MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Take a Wrecking Ball to Your Company's Iconic Practices

Here’s what today’s leaders need to do to knock down obstacles to cultural change.

Most leaders today are trying to do the same things: help their organizations become more agile, more innovative, more digitally savvy, and more customer-centric.

Sooner or later, though, they come up against entrenched values and behaviors, and progress stalls. That’s particularly true with digital transformation. Experts concur that traditional mindsets and “ways of doing things around here” — the lay definition of culture — are the primary culprits hindering the fundamental transformation that emerging technologies are meant to enable.

But organizational culture is hard to change. It’s intangible; there are no direct levers for controlling it.

About the Author

Herminia Ibarra (@herminiaibarra) is the Charles Handy Professor of Organizational Behavior at London Business School.

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