MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Changing Culture Is Central to Changing Business Models

Leaders need to examine their core beliefs if they want to prosper in a COVID-19 world.

Culture is all-encompassing. It radiates through every action taken inside an organization — including deciding what is made and sold, which employees are hired and retained, which customers are serviced and how, what is measured and reported, and where time and money are invested.

However, while some leaders strive to create tomorrow’s cultural norms using advanced technologies, others resist cultural changes and stick to their knitting. The result is a growing chasm between winners and losers. For example, today’s trillion-dollar behemoths are all technology-based organizations that take advantage of mobile technology, data, multiple revenue streams, and AI strategies. They are led by leaders who want to change the world, while the companies that held the top spots of growth and value just two decades ago — banks, oil companies, real estate companies, and manufacturers — are paying the price for holding on to their historical cultural beliefs.

About the Author

Lanham Napier (@lnapier) was the CEO of Rackspace and is the CEO and cofounder of BuildGroup, a growth equity fund that invests in public and private SaaS-plus marketplace companies. Barry Libert (@barrylibert) is the CEO of AIMatters, a business model data science startup, and a strategic adviser to BuildGroup. K.D. de Vries is a marketing consultant at BuildGroup.

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