The Elevare Edge · Issue 14 · April 14, 2026
Culture change announcements are easy.
I've made them. I've sat in rooms where they were made. I've watched leaders stand up in front of their teams, lay out the vision, and mean every word of it.
And then watched nothing change.
Not because the leaders were insincere. Not because the team didn't want things to be different. But because the announcement was never the hard part. What comes after it is.
Why it stays stuck
In my experience leading teams in financial services, culture change fails at the same four points almost every time.
→ Leaders announce it but don't model it. The values go on the wall. The behaviors stay the same. Teams are not listening to what leaders say. They are watching what leaders do. When the two don't match, the announcement becomes background noise within weeks.
→ It gets handed to HR. I have never seen a culture change succeed because HR drove it. HR can support the process. HR cannot drive the change. When a culture initiative lives in HR, the message to the organization is clear: this is not a leadership priority.
→ Nobody owns it. Culture change with no clear owner is culture change that belongs to everyone and therefore no one. It shows up on agendas. It gets discussed in offsites. It never gets done because there is no single person whose job it is to make sure it does.
→ There is no accountability after the announcement. The kickoff happens. The energy is real. Three months later the same behaviors are back and nobody is saying anything about it. Without a structure for holding leaders accountable to the change they announced, the default is always the status quo.
What I learned the hard way
Early in my career I was part of a culture initiative that had all the right ingredients on paper. Senior sponsorship. Clear values. A communication plan. Town halls.
What it did not have was a single leader willing to change their own behavior first.
The initiative lasted about six months before it quietly disappeared from the agenda. The team noticed. They always do. And the lesson they took from it was not that culture change is hard. It was that leadership does not mean what leadership says.
That lesson is expensive. And it lingers long after the initiative is forgotten.
One question worth asking this week
Think about the last culture initiative your organization launched. Not the one currently on the roadmap. The last one.
Ask yourself honestly: did it fail because the plan was wrong, or because the people leading it were not willing to go first?
That distinction matters more than any offsite or values exercise you will ever run.
A simple framework to move from announcement to actual change
Most culture initiatives stall because they skip straight from vision to execution with nothing in between. This framework closes that gap.
Step 1: Name one behavior, not a value.
Values are too abstract to act on. Pick one specific behavior you want to see more of and make it visible. Not "we value collaboration." Something like "leaders share information before they are asked to."
Step 2: Go first.
Before you ask your team to change, change something yourself. Publicly. Let them see it. Culture change that starts at the top and moves down lands. Culture change that starts with a memo and moves sideways dies.
Step 3: Assign a single owner.
Not a committee. One person whose job it is to track progress, flag backsliding, and keep the initiative on the agenda. If everyone owns it, no one does.
Step 4: Build in a 30-day check-in.
Not a full review. One question asked of three or four people closest to the work: "What have you noticed changing? What hasn't moved?" That feedback loop is what keeps momentum alive after the announcement energy fades.
Step 5: Name what will not be tolerated.
Culture change without consequences is a suggestion. Decide in advance what behavior is incompatible with the change you are trying to make and be willing to act on it when you see it.
Where the Chaos Scorecard comes in
Culture breakdown is one of the eight dimensions the Operational Chaos Scorecard covers. It will show you exactly where the gaps are between what your organization says it values and how it actually operates day to day.
If any of this felt familiar, the scorecard is a good place to start.
👉 Take the free Operational Chaos Scorecard: creatyl.com/butrflie813/products/1199/access-the-operational-chaos-scorecard-here
If your results surprise you, reply and tell me what you found. I read every response.
To your success,
Rene Madden
Elevare Dynamics LLC
https://www.elevaredynamics.com/
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