DEAR EXECUTIVES, We have two requests for you. First, stop relegating your cultural change programs to HR. Start adding them to the top of your leadership agenda. And second, stop blaming others if your attempts at culture change don’t stick. Start shifting your focus to how you and your colleagues behave.
In our work with leading organizations, we are seeing a growing divide between the rhetoric of leaders and their actual behaviour. In their words, they are ‘eager to abandon the conventional, command-and-control model.’ They want to change the narrative. They use popular words like purpose, psychological safety, empowerment and tolerance for failure. But in practice, these buzzwords are frequently not reflected in their daily actions and attitudes.
Recently, an executive of a large utility company praised the importance of psychological safety during a half-day workshop we organized with his team. A couple of hours later, he was telling his team what needed to be done, leaving no room
