Beyond Inspirational Speeches

Culture change is probably on your leadership agenda. You may want (or feel forced) to create a post-pandemic culture or become more collaborative, innovative, or aggressive.

But most companies fail in this because they try to change culture directly—through speeches, training programs, or direct intervention in meetings.

Dantley Davis, the new vice-president of design at Twitter, asked employees in a meeting to critique each other. The idea was that tough criticism would help. Instead, people ended up feeling insulted and angry.