Go Flat Out.

An excerpt from High-Velocity Culture Change

There are various good reasons for a high-velocity approach to culture change. There are no valid arguments for going slowly.

It’s troubling to hear people talk these days about how it takes five, ten, or even fifteen years to transform the corporate culture. No question you could use that much time. But the disconcerting thing about that line of thought is that it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. People start accepting the idea that they need a decade or better to pull this off, and their chances of beating that time frame disappear. The job expands to fill the time they mentally have allowed.

Don’t tell yourself you’ve got that long. Sure, you certainly could use the time if you had it. But the blunt truth is the world doesn’t look like it’s going to be that generous. The pace of change is so intense, and still accelerating. Long before you reach a five- or ten-year finish line, the world will take matters into its own hands. The world will reshape your culture, or else leave the organization to die a slow death in the marketplace.

Significant culture change should start to occur in weeks or months. Not years. Start out fast and keep trying to pick up speed. Leave skid marks.

Speed may scare you, giving you the feeling that you’re too reckless. That you could lose control. But lack of speed is what lets problems get out of hand. Tentativeness and fear cause more mistakes than quickness.

Implementing change at high speed keeps the old culture off balance. Bureaucracy has to eat dust. The emotional energy level remains high. Speed creates a sense of urgency, and is also a sign of commitment. But beyond all that, you must maintain a sizzling pace in order to make the necessary cultural adjustments before the marketplace beats you up.

Speed, of course, is a relative term. What is “fast?” People operate with very different frames of reference. Organizations vary greatly in their cruising speeds. Some types of businesses are notoriously slow. So let’s put it this way—speeding up doesn’t mean you’re fast. You could still be dragging, steadily losing ground to the world’s accelerating rate of change.

Start out throwing gravel. Don’t even think of trying to carry out culture change at anywhere near the company’s usual pace. You can go faster than you think you can. When you get to the other end of this exercise—when you look back and reflect on how it has gone—you’ll say you should have done it even faster.