Culture and Change – Making Transformation Stick
- Colette Botha
- Sep 16
- 1 min read
How are you rewiring your culture to support change—not just announcing transformation and hoping the culture catches up?
Organisational transformation is often approached as a technical project: restructure teams, roll out new software, write new strategies. But without addressing culture, change won’t stick. People revert to old habits not because they resist change, but because culture resists misalignment.
Culture is the soil in which strategy is planted. If the soil isn’t nurtured, even the most promising seeds will fail to grow.
Dr. John Kotter, change management expert, emphasises that “the central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behaviour of people.” That change must be led through beliefs, identity and belonging, not just compliance.
At Colette Strategic Solutions, we see culture as the ‘activation layer’ for change. We integrate cultural rituals, stories and leadership actions into transformation programmes so that the change becomes lived, not just instructed.
Key actions to align culture and change:
Co-create cultural shifts with employee involvement
Connect the ‘why’ of change to values and purpose
Reinforce early wins with stories, recognition and symbolism
Train leaders to lead emotionally and strategically through change
Culture is not the enemy of change, it’s the engine. But only if you bring it into the room.