Innovation only happens when you innovate. Culture is no exception.

Conventional approaches to nurturing culture change in the enterprise are broken. It’s time for new ways of thinking and, more importantly, new ways of doing.

We have all seen the data on change initiatives: Forbes recently confirmed only 25% of change management initiatives are successful over the long-term. IBM states that culture change takes twice as long and costs twice as much as initially anticipated in 75% of cases. McKinsey & Company reports that only 23% of transformations achieve their goals. Deloitte says only 34% of organizations effectively track the impact and progress of their culture change efforts

This highlights that culture change is broken – and yet, the culture change and transformation industry generates at least $371 billion a year, according to estimates. This is why we want to advocate for culture innovation, rather than culture change.

So, how can businesses start innovating culture?

Start small and make real changes

MIT Sloan Management Review states it plainly: “The pandemic accelerated three interlinked types of transformation affecting every industry: the adoption of digital technologies, the development of new business models, and the implementation of new ways of working. Most companies are now engaged in one or more of these types of transformation. While most executives recognize the transformation imperative, far fewer understand the essential connection between business transformation and culture change.”

Many of today’s culture change approaches are rooted in arguably outdated, overly-complex and theoretical models and assumptions – or over-hyped technology-fueled applications that have a lot of sizzle but far less steak. We believe challenging these assumptions and approaches is critical if we are to truly inspire people to innovate in the way they change the culture of their business.This starts with a relentlessly pragmatic — and fundamentally agile — mindset: Identify real changes that can be made now, today, that will contribute to business growth. You can start anywhere, and go anywhere – but the imperative is to get started.

But where should you focus?

Two kinds of culture challenges exist: The first is that general gut feeling consensus that “we have a culture problem – but we don’t know exactly what it is or where to focus”. The second is, “We’ve identified a few culture challenges…but need to figure out where and how to get started tackling them.”

Agile culture innovation approaches rooted in rapid experimentation can successfully address both scenarios. And rather than the traditional top-down, heavily structured and slow-moving processes of yesterday, starting at the bottom, asking the right questions with the people closest to the actual work being done can quickly identify tangible solutions.

While this bottom-up and horizontal approach can be open-ended, it can also be framed within a specific context when the culture challenge is clearer, or the desired business impact better defined.

For example, a business can focus in on assessing internal employee experience (EX) processes and behaviors that line up against customer experience (CX) expectations along the customer journey. This simple approach can very quickly highlight where EX friction reduces the optimum CX.

It’s a simple equation: Identify a few fixes in EX to improve CX. That drives sales and satisfaction. And that fuels business growth, brand loyalty and employee engagement.

Innovation takes employee inspiration

It might sound paradoxical, but too much focus on “innovation” can take the focus off the real goal: Inspiring your own people at all levels to innovate. It’s not a major development coming from an innovation team – it’s solving specific problems in new ways that help grow the business — and it comes from the people leading and doing the actual work.