Invisible Influence: Where Culture Truly Changes

The only thing harder than changing a company’s culture is realizing that all the expensive, sweeping initiatives rarely move the needle—and the real transformation happens in the smallest, most overlooked moments.

Story Snapshot

Major consulting firms tout grand, “wholesale” culture change strategies, but most fail to deliver lasting results.
Culture is shaped by subtle, everyday interpersonal interactions more than by policies or process overhauls.
Three “steering mechanisms”—formal, interpersonal, and cultural—interact to reinforce or shift organizational norms.
True change starts with leaders modeling the behaviors they want, not just broadcasting new rules.

Consulting Giants Promise Culture Change—But Deliver What?

Bain, BCG, and McKinsey dominate the culture change consulting landscape, each pitching transformative solutions that sound impressive from afar. Bain claims a winning culture delivers five times better performance, promising explosive shareholder returns and growth. BCG’s case studies trumpet cost savings in the hundreds of millions, focusing almost exclusively on financial metrics—sometimes so narrowly that their language borders on the nonsensical, like “cost earnings per share.” McKinsey, meanwhile, says little about culture, emphasizing skill-building as the path to organizational health. Despite these polished offerings, the recurring focus is on structures, policies, and processes—what can be changed centrally and efficiently. That’s “wholesale” change: big moves, big promises, but often little real impact where it matters most.

Executives crave culture change because they feel its absence in daily frustrations—a lack of initiative, poor collaboration, or chronic cynicism. Yet, when change programs roll out, they tend to reorganize reporting lines, tweak incentive systems, or launch new video messages. These are attempts to change culture by fiat, but like a government’s one-size-fits-all aid program, they miss the complex, local realities that shape how people actually behave.

The “Retail” Reality: Culture Lives in Everyday Interactions

Culture change consultants favor wholesale solutions for their scalability and simplicity. However, lasting culture is built at “retail”—in thousands of daily, face-to-face interactions. This is where the concept of “steering mechanisms” comes in: three interlocking systems that determine whether a company’s culture will budge. Formal mechanisms include the official policies and structures, cultural mechanisms are the shared mental “guidebooks” that tell employees how to interpret actions and what’s acceptable, and interpersonal mechanisms are the patterns of interaction where those guidebooks are written and rewritten.

When a star performer like Kevin publicly berates a subordinate and no one intervenes, the shared mental guidebook becomes “abusive behavior is fine for stars.” If no one challenges the norm, the next generation absorbs it, and the culture ossifies. No memo or new org chart will erase that lesson—culture is learned and reinforced through repeated interpersonal experiences. Strong cultures are consistent in their interpretations; weak cultures have no coherent guidebook, and confusion reigns.

Why Formal Fixes Fail—And Interpersonal Leadership Wins

Attempts to fix culture by reorganizing departments or combining functions often fail because they address only the formal mechanisms. For example, merging marketing and sales under a single leader won’t stop the mutual suspicion if the interpersonal dynamics remain unchanged. Interpersonal mechanisms, not formal structures, are the direct mediators of cultural change. When dysfunctional interactions repeat, the cultural guidebooks become more entrenched, and formal solutions only mask the underlying issues.

Leaders often ask how it’s possible to change interpersonal dynamics in a sprawling organization. The answer is that people watch leaders closely—Kremlin-watching isn’t unique to Moscow. When leaders consistently model the behaviors they want, others quickly mirror them. At Procter & Gamble, CEO AG Lafley’s relentless focus on consumer insights in every meeting did more to shift the culture than any official directive. Managers followed his example, and collaborative norms spread organically. In smaller organizations, simple acts—like greeting the cleaning staff or engaging with frontline employees—can ripple through the hierarchy, changing how everyone interacts.

Retail Change: Three Rules For Real Transformation

Culture change is hard because the systems that keep organizations running are designed to resist deviation. Three rules emerge for those who want to make real change. First, focus on retail, not wholesale—lasting transformation comes from direct, local interactions, not sweeping top-down moves. Second, target the interpersonal domain, where cultural norms are actually formed and reinforced. Third, change begins with leaders altering their own behavior. Declarations and new policies are ignored when leaders don’t embody them; every interaction either reinforces the status quo or seeds a new norm.

In practice, this means relentless attention to small moments: asking the right questions, showing genuine interest in others’ perspectives, and engaging constructively with those who drive the business. When leaders do this, change spreads faster than anyone expects. Teams shift from “fire and forget” to “partner for success,” execution improves, and the culture evolves—not through grand pronouncements, but through thousands of subtle cues. The hardest part of culture change is accepting that the little things, not the big ones, make all the difference.