Take a Skills-Based Approach to Culture Change

in its people, changing to address new problems is relatively simple. But when the capabilities have come to reside in processes and values and especially when they have become embedded in culture, change can become extraordinarily difficult.

To build competitive advantage, organizations must help employees to cultivate qualities that have never before been critical—among them authenticity, empathy, self-awareness, constant creativity, an internal sense of purpose, and, perhaps above all, resilience in the face of relentless change.

Use the archetype as a tool for inquiry, not as a tool for advocacy. There is a temptation to assume that your preferred solution, whether you tried it or not, is the “right” solution—and to simply write that solution into the slot. In many cases, top management sees one solution as fundamental, while front-line workers see another,

codify your group intuition. You have created hypotheses about what has happened, and where opportunities for leverage might exist. Before committing yourself to any large-scale actions, run several small, relatively self-contained experiments.

culture can’t be changed by mandating it or formally reorganizing roles and responsibilities. Rather it can only be changed indirectly by altering how individuals work with each other.