Change the Culture, Change the Game

Change the Culture, Change the Game Plot Summary

Introduction

Imagine walking into an organization where everyone takes full ownership of results, where no one points fingers when challenges arise, and where teams align seamlessly toward common goals. This isn't fantasy—it's what happens when accountability becomes the foundation of organizational culture. Yet for many companies today, accountability remains elusive, often misunderstood as punishment rather than empowerment. The journey to creating a culture of accountability isn't optional in today's complex business environment—it's essential. When properly implemented, accountability produces remarkable transparency, enhanced teamwork, effective communication, thorough execution, and most importantly, game-changing results. Throughout these pages, you'll discover a proven methodology for transforming your organization's culture into one where people at every level embrace their accountability to think and act in ways that achieve extraordinary outcomes. This approach has helped countless organizations across diverse industries accomplish what once seemed impossible: changing their culture to change their game.

Chapter 1: Identify the Results That Drive Your Success

Creating a culture of accountability begins with clearly defining the results you want to achieve. Without this clarity, any effort to change culture lacks direction and purpose. Results guide every aspect of culture change and provide the context for why change is necessary and urgent. When everyone understands and aligns with these key outcomes, the culture naturally begins to shift. The story of Fast Grill, a growing regional fast-food chain, illustrates this principle perfectly. The company planned a massive nationwide expansion and needed to improve its profit margin to fund this growth. When asked about their key result, every executive agreed it was "profit margin." But when pressed for the specific number, the responses varied wildly: "5.5 percent," "3.5 percent," and "7.5 percent." The CEO explained that 3.5% was what they told corporate they could hit, 5.5% was what they thought they would hit, and 7.5% was their stretch goal. This confusion opened the door to poor execution and undermined accountability. The Fast Grill team realized they needed to stop sending mixed messages and start communicating the same clear result to everyone. They committed to ensuring all employees could connect their daily work to achieving a 5.5% profit margin. The transformation was remarkable—even people busing tables understood how their work contributed to the margin goal. When asked about their job, they would respond, "My job is to achieve a 5.5 percent profit margin, and here's how I do it: The faster I clean and set a table, the more people we seat per hour. The more people we seat, the greater our contribution. The greater our contribution, the better our margin." To identify your own key results, focus on outcomes that meet four criteria: Difficulty (requiring more effort than past results), Direction (signaling a significant change for the organization), Deployment (requiring reallocation of resources), and Development (demanding new capabilities). Rate your desired results against these criteria to determine if they truly require a culture change to achieve. Once you've identified your key results, take three essential steps: Define them with absolute clarity, introduce them throughout your organization so everyone understands their importance, and create accountability for achieving them. Remember that people will do what you ask them to do—so be thoughtful about what you ask. When everyone focuses on clear, compelling results, the culture begins to shift in powerful ways.

Chapter 2: Transform Actions to Produce Measurable Outcomes

Changing your culture means getting everyone in your organization acting differently—taking new actions each day that produce your desired results. The most important shift in actions during cultural transition is toward greater accountability. When people internalize the need for change and ask, "What else can I do?" instead of "What else can you do?" or "Who else can I blame?", transformation happens rapidly. Consider how "Judy" and her retail store team at Opthometrics transformed their performance. After missing sales targets and receiving tough feedback, Judy shifted from actions that allowed people to make excuses to actions embodied in the statement "Customers do not walk away without finding something they need." She asked her associates why people left without making purchases and discovered they simply let customers leave after hearing objections like "Just looking," "Too expensive," or "I haven't had an eye exam." Judy refocused the team's actions by asking, "What else could we have done to help those people become our customers?" Her team began taking greater accountability by addressing customer objections proactively—calling doctors' offices to retrieve forgotten prescriptions, arranging immediate eye exams, and even engaging friends who accompanied customers to the store. The result? The fourth quarter exceeded their sales plan. They "found plan in the store" by taking greater accountability for results. To identify the actions your organization needs to change, conduct a "Stop, Start, Continue" analysis. First, list the actions people should stop doing because they hinder results. Then identify actions people should start doing to achieve desired outcomes. Finally, determine which current actions should continue because they contribute to success. This analysis creates clarity about what needs to change. However, be cautious about three classic mistakes leaders often make: prescribing exactly what new actions should look like (which reduces ownership), failing to support early adopters of new behaviors (which slows momentum), and focusing only on actions without addressing underlying beliefs (which limits commitment). Real transformation requires working with both actions and the beliefs that drive them. Remember Winston Churchill's observation: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." By honestly evaluating what works and what doesn't, you create the foundation for meaningful action that produces measurable outcomes. The most powerful approach is to change how people think, which naturally changes how they act.

Chapter 3: Cultivate Beliefs That Generate Right Actions

The beliefs people hold significantly influence what they do every day. If you change how people think about their work, you'll change how they perform it. While many leaders focus exclusively on changing actions, those who accelerate cultural transition expand their focus to include the beliefs that motivate behavior. SSM Health Care in St. Louis provides a compelling example. Their human resources network determined to change its image among customers and team members by shifting from thinking like a traditional support function with a transactional focus to thinking like a business partner with a strategic focus. Once HR professionals adopted this new belief about their role, transformation happened with astonishing speed. They outsourced employee recruitment, created specialties in benefits and compensation, and converted their internal HR professionals into consultants with a single purpose: supporting business partners in achieving key operating results. What began with a shift in one belief culminated in an HR network that delivers unprecedented value to internal clients. Not all beliefs are equal in terms of strength and conviction. Category 1 beliefs are easily changed with new information. Category 2 beliefs are strongly held, based on experience, and resist change. Category 3 beliefs represent foundational values around moral, ethical, and principled behavior. When changing culture, we primarily focus on Category 1 and 2 beliefs that reflect "how we do things around here." To accelerate culture change, identify two types of beliefs: those hindering progress (B1) and those that would help move forward (B2). For example, one client organization identified a problematic B1 belief: "I can't be candid with others because they don't want to hear it." This belief created a lack of candidness that slowed decisions, stopped information flow, and led to disappointing surprises. The corresponding B2 belief they needed to foster was: "I speak up and encourage others to do the same, because open communication leads to better results." To implement this approach effectively, leadership teams create a Cultural Beliefs statement that captures the key B2 beliefs needed throughout the organization. Each belief typically starts with "I" to encourage personal ownership and is written in a way that actualizes the desired culture. At Eastside HealthPlans, a regional health insurance provider, leadership identified Cultural Beliefs like "Own It" (I ask what else I can do to achieve our results), "Act Now!" (I take action with a sense of urgency), and "Reach Out" (I actively collaborate across the organization). Within two years of implementing these Cultural Beliefs, Eastside achieved first place in customer satisfaction among all sister companies for the first time ever. Their success demonstrates that when you effectively identify and implement beliefs that guide actions, you accelerate culture change and create the organizational capability that produces game-changing results.

Chapter 4: Design Experiences That Instill Key Beliefs

Experiences form the foundation of the Results Pyramid and drive accelerated culture change. Every interaction you have with others creates an experience that either fosters or undermines desired beliefs. To successfully change your culture, you must become highly proficient at creating the right experiences that instill the beliefs needed to drive new actions. Amy's Ice Creams, a thirteen-unit chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, illustrates this principle beautifully. Owner Amy Simmons distinguished her shops by delivering an experience with every scoop of ice cream. Employees juggle scoops, toss ice cream balls, dance on freezer tops, and create fun for customers waiting in line. To nurture this creative culture, Amy exposes all prospective employees to the "Amy's experience" before hiring them. Instead of an application form, each candidate receives a plain white paper bag with instructions to "do something with it" and return it in a week. Those who produce something unusual from the bag tend to fit the Amy's environment. This experience reinforces the belief that "things are different here" and has helped Amy's consistently dominate their local market. Creating effective experiences requires understanding four key principles. First, people interpret new experiences through the lens of their current beliefs (selective interpretation). Second, people cling to old beliefs and only reluctantly surrender them (belief bias). Third, people often fail to take accountability for their beliefs, seeing them as logical conclusions based on experience. Fourth, because beliefs resist change, past behavior predicts future behavior. Not all experiences have equal impact. Type 1 experiences communicate a clear, meaningful event leading to immediate insight without requiring interpretation. Type 2 experiences need careful interpretation before people adopt the intended belief. Type 3 experiences don't alter prevailing beliefs because people dismiss them as normal. Type 4 experiences undermine culture by reinforcing unwanted beliefs. To provide experiences that instill desired beliefs, follow four steps. First, plan the experience by identifying which belief you need to reinforce, who your audience is, and what specific experience will reinforce that belief. Second, provide the experience according to your plan. Third, ask for feedback about how people interpreted the experience. Finally, interpret the experience by telling people the belief you want them to adopt, explaining how the experience relates to that belief, and clarifying any confusion. A manufacturing team at Mécaniser, a small appliance manufacturer struggling against innovative competitors, applied this approach to shift their culture. Their new president, Claude Guillaume, recognized that despite some initial progress, the company needed a fundamental culture change to achieve its challenging plan. Claude and his team defined Cultural Beliefs that captured the key beliefs needed to achieve results. Then Claude created new experiences for his management team, including a more consultative decision-making process where he listened more and confronted less. The team also created visible experiences for the organization, such as eating lunch together in the employee cafeteria—something they rarely did before. These simple but powerful experiences began instilling new beliefs in both the management team and the organization. Remember, the most important experience you can provide is modeling the Cultural Beliefs yourself. When you demonstrate these beliefs in your daily work, you signal to everyone that this is how things need to be done. Your personal example not only promotes the desired beliefs but establishes your credibility as a leader of change.

Chapter 5: Master the Tools to Accelerate Cultural Change

Once you understand how to create alignment using the Results Pyramid, you can apply three essential Culture Management Tools that will accelerate your change effort: Focused Feedback, Focused Storytelling, and Focused Recognition. These tools help integrate Cultural Beliefs into your organization's culture and speed it toward desired results. Culture change resembles moving a massive boulder—it's heavy, awkward, hard to grasp, and requires focused energy. It never moves just because everyone agrees it should. Rather, it moves only when everyone gets on the same side and pushes together. Your Cultural Beliefs identify which side of the boulder everyone should push against to create momentum. The Culture Management Tools provide the leverage needed to get the cultural boulder moving and keep it moving. Focused Feedback, the first tool, must center on your Cultural Beliefs and can be both appreciative and constructive. Appreciative feedback reinforces desired thinking and behavior: "Here's where I feel you demonstrate 'Stay Focused'—you do a tremendous job on your developmental visits, getting to the root cause of nondelivery on key results." Constructive feedback offers suggestions for improvement: "Here's where I feel you could demonstrate 'Stay Focused' even more—there are two impending director openings, and I think you need to weigh developing current people against hiring two top-tier directors in the next two weeks." When seeking feedback for yourself, ask "What feedback do you have for me?" rather than "Do you have any feedback?" The first question assumes the person has feedback to give; the second invites a simple "no." When receiving feedback, respond with a simple "thank you" to encourage continued input. Instead of defensively filtering feedback, ask yourself: "Is that a belief I want them to hold?" If not, "What experience do I need to create to change that belief?" Focused Storytelling, the second tool, centers on specific stories that demonstrate Cultural Beliefs. These stories include three parts: beginning ("Here's what 'Live the Brand' looks like to me"), middle (a 45-second story showing the belief in action), and end (addressing the impact on key results and concluding with "That's what 'Live the Brand' looks like to me"). Stories create experiences that clearly depict what demonstrating Cultural Beliefs looks like, accelerating their adoption throughout the organization. Focused Recognition, the third tool, allows anyone to recognize others for demonstrating Cultural Beliefs. Like parents who cheer when a child takes first steps rather than booing when they fall, recognition focuses on progress rather than perfection. Many organizations use recognition cards that identify the Cultural Belief demonstrated, describe the actions reflecting that belief, and connect those actions to key results. When properly implemented, these recognition cards powerfully motivate people to think and act in ways that achieve results. At Opthometrics, these tools created remarkable momentum. Stories no longer simply began shift huddles—they bubbled up spontaneously throughout the day. Recognition spread beyond managers to include associates recognizing lab employees, lab employees recognizing doctors, and everyone recognizing each other. The integration was so complete that leadership for huddles moved from store managers to other team members, with everyone taking accountability for changing the culture. As Winston Churchill observed, "First we shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us." Once you create the culture you need, it perpetuates itself, reinforcing at every turn what's important and how things should be done. That's the power of these Culture Management Tools—they shape your culture to consistently produce the results you desire.

Chapter 6: Develop Leadership Skills for Cultural Transformation

Culture change requires leaders to become proficient in specific skills needed to lead the transition. Without concerted effort at the top of the organization to develop these skills, leaders can slow progress and diminish effectiveness. Three essential leadership skills accelerate cultural transition: the skill to Lead the Change, the skill to Respond to Feedback, and the skill to Be Facilitative. The skill to Lead the Change means taking personal ownership of implementing cultural transition best practices throughout the organization. You cannot delegate this responsibility to Human Resources or anyone else. Leaders must prioritize the change effort at the top of every management agenda and develop proficiency in applying best practices through training, preparation, and coaching. Ken Jones, CEO of Universal's Flexible Materials Division (FMD), exemplified this skill when facing pressure to improve performance or risk closure. Recognizing that FMD's "boss-centered" culture wouldn't enable the transformation needed, Ken decided to create an "employee-centered" culture where everyone engaged in making the plant productive again. He took his management team off-site for two days to align them around a compelling Case for Change: operating as though they had just bought the business themselves. Ken created powerful experiences to communicate seriousness, including moving corporate offices from a showy glass building to the manufacturing plant—the first time in over 100 years that executives would reside permanently on-site. The result? Return on capital jumped from 2% to 12%, saving the division. The skill to Respond to Feedback is crucial because leaders inevitably slip into old behaviors during transition. When you receive feedback that your behavior doesn't align with Cultural Beliefs, use the five-step Methodology for Changing Beliefs: First, identify the belief you need to change ("That's not the belief I want you to hold"). Second, tell them the belief you want them to hold instead. Third, describe the experience you'll create to reinforce that belief ("Here's what I'm going to do"). Fourth, ask for feedback on your planned experience ("Will this be enough?"). Fifth, enroll them in giving feedback on your progress. This methodology not only helps you demonstrate Cultural Beliefs more consistently but also subtly focuses others' attention on their own beliefs and behaviors. When people see leaders reinforcing desired beliefs, they get the message that "I ought to be doing that too" and begin looking for that behavior in themselves and others. The skill to Be Facilitative means developing a communication style that engages everyone in meaningful dialogue about the change. Ask three questions frequently: "What do you think?" "Why do you think that?" and "What would you do?" Then listen carefully to the answers. This approach uncovers valuable insights, as illustrated by the "watermelon story" from a manufacturing plant. A line worker showed his manager how he determined coolant levels by knocking on machinery and listening to the tone—like testing a watermelon—rather than checking broken valves as the checklist required. This crucial knowledge had been overlooked because no one had facilitated the conversation needed to discover it. Leaders face the unique challenge of leading change while simultaneously changing themselves. However, successfully transforming culture brings tremendous rewards—not just improving organizational performance, but also enhancing personal effectiveness and creating lasting business success. By developing these three leadership skills, you create the foundation for accelerated culture change and game-changing results.

Chapter 7: Integrate Change Throughout Your Organization

The key to making culture change stick is integrating the Cultural Beliefs and best practices into your organization's existing meetings and systems. Without this integration, you'll likely struggle to create and maintain the discipline needed to sustain change. Doing it well saves money, time, energy, and effort; doing it poorly results in frustration and limited progress. Integration follows three essential steps. First, identify opportunities for integration into meetings. List all your team's regular meetings, from daily huddles to quarterly reviews, then filter them based on four criteria: they should be already scheduled, recognized as part of ongoing operations, perceived as useful with high impact on results, and consistently attended. Opthometrics successfully integrated Culture Management Tools into shift huddles, weekly manager meetings, and field leaders' store visits. In shift huddles, managers briefly met with associates to review performance, share stories about Cultural Beliefs, and exchange Focused Feedback. This integration was so effective that leadership for huddles eventually moved from store managers to other team members. Second, identify opportunities for integration into organizational systems. Examine policies, procedures, information sharing, HR systems, decision-making processes, and work authorization. These systems create daily experiences that either reinforce or undermine cultural transition. Chevron Corporation integrated a new belief that anyone who saw unsafe behavior could issue a stop-work order—previously only those in authority could do so. This integration helped Chevron achieve its safest year in history with one of the best safety records in the industry. Third, make your Integration Plan specifying exactly how you'll integrate best practices into selected meetings and systems. Eastside HealthPlans created an extensive plan that included posting Cultural Beliefs at employee entrances and on badges, adding weekly pop-up questions to their intranet, conducting quarterly teleconferences on business results, and providing electronic recognition cards. These efforts contributed to Eastside becoming the top-ranking provider in its system for the first time ever. Sometimes integration requires implementing new practices. At Universal, management discovered that monthly crew meetings—identified as perfect for integration—weren't actually happening. They needed to implement these meetings and train crew leaders before integration could occur. Similarly, Alaris Medical Systems implemented "Caught in the ACT" recognition by placing Polaroid cameras near assembly lines so workers could photograph colleagues demonstrating Cultural Beliefs. These photos, displayed on bulletin boards with tags identifying the beliefs demonstrated, became powerful visual reminders of the new culture. Jay Graf, organizational leader of Cardiac Pacemakers Inc., focused on integrating Focused Feedback into his staff meetings by asking, "What feedback have you received this week that you found valuable, and what are you doing to act on it?" This simple question created a significant experience, convincing his VPs that he was serious about feedback exchange. The practice cascaded throughout the organization as functional staff meetings mirrored the CEO's approach. Integration isn't adding another program or lengthening the workday. Rather, it weaves cultural transition seamlessly into existing processes. When done effectively, it sustains culture change over time and produces lasting results. As one nuclear power plant superintendent observed five years after implementing culture change: "To this very day, the most common phrase you hear at meetings is 'Thanks for the feedback.' The one reason feedback has stayed alive after five years is simply because we successfully integrated this process into our meeting structure."

Summary

Culture change represents one of the most powerful yet underutilized strategies for achieving game-changing results in today's challenging business environment. Throughout these pages, we've explored how experiences create beliefs that drive actions that produce results. By working with all levels of this Results Pyramid, leaders can transform their organizations and achieve outcomes that once seemed impossible. As we've seen in numerous case studies, from Alaris Medical Systems to Opthometrics, the impact can be extraordinary—turning struggling businesses into industry leaders and mediocre teams into high performers. The journey begins with a simple but profound choice: "Either you will manage your culture, or it will manage you." By taking accountability for your culture, clearly defining desired results, identifying necessary actions and beliefs, creating experiences that instill those beliefs, and integrating the right tools throughout your organization, you create the foundation for sustainable transformation. Start today by identifying one Cultural Belief that, if adopted throughout your organization, would dramatically improve results. Then create experiences that reinforce that belief, tell stories that illustrate it, and recognize people who demonstrate it. When you change the culture, you truly change the game.

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Roger Connors

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