LEARN TO SURVIVE 

In the early 2000s, the company I worked for — a business with more than a century of history — launched a project to ‘reclaim the organizational culture of [its] founding days’. I was fortunate enough to be part of that team and, once involved, began digging deep into the company’s history. 

We immersed ourselves in the writings of the founders, and the subsequent leaders, who shaped its early years. Then, at the end of our research, we compiled what we’d discovered into a ‘Brand Book’ – a study of the company’s heritage and its guiding principles – and distributed a copy to every employee. By the end of the project, I had become convinced of one thing:

Companies whose founding spirit and organizational culture run deep are the ones that stay strong, no matter the era.

But years later, when I joined another company that prided itself on its ‘strong culture’, a very different reality slowly began to dawn on me. Whereas I’d once worked to protect a culture, I now found myself blocked by one.

An invisible wall

On the surface, this company encouraged innovation. But in practice, the only proposals that ever made it to fruition were the ones that fit neatly within its existing business model, supply chain, and sales channels. 

It was when I pitched a subscription-based business model and it was rejected outright – because it didn't align with the current distribution network  – that I realised that for my new employers, innovation really just meant extensions of what already existed. 

Now, this isn't a problem while the core business is growing. But the moment the environment shifts and real transformation becomes necessary, it's already too late. That’s because the organization has, culturally, become incapable of accepting anything new. It’s built an invisible wall around itself. And it took me a long time to truly grasp how dangerous that is.

Consider Kodak and Nokia.

Dysfunctional culture

Strange as it may seem, Kodak actually held the patents for digital cameras, yet failed to act on this fact. The company just couldn't escape its self-imposed cultural bind of ‘Film is our business’. And so, keeping the focus only on film, it went into decline. Nokia, despite once leading the mobile phone market, failed to grasp the importance of apps and smartphones. It kept its focus on hardware, offered too many conflicting products and built a management system that stifled innovation. In both cases, success calcified into a rigid culture, and that culture became the obstacle to change.

A strong culture creates an environment in which conservative behaviour that preserves the status quo gets rewarded. And as I said, that's no problem when business is going well. But when change becomes necessary, it's precisely what tips an organization into dysfunction. Embracing change becomes hard, if not impossible.

So the question isn't whether your company has a strong culture. The question is: what kind of culture is it? Open to change? Or resistant to it?

Begin with the leader

In an increasingly competitive business world, success depends on the ability to stay sharp, act quickly, and constantly broaden one’s field of vision to embrace new possibilities. Companies should never let up on learning and innovation. Even when their existing business is growing, they need to keep creating new business through innovation.

Toyota is a textbook example. Fully embodying the philosophy of kaizen (改善 = improvement), the company has built a learning-oriented, adaptive, and flexible culture of continuous improvement — while at the same time aggressively pushing into new domains such as AI, autonomous driving, hydrogen energy, and robotics. This willingness to keep learning and changing is the source of its sustained growth.

And such willingness, argued Edgar Schein, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, requires leaders who themselves show a willingness to learn and embrace change. Eliminating taboos, welcoming diverse opinions, leading by example — the first step in any transformation always begins with the leader.

Ask questions now

So if your company claims to promote innovation, but the only ideas it approves are extensions of its existing business model, that isn't innovation. It's just the existing culture acting as a filter to block change.

This a reality you cannot afford to ignore. What stands in the way of transformation isn't a lack of skill or capital — it's the culture that has seeped in over many years. And culture doesn't change overnight. Which is why the time to question it is now, while things are still going well. Because if you leave change until you realise things need to change, it may very well be too late. 

Keep learning. Keep changing

A strong culture can make a company successful. But that same culture can also push the company into dysfunction and bring its growth to a halt. What you really need isn't strength. It's the will to keep learning and keep changing.