Organizations often talk about the types of culture they want to see—a candid culture, a collaborative culture, an accountable culture, a customer-centric culture, an agile culture, an inclusive culture, a resilient culture, or a culture with a growth mindset. But they miss that it all can simply boil down to the execution of simple practices that breed high-performance team cultures. Instead of trying to embed new cultures through training and persuasion rhetoric, let's engineer culture change in the simplest way: through changing working practices.
In our research and my experience of over 20 years of coaching executive teams around the world, culture change initiatives attempting to transform mindsets through expensive programs, detailed communications plans, and engaging training tend to fall short of sustained execution.
By leveraging and using the simplest of practices, you can turn what you're hoping for in your culture into an assignment. And when practices are done repeatedly, they change a team's cultural mindset. It's the application of one of my favorite sayings, "You don't think your way to a new way of acting. You act your way to a new way of thinking."
A superfood for cultural change
Driving change from the bottom up, not from the top down, is an idea with historical antecedents in Total Quality Management and Sigma Six in manufacturing, and Agile in software development. Let's take one practical example: Stress testing, which replaces the tired old habit of report outs at meetings.
We have all been in meetings where report outs take the shape of somebody clicking through 20 pages of painful PowerPoints, updating everybody on the state of a project. It lulls people to sleep and drives them to their email and texts while they're waiting for the report out to finish, never really thinking that they are supposed to deeply engage unless, of course, the topic is directly adjacent to something they're working on or threatening their turf.
This practice misses the rich value of having the entire team really consider, candidly weigh in, and elevate the project being reviewed, call out risks or challenges, offer innovations and ideas, and even offer support and help.
But what would happen in that same team meeting if we had a culture of challenge, curiosity, bold innovation, and support? This is what stress testing does—it turns an old, dilapidated habit into a culture change magic wand.
From passive listening to engaged peer feedback
Stress testing develops a mindset that is challenging, curious, innovative, and supportive.
Positioning: Stress testing must be positioned as being in service to the person, not throwing them under the bus. Peer feedback in stress testing is offered and received as data, without the presumption that it must be acted upon. This clear positioning shift reduces the emotional charge often associated with feedback and opens up more honest and productive discussions.
Prepare to be engaged: Everybody knows in advance that they are being asked to shift from their normal passive listening to be responsible for attentive, leaned-in, engaged, and actively listening because they're going to be called on to comment immediately after information has been shared.
The new presentation: The person who used to put together a 20-page report now only puts together a one-page summary in a deliberate and purposeful fashion. It should cover:
- Achievements: What has been achieved so far, with metrics to validate outcomes.
- Struggling: What they're struggling with, revealing vulnerability and humility.
- What's next: Where they're planning to go next.
The team's challenge response: After the presentation, the team moves to small breakout groups of three people. In these groups, they write down challenges, risks, ideas, innovations, and offers of help in a shared document.
The presenter’s reaction—Yes/No/Maybe: The final step is for the initiative owner to reflect and share "yes, no, maybe" responses to the suggestions and ideas with those who participated.
Culture change through structured practices
Today's work environment has changed, calling for teams to adopt many new practices that bring about all aspects of a high-performing culture.
In a world where agility and innovation are crucial, stress testing provides a structured way to harness the collective intelligence of your team and drive breakthrough performance. Such a shift isn't just beneficial—it's essential for long-term success.
The fastest way to achieve sustainable, long-term cultural change is to introduce new simple, validated, and measured practices that are repeated until they become new habits. Stress testing is one of such 37 researched and documented high-return practices that I explore in depth in my forthcoming book, Never Lead Alone.
Teams that embrace new collaborative modes like stress testing and approach cultural change as a team assignment are better positioned to innovate, adapt, and thrive in our rapidly changing world.
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