In part one of this blog series, we outlined five reasons why culture change is difficult:

1. Culture is diffused throughout an organization.
2. Culture is an intangible asset.
3. Culture change threatens the status quo.
4. Culture change is both fast and slow.
5. Culture change can test the commitment of business leaders.

Given these attributes, it isn’t surprising that culture change can be a major challenge in any organization. However, research in our book, The Secret of Culture Change, shows that business leaders who build stories that break with a firm’s established culture and provide a path to a future culture can overcome these difficulties. Culture-changing stories are authentic to business leaders’ personal values and beliefs, “star” the business leaders, demonstrate a clear break with the cultural past with a path to a cultural future, appeal to both employee heads and hearts, are often theatrical, and empower employees throughout an organization to build their own culture-changing stories. 

The ways that culture-changing stories address, and conquer, the five challenges of culture change are summarized below:

1. Well-formed stories cut across horizontal and vertical boundaries in your company.

Yes, your organizational culture is diffused throughout your organization, but the stories you build—if they have the six attributes identified by our research—will cut a wide swath through your company. They will cut across boundaries between functional areas in your firm and between your different businesses, plants, and locations—your marketing people in one division will share the same stories as your manufacturing people in another division. They will also transcend vertical distinctions in your firm—your top management team will share these stories right along with your hourly workers.

Indeed, it is the wide diffusion of these stories throughout your firm that is the process by which old culture-defining stories are replaced by new culture-defining stories. In this way, building well-formed stories can help unite your entire company around culture change. 

Here is the most amazing thing about this process: If you build authentic stories in which you, the business leader, “star” in, that have all of the other attributes we identified in our research, these stories will spread throughout your organization on their own.

For free!

Like wildfire!

2. Well-formed stories make culture more tangible and visible.

Culture is an intangible asset, but stories your employees share about working in your firm can make your culture more tangible and more visible. Employees may not understand exactly what “think creatively” means in the abstract, but the story of how Post-it notes were developed at 3M exemplifies innovation at this firm. Managers may not understand what “valuing employee teamwork” means in the abstract, but a story of how employees at Southwest Airlines—from hourly baggage handlers to pilots—worked together to get luggage on an airplane takes this abstract idea and makes it real. Salespeople may not understand what “world-class customer service” means in the abstract, but when they hear a story of doing whatever it takes to satisfy a customer at Nordstrom, they get it.

3. Well-formed stories can inspire others to support culture change.

It is absolutely the case that building culture-changing stories can change the status quo in a firm, and those who have succeeded in the old culture may resist efforts to change the new culture. However, if culture change is not about changing an organization’s cultural values for the sake of change, nor about remaking a firm’s culture in the likeness of a business leader, but about aligning your firm’s culture and strategies, then culture change is really not optional. Indeed, it can be existential. Here, you actually have a responsibility to change the status quo.  

Some of your employees may resist culture change, even in the face of heroic efforts by people in your organization. It may be a difficult choice for you, but such employees—especially if they are in visible and influential positions—usually cannot remain with your organization. This can be true even if these people have been among the best performers in the old culture and even if they are your close personal friends.

4. Slow culture change stories can enable fast culture change wins. 

It’s true that some parts of your organization may change their culture fast and others can be very slow, but story building works for both fast and slow culture change. Our research shows that culture change often starts with the business leader in charge—the person who is best positioned to understand the need to implement new strategies and the mismatch between these new strategies and an organization’s current culture. Just announcing the need for a new culture, developing lists of new cultural values, or any other purely top-down approaches are not likely to be successful in this context.

Instead, these business leaders build a story. 

A well-formed story will begin the overall organizational culture change process. This is the slow part of culture change, but this initial story creates space for managers throughout an organization to build their own culture-changing stories. These fast culture change wins enable a business leader to build additional stories—either about these fast wins or completely new stories. Thus, building stories in the slow culture-change process enables building stories in the fast culture change process, and building stories in the fast culture change process can enable building additional stories in the slow process.

5. Building authentic stories makes it difficult for business leaders to back out of their commitments. 

Finally, with each story you build, you send a message to your employees that your commitment to culture change is increasingly irreversible. Depending on the kind of stories you start building, your employees may be somewhat skeptical at first. But as your stories become more authentic, more personal, and more public, your commitment to culture change becomes more credible, despite the challenges that such change necessarily encounters. This also makes it more likely that some of your employees will get off of the sidelines and actually help co-create the culture with you.

Now that you know the secret of creating culture change, we hope you will begin building your own story. Or, if you have already found success, share your story with us!