“I would regard it as a sentence to hell if they gave me some company with a million employees to change the culture.”

That’s what the late Charlie Munger, long-time partner to Warren Buffet, said when asked about culture change.

Munger was being asked to respond to promises by newly appointed CEOs to transform the cultures of their struggling organizations. He went on:

“I think it’s hard to change the culture in a restaurant.  A place that’s already bureaucratic, how do you make it un-bureaucratic?  It’s a very hard problem.”

Very hard, to be sure, but is culture change even possible?

What is Culture?

First, what is this thing called culture that we seem so intent on changing?

I have previously described culture as an invisible fence.

It is an unseen, unspoken boundary separating behaviors that are acceptable in the group from those that are not.

It is not necessary to tell people where the wire is buried or the consequences of crossing it. Those systems came online tens of thousands of years ago as our primate ancestors evolved the means of living in social groups without perpetual violent conflict.

Culture is how humans get along with each other.

It’s a big part of how we survive and accomplish things together. We were hard-wired long ago to know what happens if we step across that invisible line, and we instinctively avoid doing so.

That’s why it is nearly impossible to get people to behave in ways—even positive, obviously beneficial ways—if those behaviors violate existing cultural norms.

Is Culture Change Possible?

Broadly, the answer is obviously yes. We see it happening all the time.

If you have lived enough years to be in the workforce, just ask yourself...

• Has the way people dress changed in your lifetime?
• How about the music they listen to?
• The way people talk, the language they use?
• What’s okay/not okay to say out loud?

The borders of culture’s invisible fence are always shifting as the conditions around us constantly change.

All organisms adapt as best they can to changes in their environment, and for people that means the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors is always moving.

Yes, culture change is not only possible, it is inevitable. But that’s not really the question Charlie Munger was being asked.

The Real Question

The real question is this:

Can leaders really change the culture of their organizations through intentional, top-down efforts?

Philosopher/physicist David Deutsch makes a convincing argument that, with adequate knowledge, anything that does not violate the laws of physics is possible.

Consider nuclear fusion: The laws of physics obviously allow it—we see it every day in that bright yellow ball in the sky. We can even create it ourselves in large, explosive doses and tiny controlled ones.

Yet despite decades of effort, most agree that fusion as a significant source of energy is still many years away. We have not yet acquired the requisite knowledge.

The same is true of culture change. We’re pretty good at both small-scale experiments and completely blowing things up, but predictable success in the all-important middle remains elusive.

Challenging as it might seem, nothing about culture change violates the laws of physics, so if we want to improve our odds of success, we must seek to improve our knowledge.

The Nature of Culture

As we often point out, people and organizations are complex, not merely complicated.

People design complicated systems—Swiss watches, factories, computer chips. Nature designs complex systems—living organisms, ecosystems, weather, social groups.

Culture is exceptionally difficult to manage top-down (i.e., in a manner directed by leaders) because it was not created by people via a top-down design process in the first place.

Culture is not something we design into our groups. It is a property that emerges from them.

Emergent properties are one of the characteristics that distinguish complex systems from those that are merely complicated.

Emergent properties cannot be predicted by looking at the individual pieces of a complex system. Given one individual European starling, it would currently be impossible to predict murmurations, an emergent property of large flocks of starlings.

(I know I’ve used this example before, but it works because it offers a clear image of an emergent property that most everyone has seen. Also, I like birds.)

In a murmuration of a hundred thousand starlings, there is no CEO bird.

Instead, the graceful, mesmerizing patterns of tightly coordinated movement are “made” from the actions of each individual bird and the interactions between them. Likewise, your culture is made from the behavior of your individual people.

Starlings come together, murmurations emerge. Changing the murmuration can only happen by changing the behavior of individual birds.

People come together, culture emerges. Changing culture requires changing the behavior of individual humans.

That’s why it’s so hard. Changing culture by decree or inspirational poster is as ineffective as yelling “turn left!” at a swirling flock of birds. That’s not how it works.

How Can We Be More Effective?

You are now armed with more knowledge about how culture really works, but what can you do with it?

First, start from where you are, and decide where you’re going.

Before even attempting culture change, leaders must first be crystal clear about those two things:

1. Where are you now? What is the current culture? No, really—not what do you wish it were or claim that it is, but what it really is. And how would you know? Presumably there is a gap between those two realities or you wouldn’t be contemplating change. How can you make it visible? What conversations do you need to have, and with whom to find the truth?
2. Where are you going? What do you want your culture to be instead? Can you describe it? Is it real for you? We don’t think culture as much as feel it, so what does it feel like to be in the culture you want to create? What does it feel like to speak up in a meeting, propose something new, admit weakness or failure? Write it down. Force yourself to find the words and create clarity about what you want.

Once you have established that crucial clarity about where you really are and where you would like to go, you can begin to consider ways to nudge the culture in the desired direction.

Adding and Subtracting

Because culture emerges from the individual people in the group, the surest way to create the culture you want is to hire people who already embody it.

This is where small companies and start-ups have an enormous advantage. Ideally, company founders and team builders think about the culture they want to create before they start hiring.

But even if they don’t, shifting the balance toward people who naturally express the desired attitudes and behaviors is far more achievable in a small organization (notice I did not say easy).

Lou Holtz, the last football coach to lead Notre Dame to a national championship way back in 1988, was once asked how he kept motivation levels so high. His response was about as pragmatic as it gets:

“The way you motivate a football team is to eliminate the unmotivated ones.”

That sort of talk tends to make people squeamish, but we kind of know in our guts that he’s right.

Lou Holtz knew that it’s nearly impossible to change a player who, for whatever reason, simply lacks intrinsic motivation.

Unfortunately, the opposite is quite simple. It doesn’t take long at all to destroy motivation. Just tolerate a gifted but toxic superstar for a season or two.

It is far easier to create the culture you want by addition, but sometimes subtraction is critical to success.

All Knowledge Begins With Self-Knowledge

All this leads us to a bit of a paradox:

It is exceptionally difficult for leaders to intentionally change the culture of an organization, especially a very large one, and yet leaders have a disproportionate impact on culture.

Thus, as a leader, you must ask yourself if you, yourself, embody the kind of culture you intend to create.

Although it might not violate the laws of physics, trying to create a culture in your organization that runs counter to your natural expression is pretty close to impossible.

So, yet again, you have to know yourself. Culture change in your organization doesn’t have to be a sentence to hell, but you have to seek knowledge, and you have to be honest.

And while full self-knowledge might remain forever elusive, the closer you get, the more things become not just theoretically possible, but right there, within reach.

Until next time,

Greg