ACROSS many organisations, a predictable pattern emerges whenever performance declines or leaders start feeling pressure from the board.
The first reaction is often dramatic. Someone stands up and confidently declares that the solution is a culture transformation programme.
It sounds strategic. It sounds sophisticated. It creates the comforting impression that leadership is taking decisive action. But beneath that polished language sits a hard truth that many executives prefer to avoid.
Culture transformation has become the default refuge for leaders, who are unwilling or unable to confront the real source of organisational failure.
Let us begin with a simple question. What exactly is organisational culture?
The answer depends on who you ask. There are hundreds of definitions, each presented with great confidence, yet none with a consistent scientific foundation.
Culture has become a vague, elastic term that can mean whatever people want it to. In one organisation it refers to values. In another, it refers to behaviours.
Elsewhere, it describes symbols, rituals, or the so-called unwritten rules. This definitional confusion is not trivial. A concept that is defined too broadly can never be measured reliably. And what cannot be measured cannot be improved with any degree of certainty.
The scientific research is clear. Despite the popularity of culture as a management concept, credible studies consistently show a weak to zero relationship between organisational culture and objective business outcomes.
Not opinions. Evidence. When researchers analyse culture scores and compare them with real financial or operational performance, the connection is faint, inconsistent, or entirely absent.
This gap between popularity and performance is rarely discussed because culture sells well. It sounds elegant and progressive. It allows executives to say they are doing something without confronting the more uncomfortable realities of capability and competence.
This is why many organisations keep running culture programmes year after year with no measurable improvement. Workshops are held.
Consultants arrive with colourful slide decks. Employees attend team building retreats. Values are printed on posters and placed on walls. Yet nothing changes in the real indicators that matter.
Customer experience does not improve. Operational discipline does not strengthen. Decision-making does not get better. Financial performance continues to decline. The illusion of progress replaces actual progress.
The real issue is almost always competence. Culture transformation does not cure incompetence. When people in key roles lack the cognitive ability, job knowledge, judgment, or execution discipline required to deliver results, no amount of culture work will fix that.
You cannot compensate for weak capability by repeating values. You cannot substitute for poor decision-making by running workshops. You cannot transform an organisation while leaving the same incompetent people in positions that require higher levels of thinking, skill, and judgment.
There is another uncomfortable truth that leaders rarely acknowledge. Culture programmes often become convenient shields to avoid accountability.
When results are poor, it is easier to blame culture than to examine capability gaps. It is easier to talk about mindsets than to address poor performance.
It is easier to sponsor values workshops than to remove a non-performing executive. Culture becomes a sophisticated language used to avoid taking tough decisions.
Boards also fall into this trap. Many boards willingly approve culture transformation budgets without asking basic questions about the real source of organisational failure.
They do not request evidence. They do not ask for measurable outcomes. They do not challenge the assumption that culture is the problem. In doing so, boards unknowingly participate in a cycle where resources are allocated to the wrong intervention while the real issues remain unaddressed.
If we follow the evidence, performance is driven by very different factors. Organisations succeed when they have competent people in critical roles.
They succeed when leaders demonstrate sound judgment and make high quality decisions. They succeed when strategy is clear, structure is aligned, systems support execution, and accountability mechanisms are strong. They succeed when roles are filled by people with the right levels of cognitive capacity and professional expertise. Culture does not create competence. Competence creates the conditions under which a healthy culture emerges naturally.
There is a deeper leadership issue that must also be confronted. No culture transformation will succeed if the leader is not willing to transform themselves first.
Culture follows leadership behaviour. It does not precede it. You cannot demand accountability when you do not model it. You cannot preach values that you do not demonstrate.
You cannot blame employees for behaviours that mirror the gaps in your own leadership. Many leaders talk about transforming the organisation but refuse to address their own blind spots, weaknesses, and capability limitations.
True transformation begins with self-awareness and personal growth, not slogans.
If anyone out there has run a culture transformation programme that produced measurable before and after business results, with facts and numbers that can withstand scrutiny, I will gladly profile their work.
Evidence matters. It is easy to produce excitement. It is much harder to produce performance. Until such evidence exists, leaders must stop using culture as a convenient distraction from the real work that needs to be done.
Organisations rise and fall on competence. They rise when the right people lead. They fall when capable roles are filled by individuals who lack the ability, discipline, or judgment to deliver.
Before you talk about culture, diagnose capability. Before you host workshops, examine leadership behaviour. Before you redesign values, redesign roles and elevate standards. If you do not confront competence, you will never fix performance.
Culture transformation sounds appealing, but it is rarely the medicine organisations need. The real cure is competence. And competence requires courage, because it forces leaders to confront truths about themselves and the teams they lead.
Real transformation begins when leaders stop hiding behind culture and start dealing with capability. That is where organisational performance is truly built.
- Nguwi is an occupational psychologist, data scientist, speaker and managing consultant at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and HR consulting firm. — Linkedin: Memory Nguwi, Mobile: 0772 356 361, [email protected] or visit ipcconsultants.com.
