Changing your company's culture is hard

"Culture change is a big topic-and a big consulting business. When I Googled "culture change consulting business," three of top five (non-sponsored) responses were Bain, BCG, and McKinsey (in that order). Because changing culture is a prominent issue for executives-and often a very frustrating one-I decided to tackle it in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) called Culture Change Strategy: Three Rules for Making Change Happen. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here."

"Bain's was aspirational: "Culture is behavior at scale. Companies that create a winning culture are five times more likely to be top performers . . . Get it right and you not only boost total shareholder return and EBIT growth by up to 500%, and revenue by a factor of 10, but create an advantage that's hard for competitors to copy.""

"BCG's was interesting. It provided three success stories, the two examples for which the singular success metric was cost reduction/cost savings ($500M and $283M, respectively)-clearly BCG's focus is culture change for cost cutting. (The third case was weird, celebrating a "147% rise in cost earnings per share." You would think that a $10 billion professional service firm would at least spellcheck the large-font bolded highlights on the landing page. But maybe there is a new non-GAAP measure called "cost earnings per share.") In any event, its take on "desired culture" is: "We help create a high-performance culture . . . by articulating the unique set of cultural traits that support business strategy, activating them through leader and organization-wide practices, and embedding the culture and change in organization structures, processes, and policies.""

Culture change constitutes a major consulting market and a prominent executive concern, with Bain, BCG, and McKinsey appearing among top providers. Bain frames culture as behavior at scale and links winning cultures to substantially higher shareholder returns, EBIT growth, and revenue. BCG emphasizes measurable cost savings in client stories and focuses culture change on enabling cost reduction and high-performance outcomes. BCG describes creating a high-performance culture by articulating specific cultural traits, activating them through leadership and organization-wide practices, and embedding changes in structures, processes, and policies. Large dollar savings and unconventional metrics appear in some case highlights.

Read at Fast Company