 11108

Resources
Joel Cooper, Cognitive Dissonance: Fifty Years of a Classic Theory (Sage,
2007): Solid introduction to Leon Festingers grand idea and its relevance to todays conflicts.
Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan, Leading Outside the Lines: How to Mobilize the (In)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better
Results (Jossey-Bass, 2010): Integrating formal and informal measures
(with more on the Aetna story).
Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan, Leading Outside the Lines, s+b, Summer 2010, www.strategy-business.com/article/10204: How StockPot, a
division of Campbells Soup, used metrics to shift cultural behavior.
Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin, The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the Worlds Toughest Problems (Harvard Business Press, 2010): Changing behavior by championing
people who get better results.
Edgar H. Schein, The Corporate Culture Survival Guide (rev. ed., JosseyBass, 2009): Realistic, masterful handbook for diagnosing your culture
and raising its tacit assumptions to the surface.
The Katzenbach Center website, www.booz.com/global/home/what_
we_think/katzenbach_center: Ongoing source of research and insight on
culture change theories and methods.
For more thought leadership on this topic, visit s+bs website at:
www.strategy-business.com/organizations_and_people.

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The new CEO of a large financial-services institution

announced one of his highest priorities: a new approach
to managing the trade-offs on uncertain deals, which he
called taking measured risks. Although he talked about
it constantly, and employees understood its importance,
many people still needed more guidance. I work in legal, someone might say, and Im not sure what this
means to me. Am I supposed to be taking more risks,
or am I supposed to help others by pulling on the reins
when they go too far? The answer might well have
been a bit of both, but it needed to be spelled out.
Similarly, in the midst of any cost reduction exercise, people need guidance about new behaviors. How
will they monitor expenses from now on? How should
they call attention to wasteful activities that they do
not control? If a utility shifts from being a governmentowned enterprise to a privately held company, the culture may need to become more focused on customer
service. What kinds of things could people do differently? What kinds of regular reminders can be put in place
to reinforce key behaviors? Which aspects of subscriber
outreach matter most?

tored into where you decide to compete, how you intend

to win, and what operating model you work within.
As you continue to work with and within your culture, you will find it continually changes, keeping pace
with the changes in the marketplace. Your operating
model and the execution of your strategy will change
accordingly. To be sure, deeply embedded cultures
change slowly far more slowly than the business environment. But some cultural elements can adapt more
rapidly, particularly if you encourage your pride builders, culture carriers, and leading-edge thinkers to experiment with new ideas, such as digital media or new
forms of customer service, and spread their experience
through the networks that you have fostered.
Whatever happens in the outside world, however,
keep your internal focus on the few critical behaviors
that matter most those that determine your strategic
and operating performance. Find ways to measure both
the behavior change itself, and the results it produces.
Resist the temptation to attempt changes in the
behaviors, attitudes, and values of the system all at once.
Remember, it is much easier to act your way into new
thinking than to think your way into new actions. +

10

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