Culture Change Is Retail Not Wholesale
Martin's theory of culture change, and why most programmes fail. Wholesale culture change, values launches, posters, town halls, training cascades, addresses everyone at once and changes no one.
Wholesale culture change, values launches, posters, town halls, training cascades, addresses everyone at once and changes no one. Culture does not respond to broadcast.
Retail culture change happens one interaction at a time, through interpersonal mechanisms: what a leader praises in a 1:1, who gets promoted, how conflict is handled in a specific meeting, which behaviour is visibly rewarded and which quietly tolerated.
Three steering mechanisms, of which the interpersonal domain is the linchpin, because culture is simply the residue of repeated interpersonal experience.
Consequences:
- The only reliable lever is Leader Behaviour Is the Signal, changed consistently, in specific recurring moments
- Culture is downstream of Enabling Management Systems: incentive and promotion systems are culture mechanisms
- A values statement that contradicts the bonus plan loses to the bonus plan, every time
Practical unit of change: one interpersonal behaviour, modelled consistently until it becomes expected, not a programme, a practice.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
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