Creating Sustainable Cultural Evolution

Organisations worldwide increasingly believe that culture plays an important role in achieving growth and transformation goals. According to the Katzenbach Center’s Global Culture Survey, almost all (96 per cent) of Australian business leaders agree that cultural change will be required to remain competitive or create growth in the next three to five years. 

While most organisations report some shift in culture in the past five years, cultural evolution is often not given the internal resourcing required for success. It remains amongst the most significant challenges organisations face. 

To explore the issues faced by Australian organisations embarking on cultural evolution, we follow the journey of fictional organisation Aus. Corp. This business was created from a composite of Australian respondents to the Global Culture survey in combination with our experience observing organisations and helping them manage cultural evolution. 

Using Aus. Corp. as an example, this paper outlines our five-step approach to overcoming common challenges in evolving culture and ensuring the ongoing success of your cultural agenda. These steps build on the principles and methodology developed by the Katzenbach Center, Strategy&’s global R&D and innovation engine for culture and teaming, and are explained in detail in our recently published book The Critical Few.