Reports > Management

How to overcome repeated failures and successfully innovate organizational culture

2025.02.04 Sang-jin Bang

#Hashtag

#change management #management innovation #organizational culture

Many companies are calling for innovation in corporate culture, but few have successfully achieved it. This is because it is not easy to break the existing mold, introduce new changes, and then establish them in a sustainable manner. Let's examine the strategies and secrets of companies that have successfully implemented change by reviewing the elements that are easy to be overlooked at each stage of change and the key issues that overturn existing conventions.

Table of Contents

1. The Importance of Change Management
2. Key Issues in the Process of Change in Organizational Culture
3. Desirable Directions for Change Management and Leading Company Examples
4. Key Implications

Executive Summary

For innovate corporate culture, it is necessary to have a strategy for change management.
- Many companies are attempting to change in response to the rapidly changing business environment, but most of them fail (according to a 2021 survey by Copperfield, etc., only 22% of innovations are successful).
- Many companies have been continuously innovating their organizational culture and the way of working in response to change, but there are issues that remain unresolved, with existing practices being repeated.
Successful change management requires systematic management at each stage of organizational culture change, but despite various efforts, issues that defy common beliefs hinder change.
- Change management theories commonly emphasize the need for a process of “breaking the existing state (raising the need for change), introducing new changes (spreading and implementing change), and establishing them in a sustainable manner (change consolidation).”
  - 【Raising the need for change】 Change begins with creating a sense of crisis ↔ Overusing crises can lead to “crisis fatigue.”
  - 【Spreading and implementing change】 Beliefs and values must be changed first ↔ Changing behavior first is important.
  - 【Change Consolidation】 If change has begun, it is a success ↔ Consolidating change takes longer than expected
Leading companies do not stop at theoretical approaches but accurately identify issues that others overlook to achieve successful change.
- The necessity of change should be effectively communicated, enabling existing mindsets and behaviors to be willingly prepared for change. ▲Authentic crisis communication, ▲Various efforts focused on breaking inertia and overcoming resistance (e.g., Starbucks, Fuji Xerox, Bang & Olufsen, etc.)
- To ensure that all organizational members collectively change their mindset and behavior to perform innovative work, the following are necessary: ▲harmony between leadership-driven change and bottom-up change centered on employees, ▲the interaction between value changes and behavioral changes, ▲the evolving role of departments supporting change (e.g., global biopharmaceutical company Amgen, Alcoa, Adobe, etc.).
- To ensure that new changes become embedded in organizational culture and processes, it is important to pursue sustainable change by emphasizing ▲invisible changes that permeate daily life, ▲valuing ongoing efforts toward change, and ▲sharing a long-term perspective on change (e.g., Google, Zappos, Nestlé, Salesforce.com, Dell Technologies, and design consulting firm IDEO).
To achieve true innovation in organizational culture, it is necessary to identify the real issues that were overlooked among the innovation measures that were taken for granted and establish practical alternatives.

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