Change occurs when one becomes what one is; not when one tries to become what they are not.
Earlier this year, two companies reached out to me about cultural transformation. One had never attempted anything like it. The other had started two years ago and was frustrated because nothing had changed.
I am not going to list what makes a cultural transformation project succeed or fail. A quick search will give you thousands of consultants and firms who claim to know. Pay them and you’ll get the result, or so the pitch goes.
What I want to surface is one thread that ran through both conversations. Something that might sound familiar if your organization has ever tried, or thought about trying, something similar.
Both companies could describe where they wanted to be. More open, more collaborative, higher psychological safety, more positive. These are the destinations. And they are not wrong. They are the same destinations you’ll find on any leadership Instagram account or corporate wellness slide deck. You should be more transparent. You should embrace feedback. Your culture should be one of trust.
Fine. But where are you now?
This is the part almost everyone skips. It is easier to imagine the destination than to honestly examine your starting point. And by starting point I don’t mean a culture survey with quadrants and color codes. I mean the actual human situation.
Do you want to find out that your organization’s culture looks the way it does because two C-level executives have been avoiding each other since an incident three years ago? Or that the L&D budget goes to the same vendors not because they deliver results, but because they have a relationship with the head of L&D?
Most organizations don’t want to find that out. It is uncomfortable. It implicates people. It requires a kind of honesty that corporate life is not designed to reward.
But culture is made of humans. And if you want to change the culture, you have to be willing to look at the humans who carry it.
I wrote something at the beginning of this year that speaks to this at a personal level. The same pattern holds. We rush toward what we think we should become without pausing to understand what we currently are:
Where are you with yourself? Are there conversations you’ve been avoiding? Are you carrying emotions — anger, grief, frustration — that you haven’t stopped to examine?
Before advice like “I need to be brave and have that conversation” or “I need to be less angry” or “I shouldn’t feel this way,” there is a prior question. Why am I angry in the first place? What is this emotion trying to tell me?
Social media is full of destinations. Be more resilient. Be more vulnerable. Be a better leader. Everyone can point you toward where to go.
But only you can sense where you actually are. And change, real change, starts there. Not in becoming something you’re not, but in understanding what you already are.
That was my advice to both companies. Before you hire someone to tell you where your culture should go, find someone who can help you see where it actually is. Observe it. Name it. Understand why it became this way.
If you have the time and willingness, learn the skills to do this yourself. Because the patterns are happening in front of you every day. The question is whether anyone in the room has the language to point at them.
Anyone can tell you where to go. You don’t need a consultant for that. Instagram can do it for free.
Find someone who can help you understand where you are.
mulyadi.org 