Choosing Your Partner in Culture Change

If you want to create change, you have to do things different.

Whether it’s about aligning the executive team, making hybrid, digital/AI, Gen-Z, and sustainability work, or responding to a crisis, instigating culture change is not something to take lightly. Most non-specialists aren’t experts in culture change, and they don’t need to be. However, any organization wanting—or needing—to undertake a culture change must have a key partner in the project.

There are three essential criteria in choosing a partner: trust, partnership, and suitability.

Trust

Imagine choosing a professional for a life-changing event, like a surgeon or a lawyer. You want to be absolutely certain of their professional credentials and experience. You want to know they can do what they say they can do and that they will deliver with full attention and reliability. You also want to understand them as people, not just where they vacation, but whether they have the courage to be honest with you about anything significant to the project. You want to know they are genuinely on your side—not because of incentives, but because they care about the outcome as much as you do. It’s the same with your culture change partner. The priority is that you can trust them to be capable and reliable, that they are open and honest about what is relevant, and that they care about the outcome as much as you do.

Partnership

Organizations have many supplier relationships, some more transactional than others. For the company that provides your office supplies, a transactional relationship is fine—you tell them what you want, they supply it. Cultural transformations, however, are “wicked problems,” full of contradictory and evolving requirements that are difficult to recognize at the outset. Effectively enabling a cultural transformation requires a partnership where the client organization is an expert in its people, culture, and priorities, and the provider is an expert in the process and the learning journey that will enable people to eagerly change habits of both behavior and thought.

There will be challenging conversations where organizational priorities conflict with the ideal learning experience. Both parties need to represent their positions skillfully and be creative in navigating toward an effective compromise. When choosing your partner, avoid providers who will simply do what they are told. Seek out partners who will engage in the messy and challenging process of co-creation. Clients, too, must be willing to commit time and energy to the process.

Suitability

No matter how much you trust them, you wouldn’t choose a doctor to fix your car. The same applies to culture change. You want your partner of choice to already be role-modeling the kind of culture you seek to create. Certain cultural traits are common to any organization that can deliver sustained success in a disrupted environment, regardless of what’s causing that disruption. These traits include authentic leadership, trust, psychological safety, emotional regulation, and excellent communication. These characteristics should be highly evident in every interaction.

And finally, a few notes on price.

For all organizations, price is, rightly, a significant consideration. However, it is also a very poor basis for making a choice. Quite simply, it will never be an apples-to-apples comparison. No two providers of cultural change support are the same or propose identical solutions. More significant is the disparity between the cost of the service and the value of the outcome. A transformation may be a costly exercise but the value to the company over a ten-year period might be 100 or even 1,000 times that, compared to the cost of not transforming—or a poor transformation.

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In summary…

• Trust: Ensure your partner is capable, reliable, and genuinely cares about the outcome.
• Partnership: Choose a partner who will engage in co-creation, not just follow instructions.
• Suitability: Select a partner who embodies the cultural traits you seek, such as authentic leadership and psychological safety.
• Price Consideration: Focus on the long-term value of transformation rather than simply the cost.

Holos helps leaders make change easy. How can we help you?

Reach out to us at hello@holoschange.com and let’s have a conversation.