It’s easy to smile and nod when people say “We need to change the culture.” But the whole point of culture is that it resists change.

It brings cohesion to a social group by encouraging and reinforcing existing behaviours — “the way we do things around here”. Culture is a stabilizer. Ballast in the hull. Routines, rituals and mentalities can persist for thousands of years precisely because culture is a change-resistant phenomenon.

It is also emergent. The by-product of education, leadership, incentives, habits, history, people, place and time. Culture isn’t like a part on a machine. You can’t just swap it out for a new one.

So we can’t change the culture as people love to say. We can only change the things that might eventually change the culture — the incentives, training, leadership and management, people, processes, and the environment they work in — and hope that over time they have an alchemical impact on accepted norms.

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