What's the best way to change the corporate culture?  This is obviously a big question, because a Google search on "How do I change the corporate culture?" produces around 50 million results. And, according to Overture, the expression "corporate culture" is searched for three times more often than "profit margin".  The question of changing the corporate culture is clearly of concern to a lot of people, perhaps of higher concern than making money?

There is also plenty of traditional wisdom to offer direction as to how to change the corporate culture.  There are many models available that can be used to analyse, measure and/or determine what change is required, such as the theories of Trompenaars, Hofstede, Handy, etc..  There are also many techniques that can be used to plan and implement cultural change: top down, bottom up, change management, business process reengineering, and a variety of other approaches.

Many of these techniques have great value and, when approached in the right way, can deliver significant benefits to the organisation.  However, I'm not sure that, in many cases, it is the right question to ask, or at least not at first.  There are a couple of hidden assumptions in the question "How do I change the corporate culture?" that I see as potentially problematic.  In particular:

 - Is it the culture that needs to change, or something else?

 - Does the organisation need a corporate culture?

Achieving cultural change is most often driven by the team at the top.  But there can sometimes be a major problem with the directors asking how they can change the corporate culture.  This because they are a significant driver of corporate culture, and they often need to focus on changing themselves and not the organisation.  I'll make my case for this tomorrow, and outline how the top team can tackle the issue on Wednesday.

With regards having a corporate culture, there is an underlying premise that there should be one culture across the organisation.  On Thursday, I'll make a case for an organisation consisting of a diverse set of cultures, with teams having their own different cultures according to the nature of their roles.  And on Friday I'll outline an approach that can be used to develop an appropriate, cosmopolitan corporate culture.

I'm not going to argue against having cultural change programmes.  However, I am going to make a case for approaching them in a way that is different to conventional practice.