Practice Area 03
Large organisations move at the pace their culture permits, not the pace the plan specifies. We design and deliver change that accounts for that reality — accelerating adoption where it is possible and absorbing strain where it is not.
Change programmes are typically designed as sequences of activity: communicate, train, launch, monitor. The design assumes that once people understand what is required, they will do it. In our experience that assumption holds for perhaps a third of any workforce.
The remainder respond to something else — what their immediate manager actually rewards, what they observe senior leaders doing rather than saying, and whether the new way of working is compatible with the targets they are still being measured on. Where those signals contradict the change narrative, the narrative loses. Predictably.
We work on those signals directly. That means engaging middle management as the primary channel rather than an audience, resolving contradictions between the change and the incentive system, and being honest with leadership about the behaviours they will need to change first.
A transformation is technically on track but adoption on the ground is not.
Stated values and observed behaviour have visibly diverged.
Middle management is passively absorbing change rather than driving it.
A merger or restructure has left two cultures operating in parallel.
Engagements run six to twenty-four months depending on scale. Culture work compressed into a quarter produces a campaign, not a change.
We establish how the organisation currently behaves and why — through interviews, observation, and analysis of the incentive and reporting systems that shape behaviour. We identify where the intended change will meet genuine resistance and where it will simply meet inertia.
We design the change approach: sequencing, sponsorship structure, the change network, and the specific behavioural shifts being asked for at each level. Vague aspiration is converted into observable behaviour or it is dropped.
Before anything is asked of the organisation, we work with the executive team on the behaviours they must model and the contradictions they must resolve. This phase is frequently uncomfortable and is not optional.
Line managers are equipped to lead the change with their own teams — not briefed on it. This is the layer where most change programmes are lost, and it is where we concentrate effort.
Systems, incentives, and performance management are realigned so that the new way of working is the path of least resistance. We track adoption rather than activity, and we report honestly where it is not happening.
Selected according to the scale of change and the distance between current and intended culture.
An evidence-based account of how the organisation actually behaves, what drives that behaviour, and where it helps or obstructs the strategy.
Sequencing, sponsorship, governance, and the behavioural specification for each level of the organisation.
Identification of the individuals and groups whose position will determine the outcome, and a deliberate plan for each.
Message, channel, cadence, and messenger — designed so that the change is heard from line managers rather than only from corporate communications.
Practical capability building for the layer that translates strategy into daily work, including handling resistance and difficult conversations.
Structured work to resolve the operating and behavioural differences that persist long after legal completion.
Culture work requires the executive team to accept that their own behaviour is part of the subject matter. Where that is not accepted, we would be taking a fee to produce a campaign.
Specific behaviours can be changed reliably, and enough of them shifting constitutes what people mean by culture change. Broad aspirations — 'become more innovative' — cannot be changed directly. We work at the level of observable behaviour and the systems that reinforce it.
Leadership behaviour shifts within the first quarter if the executive team commits. Middle management engagement shows in six to nine months. Durable, system-level change takes eighteen months and upward. Anyone promising faster is selling communications.
Then that is the finding and we will say it, to the chair if necessary. We have declined engagements where the sponsor wanted culture work everywhere except the top team.
It usually complements one. Internal teams have context and relationships we cannot replicate; they often lack the standing to say uncomfortable things to the executive committee. We provide that, and we build the internal team's capability so it is not needed permanently.
We design the architecture — message, messenger, cadence — and work with your communications function on execution. We do not replace it.
Against the specific behaviours defined at the outset, using a mix of observation, targeted pulse measurement, and system evidence such as decision speed, escalation patterns, and internal mobility. Engagement scores alone are a weak proxy.
If a transformation is running and adoption is not following, the diagnosis is usually available quickly. Start with a conversation about what is actually happening on the ground.