Corporate Culture Evolution

Culture isn't what's on the poster in the lobby. It's the set of unwritten rules that determine what actually gets done, how decisions really get made, and what happens when nobody's watching. It's also the single biggest reason good strategies fail.

Culture across levels

One of the things the Navigating Change framework makes visible: culture manifests differently at every organizational level. The culture of a four-person team is not a miniature version of the enterprise culture — it's a different animal. GO1 through GO5 each have their own cultural dynamics, and what works as an intervention at one level can backfire at another.

Cultural inertia

The hidden barrier to strategy execution. You can have the right plan, the right people, and the right resources — and still watch everything stall because the culture is optimized for a reality that no longer exists. Diagnosing that inertia is the first step. Reshaping it without destroying what works is the harder, more interesting part.

Cross-cultural dynamics

When you add national culture to organizational culture, the complexity multiplies. Chinese, German, and Japanese business cultures don't just differ in communication style — they differ in how they conceptualize authority, time, consensus, and risk. In a multinational setting, these layers interact in ways that no cultural awareness training will prepare you for.

My work coaching dysfunctional cross-cultural teams in multinational settings is where this gets real. The Erpenbeck–von Rosenstiel competence model provides one useful lens. Lived experience provides the rest.