change management plan Articles and Blog Posts

Change Culture by NOT Changing Culture

Admin Account — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:30:20 +0000

I was catching up on quite a bit of periodical reading recently. For me, this typically includes a wide range of sources ranging from HBR, CIO Magazine, Chronicles of Higher Education, Forbes, Fortune along with other interesting articles that pop up on LinkedIn.

I was surprised how there seems to be an abundance of articles about culture. Whether it was organizational or corporate culture, changing culture, assessing your culture – I could barely get through two or three articles before another culture-related article came up.

Now, I wish I could say that I am an expert in culture. I’m not. I am, however, an aficionado of culture. I love learning about an organization, usually about a prospective client, and getting the feeling that something really special is going on. Something intangible that seems to drive every person in the room forward. Maybe it is the buzz of a fast-growing startup or the energy around some recent transformation or breakthrough. But there is something in the air at these organizations, and it is more substantive than a “blinged out” office space or a cool logo.

The energy that is so hard to capture and define is similar to that you may experience when watching (or participating on) a sports team that surprises its fans with a come from behind win, especially, if it were one of your favorite underdog teams (Go Cubs!). Somehow, the teams have found a magical formula and pull off a victory when you least expect it.

Building on this, there are two scenarios that I am particularly intrigued by:

A team that goes from “worst to first” in just one short year, or
The team that is seemingly always at the top.

We all know that competition, both in and outside of the “business world” is hard. Market forces and economic cycles require more than just a change in plans and tactics. They require the DNA of an organization to change while balancing so many characteristics that will enable the organization to thrive during these volatile and competitive times.

So how do these “winning” organizations defy the odds?

As I was preparing to write this, I scoured quite a few sources of information and insight that I’ll share below to save you time. But, to get started, I will highlight the top factors that jumped out to me, pertaining to developing a winning culture. These may benefit you if you are looking to make a rapid turnaround or stay on top:

“But this time, without ever describing their efforts as ‘cultural change,’ top management began with a few interventions. These interventions led to small but significant behavioral changes that, in turn, revitalized Aetna’s culture while preserving and championing its strengths. And this point: Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior.“
Jon Katzenbach – Culture Change that Sticks

Often, we may hear about some initiative, originating out of a certain department and eyes roll and skepticism builds. However, the pragmatic focus on a few, small, but critical items that make a difference can begin to create momentum upon which larger change can be built on. Katzenbach’s perspective validates that we don’t need to take a “big bang” approach to culture change. In fact, perhaps “less” is “more”.

Know that valid self-analysis is crucial for improvement.
John Wooden – 8 Rules for Success

Few organizations really know, beyond, their financial performance, what their true operating performance or customer experience is like. Those that embed this self-analysis into their culture are rare and should be commended for investing in this area.

Critical “self-analysis” does not require bench-marking and can be very basic in nature. But starting with a solid baseline that defines, accurately and honestly, where the organization is – where it is thriving and where it is struggling – will serve as a natural and great platform to begin your improvement roadmap.

Turn the mundane into the sacred.
Coach Phil Jackson – 11 Principle’s for Mindful Leadership

At the risk of bringing culture “back to the basics”, think about some of the basic tasks we do all of the time:

Have a meeting
Serve customers
Have “everyday interactions” with employees
Transact business with vendors.

If these four items were primary inputs that one would use to define your organization’s culture, how would it be measured? Considering using these four areas within your span of responsibility to reinvent culture so that your organization becomes the organization you are proud of. Who knows – maybe it will rub off on other areas.

“Success is not all about talent. It’s about dependability, consistency, being coach-able and understanding what you need to do to improve.”
Bill Belichick, of the perennial favorite New England Patriots

When I get a chance to work with different organizations, I find it relatively easy to get a sense of how dependable, consistent and coachable an organization is, simply based on the senior leadership I interact with. If these three are absent, as you can predict, changing culture won’t happen. Change won’t happen. Great performance may happen, but likely only for a short term.

Think about your organization’s dependability, consistency and coach-ability and that will tell you a lot about the culture and readiness for change.

Hopefully, this article resonated with you. Feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues. And for more like this, check out our other articles here.

Lastly, if your organization happens to have any potential project needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here.

References:

The post Change Culture by NOT Changing Culture appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Change Culture by NOT Changing Culture

Admin Account — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 23:21:54 +0000

Building on this, there are two scenarios that I am particularly intrigued by:

A team that goes from “worst to first” in just one short year, or
The team that is seemingly always at the top.

So how do these “winning” organizations defy the odds?

“But this time, without ever describing their efforts as ‘cultural change,’ top management began with a few interventions. These interventions led to small but significant behavioral changes that, in turn, revitalized Aetna’s culture while preserving and championing its strengths. And this point: Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior.“
Jon Katzenbach – Culture Change that Sticks

Know that valid self-analysis is crucial for improvement.
John Wooden – 8 Rules for Success

Turn the mundane into the sacred.
Coach Phil Jackson – 11 Principle’s for Mindful Leadership

At the risk of bringing culture “back to the basics”, think about some of the basic tasks we do all of the time:

Have a meeting
Serve customers
Have “everyday interactions” with employees
Transact business with vendors.

“Success is not all about talent. It’s about dependability, consistency, being coach-able and understanding what you need to do to improve.”
Bill Belichick, of the perennial favorite New England Patriots

Think about your organization’s dependability, consistency and coach-ability and that will tell you a lot about the culture and readiness for change.

Hopefully, this article resonated with you. Feel free to pass this on to friends and colleagues. And for more like this, check out our other articles here.

Lastly, if your organization happens to have any potential project needs, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us here.

References:

The post Change Culture by NOT Changing Culture appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

Pursuing Digital Transformation Success – Should we focus on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) or More?

Dan Feely — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:48:37 +0000

Digital transformation success demands that many critical factors align so the people, process,
and technology dimensions work in harmony (and on time). Read below and learn how to
manage important digital transformation projects.

The Situation

A few weeks ago, one of our clients, a prestigious private university in the south, and I were
having a planning meeting for an extremely high stakes CRM-related program. This program will
include a major CRM implementation, while refining processes and roles to pursue higher levels
of constituent engagement and user productivity.
Like other similar meetings, during the planning meeting, we covered many topics. I won’t get
into all of those, but a few of these included these key topics such as:

What is our definition of success for this program? What is “done” as it relates to the
project (note, in our next post, we’ll dive deeper into tips to help define “done”?
Are we merely replacing an aging system or trying to transform how we work and the
result we get?
To realize the benefits that we identified in the business case, what functional areas do
we see as the highest priority areas of the systems? As an example, how can we
improve the donor experience quickly, without waiting for 18 months and all of the new
functionality to be delivered?
When do we need to implement the system by and what dates do we need to keep in
mind when we create this plan? In other words, how can we effectively use milestones,
semester and summer term time windows to our advantage?

As we were talking and planning, it reminded me of an acronym we would use in supply chain to
ensure an order was complete. It has relevance in complex CRM and ERP implementations as
well. The term is OTIFNE (pronounced O-Tiffany) and means:

OT – Ontime
IF – In Full (or in this case, full scope)
NE – No Errors (or high quality).

So, let’s break this down a bit.

The Challenge

First, let’s talk about time, specifically deadlines. This is a funny concept with implementing technology, and I’ve seen this from seemingly all angles and now, we serve our clients as “client-focused” program managers. Some folks (ok, a LOT) want to lock in a date or a “not to exceed” cost, with little attention paid to the scope, or the quality (i.e., how much actual organizational transformation so one can realize the original business case) of the project or program.

What are the long-term effects of doing it this way (aside from cost)?

Imagine if you hired a contractor to build your family a house and your primary goals was having
a house that you can be in by the end of the year. Assuming that the timeframe was tight, and,
like many technology projects, the housebuilding labor market is also tight, then all of the
sudden, the amount of finished square footage of your house may be at risk as well.

Assuming we can add an adequate amount of definition to all of the dimensions mentioned
above, let’s add some clarity on why the deadline is critical. In many cases, our clients are
paying for the old system and the new system. For some large implementations, every
additional month of implementation may cost over $100,000, for a system this is not returning
any value since it is not live yet.

Equally important, let’s define why we need the functionality in the new system that we are
requiring. Let’s anchor that understanding with the same importance as the desired date.

MVP versus MNC

With respect to scope, many institutions strive for the notion of an MVP (minimum viable
product) so the implementation team has a clear picture of the functionality that is expected.
From my experience the MVP is never the minimal threshold; instead, it becomes the definition
of full scope. At TSI, we support the notion of MNC – Most Needed Capabilities. This differs
from MVP in that it focuses on the functionality that users will gain the most value from. In other words, what really drives the business case behind the new system investment, what will get the SMEs excited and make adoption of the new system a reality.

Anything less is simply inadequate and prevents us from moving off the old system and
definitely does not allow us to manifest the business case.

Project Hack

Having been around at least 50 major technology implementations, the #1 reason projects get
off track is due to the inability to make decisions on critical aspects of the project scope, its
approach, priority areas and deciding on the small (but important) aspects of the implementation.
If you/your project simply makes timely and informed decision, you have just increased the
programs chances for success a millionfold.

Key Takeaways

Focus on these three things and you will dramatically increase your chances of having a
successful project AND allow your project to be more transformative than simply a technology
change:

Set your project up to make timely and informed decisions
Resource your project properly and set your focus on transformation
Define “success” in terms of your project’s most necessary capabilities (MNC). Then lock in your date and, without removing important aspects of the scope, or quality/focus on transformation, treat it like it is etched in stone.

By focusing on these principles, you can pave the way for a successful and transformative
project.

Do you have any examples where you have used MVP or something like MNC successfully? What are some ways that you have facilitated faster decision making? Do you have any real-life examples of successful CRM or other implementations that balanced deadlines, scope, and quality? If so, please share.

If you wish to discuss upcoming project needs, please give us a call at 847.705-0960 x202 or email tsi@transforming.com.

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The Top 4 Indicators To Help You Know Whether You Need a “Real” Change Management Plan

Admin Account — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 15:54:57 +0000

According to a study by Boston Consulting Group, 85% of companies have undertaken a transformation during the past decade. Related research found that nearly 75% of those transformations fail.

What Are You Doing to Increase Your Chances for Success?

Constantly changing market conditions and customer demands continually challenge how we do our jobs. With this, the need for agile work environments that can adapt quickly to change continues to grow in importance, yet as noted above, 75% of those transformations fail.

Research shows that businesses that facilitate a thorough organizational change management plan have a much better chance of weathering the storm and succeeding in mass adoption of the change.

In order to thrive in these dynamic times, we need to lead our organizations through change in a proper manner. In this blog, we will discuss what Organizational Change Management is, when to use it, and how to plan for it.

What is Organizational Change Management (OCM)?

Organizational Change Management (defined below) is a concept and an activity that has been around for years. Oddly, it still struggles to gain priority status with many organizational leaders.

When going through a period of change, Leadership can be so focused on the tactical side of going through the change (“turning the wrenches”) that they completely forget about the people who will be turning the wrenches once this change has been implemented.

This oversight is understandable, especially since leadership bandwidth, competing priorities and so many activities can get in the way of managing change. However, the risk of failure becomes greater the more people that are involved and impacted by the project or initiative.

This can lead to poor adoption and execution of the change.

To understand when to develop and execute an Organizational Change Management Plan, let’s first define Organizational Change Management. One definition, by the United States Government Accountability Office has a very solid and comprehensive definition:

Change Management: activities involved in:

(1) defining and instilling new values, attitudes, norms, and behaviors within an organization that support new ways of doing work and overcome resistance to change;

(2) building consensus among customers and stakeholders on specific changes designed to better meet their needs; and

(3) planning, testing, and implementing all aspects of the transition from one organizational structure or business process to another.

So what’s the takeaway? When making change in your organization, the people experiencing the change need to be guided through this transition in a thoughtful and structured manner.

But when should this be done? How does someone quantify or identify, when going through the additional time and effort is necessary to build and execute a Change Management Plan?

The Top 4 Indicators To Help You Know Whether You Need a “Real” Change Management Plan

Here are four conditions to help you recognize when you need a Change Management Plan:

1) More than 20 people (give or take a few) are involved and will need to change what they do for a critical job function.

When working in a small team (under 20 people and, say in a single location), and the change is isolated to only that team or department, it’s easy to call a quick huddle, a meeting, or just lean back and say “hey, we’re going to change this. OK?”

However, when you have more than 20 people, this approach becomes increasingly more difficult because people get tired and experience change fatigue.

In our experience, when you need to involve more than 20 people, or those 20+ people are scattered across a few departments and/or locations, you will need to begin to add some structure to it. For example, let’s say that you are changing how you process product returns, which involves:

- 15 people in customer service,
- 10 people in the warehouse and
- 5 people in credit and billing

This may likely need a light Change Management Plan that maps out the impact to these teams and how you may address the change via training, documented procedures, performance metrics, etc.

Imagine if there are 2x (or more) the number of processes, people, and departments involved. Now you are getting into the need for a structured Change Management Plan with a dedicated person(s) to drive its execution.

2) Multiple departments/work groups are involved in executing the change.

Change that involves more than one department, as a general rule will need a structured Change Management Plan. The implication is that when executing a change across departments or work groups, process and role changes are occurring. This may also impact compensation plans (both individual and group) and, if you are in a regulated industry, it can become even more complicated.

A critical error many organizations make during change is not effectively communicating and educating staff who need to work across department lines how that handoff/transaction will be changing.

This leads to miscommunications, inaccurate or incomplete information, and an endless stream of conflict between groups. With a Change Management Plan that has been developed and executed effectively, teams may actually work better, internally and across departments than before as a result of understanding how they impact other members of the organization who depend on their work.

3) There is “significant change” in terms of how people do their work.

Being somewhat subjective, my measure of “significant” in this context is when a group of people will be changing around 30% of their daily activity (measured by hours spent, e.g., 12 hours in a 40-hour work week are different) by changing their process, learning and using a new system, device or other tool.

Some may argue that this number could be significantly higher or lower. 30% is based upon my experience where people really start having negative reactions if they are told to just do it without proper guidance or communication.

A change of this magnitude is stressful and difficult to do, let alone without support. A Change Management Plan would provide a roadmap to help these people move forward, minimizing the fear of the unknown hindering their progress.

4) Cultural resistance has already been witnessed and felt.

This is the one condition that does not have a number associated with it. Often, project leaders will understand very early on how impactful this change will be. They will be leery of how their organization will accept this change because there is already felt resistance.

This culture of resistance to change is commonly based on the success and adoption (or lack thereof) of past changes, blatant and at times aggressive resistance to change, and other signs that the organization may strongly resist change. Part of a well-developed Change Management Plan is clearly identifying and strategizing for the organization’s readiness for change.

What this means is that depending on the priority level of the project, the project may need to be delayed, or different Organizational Change Management tactics will need to be utilized to move the organization and its people through this change.

Going through change is hard, but it does not need to be overwhelming. Change, by no means, is impossible.

The first step to ensuring that change will be adopted with the least amount of productivity loss over the shortest amount of time is to understand whether a Change Management Plan needs to be developed and executed.

Final Thoughts

When a change management plan is being executed, resist the temptation to move time and resources that are allocated for change management to finish operational go-live tasks or to simply be forgotten in the rush to complete the project.

Too often I have seen project delays and other project issues push change management off to the side. Often this is due to leaders viewing change management activities as a lower priority.

However, even if change management is pushed to the side, the projects will be completed, on time, and possibly in full, but rarely without errors due to poor adoption of the change.

Those errors will cause additional costs to manage ongoing resistance to change, as well as the time-consuming correction of transactions and data due to people not using the system or processes as intended. If leaders want projects to be delivered in the least disruptive and most cost-effective manner, then OCM needs to be viewed with the same criticality as requiring that all employees have the proper tools and facilities with which to perform their jobs.

Using the conditions above to identify when a change management plan is needed, and executing it as needed without constraints will put your organization in the best possible position to transition through the change as painless as possible.

Want to learn more about how TSI can help your organization through a time of transition? Read more about how TSI approaches OCM by going here or contact us directly at TSI@transforming.com or call us at (847) 705-0960 x 202.

Reading List

Here are a few items we have been reading and using as research for this and other efforts.

Cross-Silo Leadership – Casciaro (et al.) from Harvard discusses four practices that enable effective interface work through horizontal collaboration.

Leaders Focus Too Much on Changing Policies, and Not Enough on Changing Minds – Tony Schwartz (HBR) discusses how businesses overlook the “internal shift” during change.

A Leader’s Guide to “Always-On” Transformation. – Unprecedented disruption is challenging established business models, and is requiring organizations to launch more frequent transformations in response.

Why Doing The Easy Parts Of Your To-Do List First Can Be A Bad Idea – The essence of the article is that most of our greatest learning comes from doing difficult tasks, so choosing easy tasks does not necessarily benefit us.

Leadership Needs to Neutralise Innovation Blockers – And Here’s How – Scott Anthony’s (Top 10 global business thinkers in the prestigious Thinkers50 listing) research shows that the most innovative companies display five key behaviors.

Why Customer-First Companies Ultimately Win – Kyle Tibbits discusses how companies have lost touch with customers.

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How to Create Lasting Cultural Change Within Your Organization

Dan Feely — Thu, 27 May 2021 15:39:02 +0000

For decades, Transforming Solutions Inc. has helped organizations define how their people perform critical work via our process improvement projects. These processes could be in sales and marketing, such as taking an order, or in operations, in terms of how an order gets picked, packed, and shipped. We also have helped in many higher education processes from the student, alumni, and faculty-oriented processes. Since there are hundreds of variations of the process, defining how people perform critical processes is absolutely mission-critical.

A few years ago, I noticed something interesting with our clients who hired TSI to train them on process improvement and organizational change management skills and subsequently lead them in their own process improvement journey. Don’t tell anyone…but their culture actually began to change as a result of what they learned and started to apply in their own organizations.

This post is not about the work that we did. Not at all. It’s about the initiative that these teams took, the space that their leadership gave them, and the progress they made.

I discovered that by starting with more tactical needs like improving operating efficiency without any intentional ‘culture change’ initiative, culture change was happening. Starting with learning new skills, these organizations developed an individual and organizational sense of “self-awareness” and they paid attention to some interesting fundamentals of the process, such as:

Who is currently involved in getting the work done versus who actually needs to be?
What steps are being performed?
Are most of these steps manual or automated?
What do we do that adds little to no value to our organization?
How do our handoffs work?
Where do we fumble?
Where do we thrive?

These are all critical questions around process improvement. However, the culture shift that occurs through the program of process improvement is most notable. Individuals and teams learned useful tools that equipped them to look at their world, and in turn their organization, differently.

When employees are empowered to make a change, this can build momentum within the organization and begin to change its DNA. You move from an organization that is operated, to a degree, in the dark, to one that has cast a spotlight on key opportunities for improvement.

The 4 E’s of the Teams That Get It

Through working with a variety of organizations, it is worth noting that the teams who embrace their new mindset and try to ‘move the needle’ on the culture scale, typically possess a combination of these four characteristics:

Energized – The process improvement pilot team members – some may be subject experts – who stand out simply radiate positivity. They learn with ‘fresh eyes’ and are willing to try, refine, and improve on new skills.
Empowered – This one is mostly the responsibility of senior leadership to allow the team to make changes absent of bureaucracy. In conjunction, the team needs to take that responsibility and do something useful with it. That does not mean that the process team has carte blanch authority, but they need some latitude to initiate change. How frustrating that must be for those in organizations who are given a chance to learn new skills but have no authority to make any changes.
Lack of Ego – Prima Donna ego’s kill culture change. The teams that I see thrive are typically diverse and absent of large egos that kill the culture. Process improvement team member selection is so critical, as they need both Attitude and Aptitude to be successful.
Engaged – This is no different than the person who ‘goes through the motions’ during their workouts and then gets frustrated they aren’t seeing any results; the engaged team, comprised of team members that challenge themselves and each other, is in a class by themselves.

The Quick Fix Mindset: Just Buy New Software

An alternative approach that we have also experienced is an interesting one. And, not surprisingly, it is an approach that we see far too often. The approach looks something like this – a group (a growing corporation, university or non-profit organization) has an aging technology platform and surrounding it, inefficient processes, and some degree of dysfunction in the organization structure. They aim to fix it by buying a new (and expensive) software product. Then, when it comes time to implement the new software product (an ERP, CRM, or other significant new enterprise application) the expectation is that this new shiny piece of software is a lever to transform their culture.

My software implementation friends – I feel your pain 🙂

This is an interesting approach. I’m sure it has worked somewhere along the line, but it is akin to purchasing that shiny new piece of workout equipment, thinking that it is going to turn you into a workout enthusiast.

This is exactly where tools and techniques pertaining to organizational change management collide with the needs and levers for culture change. Just like the workout equipment metaphor once you are clear on “your why” – doing some mental and emotional preparatory work – you will make gains.

How You Can Initiate Culture Change

Does your team or organization have any “bright spots” or isolated examples of wins that we can use to build some culture change momentum on?
What tensions and blind spots does your organization have that prevent it from moving to the culture that will allow it to thrive?
When you think about the key characteristics that are part of your organization’s DNA, consider which ones you want to build on and which you hope to move away from.
How can you illustrate the impact that those organizational ‘toxins’ have on your organization?

If you are a corporate or higher education practitioner (sorry consultant friends), consider attending our upcoming webinar on utilizing process improvement for cultural change within your organization.

Do you have other things that you and your organization consider when looking at characteristics and culture? We would love to hear them! Let us know what has worked or failed within your organization in the comments below.

For other related articles on culture, check out these posts on TSI Insights:

Why Culture Change is so Elusive (and What You Can Do)

Change Culture by Not Changing Culture

How Does a Culture of Change Turn Resistance into Growth?

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Why Culture Change is so Elusive (and What You Can Do)

Dan Feely — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:00:00 +0000

Nearly every executive that I get a chance to have candid discussions with admits that she or he wishes they could simply wave a magic wand and automatically change the culture (or some aspect of it) for at least some part of their organization. Culture is consistently the most elusive dimension of change that – if and when we establish the culture we need – will be a force multiplier. This multiplier accelerates the progress that brings strategy to life, breaks through blockers that thwart organizational change, and ultimately manifests the direction the organization is wanting to go.

In 2019, when writing about culture, I was surprised to learn that there is an abundance of articles about culture. Whether it was organizational or corporate culture, changing culture, assessing your culture, I could barely get through two or three articles before another culture-related article came up.

Today, there is no shortage of pandemic articles -some talking about moving back to working on-site and some talking about a hybrid workplace.

In conjunction with these, I want to take the chance to share a few thoughts about the reinvention of culture during a time when we are reinventing everything else.

How do we Define Culture?

To start off, I was curious how our friends at Merriam-Webster define culture.

Merriam-Webster defines culture as:

a: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group also: the characteristic features of everyday existence (such as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time

b: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization (e.g., a corporate culture focused on the bottom line)

How do we Experience Culture?

When I read these two definitions, I think about how entire cultures or subcultures may emphasize excellence in a certain sport, academic area, music or art. The subject they choose to emphasize is viewed as important throughout that society, becoming expected and celebrated.

I’m also reminded of our clients: some we have worked with that had an amazing culture and others I have worked for (or been exposed to) that have left an impression as they have developed or pursued a differentiated culture.

In the mid-’80s, I played football for Coach Bill Mallory. Coach Mallory came from a legacy of coaches that were referred to as the “Cradle of Coaches”, having a reputation of being successful, with a hard-nosed, no-nonsense style of coaching. Coach Mallory, without question, established a culture for our team. The culture that he, and his coaching staff set, consistently played on the message “you all may not be the most talented, but you will never get beat because you were unprepared enough or not tough enough”. In very old school fashion, we worked out hard, practiced even harder, had very physical scrimmages, watched countless hours of film, and then did it all over again. On the field you didn’t take a play off, played through pain, and did things you didn’t think were possible.

His message was reinforced during every practice, film session, and strength and conditioning workout. That year our team was fortunate to have won our conference championship. We were invited to one of eleven bowl games (unlike the countless number that exists today). As a ‘reward’ for this, we had “two-a-day” live contact practices to prepare for the bowl game, mostly indoor at the basketball stadium. I vividly remember a time when, before we flew to California for our bowl game, we had a ‘light workout’ that involved a three-mile run before taking the bus to the airport. Coach Mallory ran every inch of that with us.

This was our culture. We believed it because we lived it, and it worked. We were prepared, we worked harder than the competition, and we developed a tenacity and resilience that gave us a competitive advantage. That was our brand and it paid off.

After graduation, I accepted an offer and started my career at the largest of the ‘Big Four’ consulting firms. Their culture to clients emphasized privacy and confidentiality as was illustrated by the firm’s logo. But internally, on a day-to-day basis, it was a culture of “work hard and then work some more”. Unfortunately, even though I worked with awesome co-workers, managers, and partners, there was no balance. It did not take long to see really talented individuals leave and well-balanced, intelligent consultants develop a sharp edge that diminished the effectiveness of our team’s performance.

A Culture Defined by Groupon Speed

After starting TSI, we had the opportunity to consult with a company who, at that time, was touted as the fastest growing company in history: Groupon. We, seemingly overnight, needed to select a new ERP system that would be the global ERP, ultimately enabling the company to file an IPO in a very short time frame.

With the senior leaders, TSI collaborated to develop the mantra of ‘Groupon Speed’ and, as related to this project, developed a sense of results-orientation with the notion of good now is better than perfect later. TSI defined Groupon’s forward-looking requirements, a short list of software vendors, and selected a new ERP in a very short timeframe. We talked about this mantra of ‘Groupon Speed’ in nearly every meeting when we felt things were getting bogged down.

Shortly after the previous developments, our talented project team helped implement NetSuite ERP in five countries in six weeks and twenty-six countries in three months. ‘Groupon speed’ was our culture. We talked about it, but more importantly, we lived it and used it as a tool to make decisions, quickly and accurately.

Four Things to Consider

After reflecting on my experiences within multiple groups, I have developed four questions to consider when thinking about culture and culture change within your organization.

At the risk of stating the obvious, culture change cannot simply be lip service. It must come from an authoritative source, and it must be put in practice consistently. Do you have this consistent implementation of culture change within your organization?
The organization must know what ‘price’ it is willing to pay to achieve that culture. In all the examples I shared, there were times when there was a clash of cultures. The new and the old way, or the desired culture and the preference of one or more individuals were not aligned. As your organization evolves its culture, how will you address the conflict that invariably will arise?
Before things get tough (and when going through culture change they ALWAYS do), it is important to be laser focused on the end results that you are striving for. Monitor to the culture and be self-aware in the event you are getting unintended consequences (note one or two of the examples I shared). When things get tough, you will need to decide whether you need to tweak your approach, or double down and stick to the desired, new culture standards you have set. You will need to fight today’s ‘cancel culture’. Realize that to be successful, you must allow the new culture to have time to grow roots and overtake distracting subcultures that seek to drag it down. Does your organization have the ‘stick-to-it-ness’ to withstand resistance?
As the organization grows, you will need to be intentional and hire to the new culture. In conjunction with this, you need to find a new home for individuals who are unwilling to embrace the new culture. As one executive used to say “you are either on are bus, or under it”. Harsh, but the organization lived it. While the passion shouldn’t be aggressive, how will you keep the right people on the new culture bus and allow the wrong people to get off?

Do you have other things that you and your organization consider? We would love to hear them! Let us know what has worked or failed within your organization in the comments below.

For other related articles on culture, check out these posts on TSI Insights:

Change Culture by Not Changing Culture

How Does a Culture of Change Turn Resistance into Growth?

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