I had an interesting conversation with an almost-client today.
He's currently the manager in a multinational here in Colombia, and he looked me straight in the eyes and asked me earnestly, with that strained tone that accompanies unfulfilled longings mixed with unwanted skepticism:
"Alma, I've been through so many different company culture change initiatives in my professional life and seen companies spend so much money on these projects with consultants, but they usually just fail miserably because the higher-ups, the leaders, they never actually change.
They just hire consultants to change the rest of us so they can check off their KPI's. How do you face this challenge? How do you get any results?"
A smile spread across my face. I’ll admit that I drool for these kinds of questions and challenges.
Naturally, I answered him by drawing my favorite, albeit unoriginal, metaphor for culture change.
A tree with deep roots.
And I started to tell him about how we business leaders who so desperately want the pears on our trees to become apples, we shake the branches, paint the pears red, or even spray them with apple-flavored body splash, but we rarely go to the roots, or move around the soil.
I love business storytelling because it is what allows us to go down to the roots, where real change is born.