Culture at Breakfast

I once worked with a CEO who thought her biggest management challenge was internal comms and language. It wasn’t.

The message was clear. The tone was fine. But it still wasn’t landing. Because the company’s underlying culture was getting in the way.

We’re often brought in for what looks like a comms issue. But what we often find is something deeper—a work culture that needs more than a communications fix.

If people are disengaged, it’s rarely because they don’t understand the message. It’s usually because they don’t feel equipped to act upon it.

That’s not a comms problem; it’s a culture problem. Comms is surely part of the solution, but comms alone is not enough.

The work that’s needed tends to get tagged as “change management.” But we don’t love that term. You only manage change by managing people and systems to shift the culture.

Culture change is about helping people adapt, align, and move forward together.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” as the saying goes. There’s a good chance that what presents as a comms problem is actually rooted in an underlying issue that’s standing in the way of comms.