A leader and their company are in the same boat. During a store visit, the leader notices safety issues and deviations from corporate policy. "Fixing these problems is in the employees’ best interest, so they’ll do it," the leader thinks. "I’ll tell them to do it, and it will get done." The employees nod in agreement and promise to act.

A month later, the leader returns to the store. Nothing has changed. Frustration. The leader calls in top consultants to solve the problem. Armed with SWOT analyses, posters, and data, they manage to fix the safety issues and enforce corporate policy. "This is in the employees' best interest, so it will stick," think Debbie and Patrick from Eighties Consulting.

A month later, the same problems have resurfaced. Exhaustion, confusion: the employees seem oddly resistant to a change that is supposedly in their favor. Why do organizations that we transform so often revert to their original form?

It's because we, as humans, don’t always do what we’re told. We do what makes sense to us.

We can follow a to-do list, check boxes, and fulfill the roles we've been assigned. But no deep organizational transformation has ever succeeded by being reduced to a list of tasks. Because the moment the list ends, an unexpected challenge arises, or foresight is required, the action becomes impossible.

Our leader is doomed to frustration if they believe that simply telling people what to do will yield lasting results. At best, the results will last as long as they are physically present. Once they leave, a void is created. That void is quickly filled by the existing culture, and the company will snap right back to its original state.

Our consultants did good work. However, their detached approach bypasses authority relationships, reinforces silos, and imposes a new external order on the organization. All of this weakens the business by draining its capacity to act, infantilizes management by stripping away its ability to understand, and makes the organization dependent on its consulting lifeline (M. Mazzucato & R. Collington, 2023).

Yet, organizations still need to transform to adapt to shifting markets, dwindling resources, new attitudes toward work, evolving regulatory frameworks... and the increasing challenge of creating value. Restructuring after restructuring, training programs follow one another, investments are carefully calculated, but the magic never happens.

What truly drives human action, efficiently and sustainably, without needing constant oversight every five minutes?

What guides human action is a matrix of meaning, a vector that carries or pulls us, one that doesn’t explicitly tell us what to do, but from which we still understand how to act, what is expected of us, and the attitude we should adopt. This matrix is culture.

Culture is a source, a seed, a coiled strand of DNA that holds the germ of behaviors, permissions, expected, unacceptable, or desired reactions. In germ: it’s not a defined list! An anthropologist might call it an "ontological incubator" (P. Descola, 2014): it shapes and nurtures individuals.

Culture provides answers to questions that may seem sophisticated but are the foundation of effective leadership: How does the network of relationships I’m part of function? Does it suit me? What role do I play within it?

But culture also provides solid answers to the questions that keep leaders up at night: How can we continuously adapt to unpredictable changes without compromising on our goals? How do we think long-term strategy while being accountable to shareholders? How do we innovate? How do we align our business model with a world of limited resources? How do we reduce talent attrition and foster team engagement? How do we make the right decisions quickly, without having all the necessary information?

Culture is the answer to all questions that engage the organization at a systemic level.

When an organization’s culture is integrated into a transformation process, it ensures cohesion across the entire organization and a unified, consistent response to unforeseen situations. This marks a shift from a mechanistic, Taylorist view of organizations to a more systemic approach. As H.A. Simon stated in 1962, "In an organized system, the whole is not simply the sum of the parts, but the result of the parts and their interactions."

There is a temptation to control and shape this matrix. Transforming an organization’s culture is an ambitious goal. However, culture is not a tangible business asset (like processes or practices) that we can alter from the outside. It shapes us as much as we shape it (M. Crozier & E. Friedberg, 1977). To influence culture, we must first equip ourselves to understand it and accept our role within its functioning. A measured, precise approach—like acupuncture—can tweak a strand of the organizational DNA, leading to new behaviors and norms as it unfolds. At this point, culture "works" for us: this is transformation through culture.

Culture is the matrix that guides human action within an organization. While it cannot be commanded to change, change can be seeded by working within the culture—provided it accepts us and recognizes our legitimacy. Ultimately, it’s not culture that transforms an organization, but the people within it, once they understand, through the culture, the direction the organization must take—and adopt that direction as their own.