Latest news with #organizationalCulture
Associated Press
27-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
GOCP Expands Coaching Services to the US Market
05/27/2025, County Sligo, Ireland // PRODIGY: Feature Story // Gerald O'Connor, founder of the executive coaching firm GOCP, has announced the expansion of his bespoke leadership services into the United States market. This expansion signifies his commitment to bringing his methods centered on transforming organizational culture through meeting effectiveness through a broader international client base. With a growing demand for leadership interventions that address cultural and communication challenges, O'Connor is seeking senior leadership teams ready to reimagine how they decide, collaborate, and lead. 'I've spent years observing how subtle power dynamics and poor meeting structures hold organizations back. It's not just in performance but also in morale, innovation, and retention. The US is full of forward-thinking leaders who know something needs to change but aren't always sure where to start. That's where I come in,' says O'Connor. O'Connor's philosophy revolves around the belief that meetings are diagnostic tools and levers for cultural transformation. His unique coaching model begins with an in-depth meeting analysis, which he utilizes to discover patterns in behavior, communication gaps, and decision-making inefficiencies that reflect the broader organizational culture. By improving the design and function of meetings, O'Connor helps leaders initiate cultural shifts that can lead to lower staff turnover, improved efficiency, and more accountable decision-making processes. Catering to the C-suite and senior leadership teams, O'Connor's coaching is highly personalized and usually includes structured one-on-one sessions between the CEO and each board member. This approach is essential to draw out underrepresented voices and nurture more inclusive, balanced decision-making. He helps executive teams understand the informal power structures and communication habits that shape their culture and guides them in using meeting practices as vehicles to influence change from within. O'Connor has witnessed firsthand that many meetings are bloated, underprepared, or poorly constructed. They result in lost opportunities and disengaged participants. 'What we need is fewer but more purposeful meetings, where the right people are at the table, and where everyone feels safe enough to speak up,' O'Connor states. He has seen too many cases where the best ideas were left unspoken because the cultural conditions don't allow for open contributions. Hence, O'Connor helps flatten hierarchical structures to empower teams, promote safer communication, and build a foundation of trust and accountability. The coach believes that meetings are a microcosm of the organization itself. When they're dysfunctional (i.e., dominated by a few voices, under-attended by the right people, or misused as performance rituals rather than decision-making forums), they're symptomatic of deeper cultural flaws. Inspired by a retired US Navy captain, O'Connor promotes decentralized leadership models where authority is distributed and initiative is encouraged. 'Authority should be bottom up rather than top down,' explains O'Connor. Over a decade in executive roles within one of Ireland's most respected sporting organizations informs O'Connor's approach. As a former County Board Secretary, he led initiatives in governance, strategic planning, and cultural transformation. These experiences became the basis for his book, The County Board Chair: The Unofficial Guide. It's widely respected for its candid insights into the realities of leadership in volunteer-driven organizations and its practical guidance for turning complex dynamics into shared purpose. Meanwhile, his work in the voluntary sector was where O'Connor realized the destructive impact of unaddressed power imbalances and workplace bullying. He now integrates this awareness into his coaching, helping leaders recognize the subtle behaviors that can poison team culture, such as information hoarding or strategic ostracization. His experience being undermined by such dynamics only motivated him further to teach others how to build systems of support, transparency, and mutual respect. As he sets his sights on US organizations, O'Connor is eager to connect with mission-driven leaders ready to turn their meeting rooms into engines of innovation. He believes his approach has universal relevance, whether working with startups, scaling firms, or legacy institutions looking to modernize their culture. 'I'm not just trying to fix how people meet,' O'Connor says. 'My goal is to create organizations where everyone can contribute without fear and where decisions are made with clarity, courage, and collective insight.' Media Contact Name: Gerald O'Connor Email: [email protected] Source published by Submit Press Release >> GOCP Expands Coaching Services to the US Market
Forbes
26-05-2025
- General
- Forbes
Think And Lead Outside-In To Counter Groupthink And Insular Cultures
Groupthink Insular cultures produce groupthink, don't evolve as fast as others, and thus pose an existential threat to organizations. Instead, think and lead from the outside-in to ensure your culture and organization continue to evolve and thrive. Irving Janis explained that groupthink happens when group pressures and a drive for unanimity suppress dissent and critical evaluation. One example is the disastrous decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger, reenacted for this video. As I wrote earlier, culture is the collective character of the individuals in an organization. Organizations are made up of individuals, each with their own character. The way they behave together, relate to each other, the attitudes and values they share, and the environment they create is the organization's culture. In his recent book, 'On Character: Choices that Define a Life,' Stan McChrystal argues that character is a personal choice made up of a combination of convictions and discipline. In his words, 'Convictions set the direction of our intentions, but discipline provides the impetus to move' – especially when the choices are hard. For example, 'When our belonging to a group is on the line, many of us will say or do things we otherwise wouldn't.' He then told me that, 'In working on our book on Risk, we studied the Bay of Pigs and Janis' conclusions about Groupthink. Most of us have seen it many times and I'd add that the pressures of a hierarchical structure (like the White House, Army, or many Corporations) makes it easy to fall into – a huge trap.' Thus, groupthink behavior happens in organizations with cultures with a bias to work with people just like us (importance of being accepted by the group,) and a responsive/avoid basic failure attitude (as opposed to openness to making intelligent failures while learning through experiments.) As Janis puts it, these organizations and groups tend to: The ultimate issue is Darwinian. Those focused on being accepted by the group and afraid to experiment are, almost by definition, not responsive to changes, not evolving, and not going to survive as others evolve to serve customers better. Outside-in thinking is closely related to outside-in leadership. Outside-in leaders know that the true measure of success is not in the organizations, infrastructure or people they attract and develop, but in what those organizations, infrastructure and people get done for others. They start by thinking about those others and the conditions they face. This should play out differently depending upon the core focus of your organization. If your organization is focused on: Get to the ground truth Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, described the need for leaders to know 'ground truth.' This is unvarnished, unfiltered truth about the harsh reality. Powell got his from chaplains, sergeants major, inspectors general, and normal soldiers. Get your ground truth from data, facts, and first-line supervisors. They are close enough to the front lines to know the truth, one step back so they can see the forest and not just the trees, and far enough away from you not to be afraid of you. Get it from your customers (service-focused,) outside innovators (design), suppliers (production,) and others solving similar problems (delivery/distribution.) Seed dissent Make sure your groups have people that will dissent – and protect them. These could be people that play Devil's advocate or, like Shakespeare's fools, challenge ideas and thinking. Conduct double skip-level lunches Identify the top-box, highest-rated performers three levels below you. Set up one-on-one lunches with them. Read their reviews just before each lunch. Greet them and say, 'I've read your review. You're doing amazing things. I'd love to learn more about what you're doing.' Just that. Then listen. They'll feel great. You'll learn what good is. They'll tell you the truth about what they think. The people three levels down aren't part of your 'group' and, like front line supervisors, are too far away from you to be afraid. Click here for a categorized list of my Forbes articles (of which this is #946)
Forbes
22-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Seeing How Character Eats Culture For Breakfast
Why has it been so difficult for organizations to realize the aspirational culture they seek? In a recently published article, 'Diagnosing and Implementing a Character-Based Culture,' Bill Furlong, Corey Crossan, and I describe four vexing challenges organizations encounter when attempting to define, shape, measure, and sustain an aspirational culture. Simply put, seeing these obstacles through the lens of character not only diminishes the 'fog' of culture, it provides insights, approaches and tools to intelligently and intentionally develop the culture organizations need to enable their chosen strategy. Seeing and understanding the influence of character is akin to putting on a set of glasses to see culture more clearly. Roughly speaking, 90% of what every organization seeks in their aspirational culture is represented in the middle column of Table 1. The other 10% is the nuance that comes from strategy, such as having a service or safety culture. The problem is that the realized culture of most organizations is represented by the left- and right-hand columns. In our article we describe how the micro-foundations of character can operate in under-weighted and over-weighted states, undermining the aspirational culture that most organizations seek. Aspirational culture, regardless of strategy, can be directly tied to the strength of character of people, particularly the leaders. Essentially, culture reflects character. Extensive research at the Ivey Business School and around the globe has brought clarity to what character is, how to assess and develop it, and embed it in organizational practices. When it comes to culture, Table 1 captures the essence of how culture reflects the dimensions of character as under-weighted, strong, or over-weighted. Table 1 - Character and Culture Crossan & Crossan, 2021 Individuals can readily identify the statements that best describe the culture of their unit or organization. Most find themselves on the left 'under-weighted' column, which is the aggregation of deficiencies in a dimension of character, and/or the right 'over-weighted' column, which is an aggregation of excess. The over-weighted column merits explanation. It means that individuals in the organization have significant strength in a dimension, such as accountability, but that strength is not supported sufficiently by other dimensions, leading to 'difficulty delegating; obsessive and controlling; little room for learning from failures.' Without exception, our workshops reveal that individuals would be delighted if their culture reflected the 11 statements in the middle 'strong' column, which is why aspirational culture is founded on character. People grasp the logic that these descriptors mirror a similar set of descriptors at the individual level, which is when the proverbial lightbulb goes on. They realize that culture reflects their character. And if they want to transform culture, they need to strengthen their character. For example, an executive with strong accountability realized that because his temperance and humility were weaker, his accountability was manifesting in the over-weighted excess state, characterized by being obsessive, controlling, burdened, and unable to delegate. He grasped that his behaviors were fostering weaknesses in accountability among his subordinates, causing them to become less accountable. All of this leading to behaviors in the left and right-hand columns of the table. Although there are many cultural diagnostics, often pointing to some of the behaviors in Table 1, the lack of a coherent understanding of the architecture of character and how to develop it has crippled organizations as they seek to diagnose and transform culture. Building on the analogy of the glasses, the visual acuity associated with character arises through its development, not simply reading about it. The challenge with character is that most of us think we have clarity. However, there is significant danger in believing we have character covered, only to discover that we have substantial blind spots. It is this lack of clarity that leads to the left- and right-hand column behaviors. As a sort of vision check to help identify character blind spots, Corey Crossan and I created the Character Quotient (CQ) questions in my Forbes article, 'From Good to Great: 10 Ways to Elevate Your Character Quotient.' The QC score comprises three categories related to the 10 questions: awareness, development, and application. A high QC means that a person is aware of the interconnected dimensions of character and how they can operate in a deficient and excess state, they can observe and identify that in themselves and others, they have an evidence-based daily habit development program to strengthen their character (we call it going to the character gym), and they can confidently apply character to areas such as selection, performance management and culture transformation. Although cultivating a high QC score is a work in progress (mine is 87% even though I have worked in this space for 15 years), it provides a reasonable measure of the confidence we can place that we understand character, are actively developing it, and applying it in our organizations. There is clear evidence-based science about what character is and how to develop it, which becomes the solid foundation on which to engage the journey of individual development, taking into account the recursive relationship between the individual and their context. A great example of this is revealed in the Virtuosity Podcast between Corey Crossan and Dr. Christian Breede, a Research Analyst with the Department of National Defence, working at the Canadian Defence Academy. In the podcast, he describes his journey of character development and how it manifests in his personal and professional life. He describes that he has cultivated a better understanding of what character is, how to develop it and apply it in his context. In the podcast, Breede reflects on character in combat, saying 'Character work is not to be started in the attack position. You've got to do it before…You gotta have the sets and reps done beforehand so that when you're in those positions of having to make a quick decision, you can rely on your strength of character – your judgment is strong and you're going to make the right call.' With clarity about what character is, how it can operate in deficient and excess states, and efforts to develop it, individual character scales to organization culture. It does so through the micro-moments of conversations and actions, which reflect and shape character. This is the essence of the famous quote by Gandhi: 'You must be the change you want to see in the world.' With great respect, I would suggest we consider that the word 'be' is best understood as 'become.' When it comes to character, we are always becoming someone with more or less courage, humanity, humility, drive, and so on. The development of character involves the intentional practice of strengthening one's character, with the ultimate test being whether it holds up in various contexts, including organizational reward systems that could undermine character-based judgment, under time pressure, and adversity. This was the argument I made in my Forbes article 'Strategic Resilience and Agility: 4 Ways to Thrive in a Chaotic World.' The development of character underpins organizational agility, which underpins strategic agility. Will leaders navigate today's generational challenges of economic upheaval, geopolitical volatility and accelerating climate change through doubling down on technical or management competencies alone? Of course not. Success, or lack thereof, will reflect our leaders' judgment and decision-making, which is rooted in leaders' character. A good test of strength of character vis-a vis context is whether individuals blame the organization or the broader system for their decisions and actions. A classic example is blaming compensation and reward systems, or blaming the pressure for performance, whether that be from capital markets or other mechanisms. Although we can't ignore these pressures and influences, character-based judgment brings the needed 'practical wisdom' to operate in complex scenarios without resorting to being a victim of them. Furthermore, while today's extraordinary context challenges character, individuals with strong character-based judgment have the potential to shape that context. An example of this is how Sonja Coté from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) embraced the opportunity to elevate character alongside competence in their executive hiring practices. Then, when the pandemic arrived in 2020, CRA was capable of delivering emergency financial relief to millions of Canadians amid an unprecedented health crisis, one of the first signs that the pandemic could indeed be managed. There is a clear case that the development of character is a critical underpinning of culture, but there is so much more. Seeing, experiencing, and applying the development of character to culture will open the door for seeing many more possibilities, both personally and professionally. Regardless of the challenge or opportunity, the foundation of character will remain critical. The logic for why character is indispensable is clear, as is the evidence. In 2015, Fred Kiel wrote the book 'Return on Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Organizations Win,' paving the way for extensive empirical work exposing how the foundations of character influence a variety of key performance indicators. In 'Cracking the Code: Leader Character Development for Competitive Advantage,' Corey Crossan, Bill Furlong, and I share the extensive research conducted at the Ivey Business School, which demonstrates a correlation between character and leader effectiveness, resilience, well-being, promotional potential, and numerous other key performance indicators. The famous saying 'all roads lead to Rome' aptly describes character. Think of it as the bedrock, the DNA, or the cornerstone of many things, including culture. Essentially, wherever competence resides, character belongs. The greater the competence, the more need for character to harness it. Investments in character development yield benefits for cultural transformation, as well as numerous other benefits related to well-being and sustained excellence. An example of this is revealed in the article my co-authors and I published in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 'Leader Character in Engineering Projects: A Case Study of Character Activation, Contagion, and Embeddedness,' where we describe the year-long activities of a University Formula Race team, revealing how character can change how competencies are enacted. The bottom line is that character development is indispensable and should be the first point of consideration, given its foundational influence. It not only eats culture for breakfast, but virtually everything that matters to us personally and professionally.
Forbes
12-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Should You Just Give Up Trying To Change Your Company Culture?
Why organizational culture change interventions are hard, and what to do instead. New way versus the old way concept getty Organizational culture, an anthropological metaphor used to inform research and consultancy and to explain organizational environments change, is frequently cited as a strategic imperative, yet empirical evidence suggests that achieving successful cultural transformations is notably challenging. To be sure, there is no shortage of catchy stories on successful culture change, from Microsoft's celebrated pivot under Satya Nadella—from a know-it-all to a learn-it-all mindset—to Uber's strategic rebranding after replacing Travis Kalanick with Dara Khosrowshahi in an effort to detoxify a hyper-aggressive, 'bro' culture and signal a new era of empathy and ethics. CVS made headlines by banning tobacco sales as part of a broader shift toward being a healthcare company rather than a convenience chain. And even Goldman Sachs has tried loosening its necktie and softening its image to attract younger, more socially conscious talent. As always, stories sell, but data tell… Indeed, these and similar stories dominate headlines, keynotes, and TED talks precisely because they're so rare—and so appealing. But behind the sanitized narratives of oversimplified reinvention lies a messier, more sobering reality: most culture change efforts fail, or at best, underdeliver. The problem isn't a lack of ambition—it's that culture is stubbornly resistant to change, especially when it's embedded in the routines, incentives, and identities of the people who keep the organization running. Despite decades of rhetoric about 'transformation", we still lack robust proof that organizations can systematically engineer meaningful cultural shifts at scale—especially in ways that stick. Most interventions amount to symbolic gestures, short-lived campaigns, or well-meaning leadership slogans that struggle to outlast the next reorg or quarterly review. Importantly, there is a big difference between marketing campaigns aimed at persuading clients and consumers that an organization has changed (rebranding), and actually transforming the company's culture (a culture reset). Fifteen years ago, a comprehensive and widely-cited review assessing the effectiveness of strategies to change organizational culture within healthcare settings, concluded that no studies met the rigorous methodological criteria required to draw definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of culture change interventions. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, of course—but it does raise uncomfortable questions about the empirical foundation of one of the most evangelized ideas in management. If culture really does eat strategy for breakfast, it seems we're still guessing at the recipe. Two years ago, a systematic review by Dong (2023) synthesizes key findings from organizational culture research to identify critical success and failure factors in culture change initiatives. The study highlights that leadership support, effective communication, adaptable organizational structures, and well-designed incentive and reward mechanisms are crucial for successfully changing culture. Conversely, it identifies insufficient resource investment, underestimating risks, and resistance to change as major contributors to the failure of culture change efforts. The review emphasizes the importance of tailoring culture change initiatives to an organization's specific needs and context while incorporating insights from previous research and best practices. It also notes the necessity of addressing both success factors and potential obstacles to enhance the likelihood of successful organizational culture change. These and other findings underscore the complexity of culture change and the necessity for well-planned, resource-supported, and inclusive approaches to increase the likelihood of successful transformation. So, if you're planning to upgrade your company culture—and particularly if that upgrade is seen as a precondition for broader strategic transformation or reaching a significantly higher level of organizational performance—here are a few uncomfortable but useful points to keep in mind: 1) Culture change takes years—so don't expect to see results by Q3. Cultures are not static, but their change is glacial. They evolve incrementally, shaped by repeated behaviors, rituals, and norms—rarely by declaration. Think of it like aging: you don't notice the difference day-to-day, but ten years later a photo reminds you of how much you've changed. The same applies to culture. It resists quick wins and isn't compatible with typical corporate timelines. So if you're serious about culture change as a strategic imperative, you'll need to sustain interest, investment, and leadership alignment for the long haul. Sadly, most culture-change champions operate under short-term KPIs or political survival instincts that contradict this very need for patience. CEOs and CFOs, understandably, want results this fiscal year—not a promise of psychological climate shifts in 2029. 2) The ROI of culture change may be lower than you think—at least directly. Culture is often defined as 'how we do things around here'—a broad and seductive explanation that, unfortunately, predicts very little on its own. Scientific evidence shows that individual differences (personality, values, cognitive styles) account for over 50% of the variance in work outcomes like collaboration, innovation, and performance. Meanwhile, organizational culture and employee engagement—often used as proxies for culture quality—explain less than 10% of the variance in outcomes like productivity or retention. So, if your goal is to improve performance, innovation, or inclusion, it might be more efficient to focus on things like talent selection, leadership development, and incentive structures. Changing the culture for the sake of results can be like trying to change the weather to improve your commute—when what you really need is a better car. 3) Formal systems and incentives are easier to change—and more immediate in impact. Even if you accept that culture is slow to move, you're not powerless. Much like national governments that govern populations with deeply embedded traditions and identities, organizations can still influence behavior without overhauling their cultural DNA. How? Through formal processes, structural nudges, and well-calibrated incentives. You don't need to wait for your culture to 'evolve' to improve collaboration, accountability, or decision-making—you can create systems that reward and reinforce the behaviors you want. As the Norwegians say: 'There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.' Likewise, there's no such thing as a totally dysfunctional culture—only bad management decisions that fail to adapt to it. 4) Culture changes one leader at a time—so maybe stop trying to fix the wrong ones. Max Planck famously said that science progresses 'one funeral at a time'—not because scientists change their minds, but because they eventually disappear. Culture, too, often progresses not by persuading incumbent leaders to behave differently, but by replacing them. Leadership has a disproportionate impact on team norms and organizational culture, with studies estimating that leaders account for 30–40% of group-level performance outcomes. So if you want to change a toxic or stagnant culture, don't start with a values workshop—start with succession planning. Some leaders will thrive despite a bad culture; others will fail despite a good one. Focus your effort on selecting, promoting, and rewarding the right leaders, rather than trying to reprogram the wrong ones. As INSEAD's Gianpiero Petriglieri notes, 'leadership is always an argument with tradition'. In other words, nobody is truly a leader if they are in their role to keep things as they are. There is an important implication here, namely that leaders are a fundamental vessel or conduit for change; the bridge between a past and present that are not future-ready, and a better potential future they embrace with their vision. 5) You probably don't know what your culture actually is. Most companies have a vague or inflated sense of their own culture. Aspirational statements on corporate websites are nearly indistinguishable: every organization claims to value innovation, purpose, collaboration, integrity, agility, and (until recently) diversity. But culture is what people do—not what leaders say or posters declare. If you haven't conducted a serious diagnostic of your organization's real behaviors, norms, and narratives—including contradictions, sacred cows, and informal rules—you're likely working off a flattering illusion. And as management guru Peter Drucker might say (if he hadn't already): you can't manage what you don't understand. Knowing your real culture—warts and all—is a prerequisite to changing anything meaningfully. Importantly, don't try to copy someone else's culture: the goal, if you have to embark on a culture change initiative, is to optimize yours, to fine-tune or upgrade it in line with your strategy and talent philosophy. In short, even if culture does eat strategy for breakfast, that doesn't mean you have to cook for it every day. You don't need to change the culture before you can execute strategy—you just need to stop letting culture block your path. Moreover, while every leaders loves to think that their strategy is right but the execution is what fails, the right strategy must also contain an effective plan for execution which, incidentally, must not just account, but leverage, whatever culture is in place. Start with what you can actually influence: leadership, systems, incentives, and behavior. And if culture changes along the way, consider it a lagging indicator of doing everything else right. An alternative view of culture may be that it is basically a form of leadership when leaders are absent. In other words, when your boss isn't watching you, your behavior will be affected by the internalized norms and rules that the company's leaders have instilled. This view of culture may also highlight one of the most obvious fixes or tools for your cultural re-set, namely present leadership: that is, when the formal and informal rules for interaction that govern the social dynamics of organization cease to be advantageous or conducive to success, it is especially critical that leaders are present, to act as a counterforce to this inertia or invisible force derailing individual and collective human activity.
