CULTURE POWERS PERFORMANCE
By starting where performance already shines bright, leaders can turn internal belief into external results, fast.
A PLAYBOOK TO POWER PERFORMANCE THROUGH CULTURE 1 Identify your individuals Use data to find the 10–15% of people who influence how work gets done. Look at leadership impact, employee network analysis, sales team performance, safety data, customer satisfaction scores. Who people listen to matters more than who sits on the org chart. 2 Empower the few, loudly Give them support, freedom, and responsibility. Pilot new behaviors, tools, or ways of working with them. Provide visibility and senior backing. Let them co-create what “better” looks like and recognize their wins publicly. 3 Amplify their success Make the early adopters the story. Turn their results into internal case studies. Use storytelling and internal comms to shift what’s “normal.” As social norms shift, more people follow, not because they’re told to, but because they want to be part of what’s working. 4 Scale what’s working Only after proof, not before. Once you’ve built critical mass, you can scale through playbooks, peer-to-peer coaching, and targeted onboarding. Change that is real, visible, and successful sells itself.
Kevin Keohane Managing Partner, Culture Innovation, US Brandpie
I t’s a well-known fact that transformation is a rarely smooth process, and culture change is no exception. Just like the external energy transition, the internal journey toward alignment, agility, and performance is riddled with friction. Leaders are often told they need total buy-in across every level of the organization. But what if that pressure for comprehensive change is part of what’s holding transformation back? Not every part of a business moves at the same pace. And in a sector already navigating the monumental tension between legacy systems and future ambitions, the idea of a full-system cultural reboot is often unrealistic and unnecessary. What if the key to real transformation isn’t total alignment but strategic selectivity, concentrating on where momentum already exists? THE PROBLEM WITH “COMPREHENSIVE” CHANGE Organizational change management literature is filled with calls for alignment across all levels—executives, middle managers, and front-line employees. It’s a compelling idea in theory, but in practice, it often leads to generic efforts that lack focus, urgency, or measurable traction. One of the most persistent blockers to this kind of change is the “frozen middle”—a term coined to describe middle management who, despite being crucial to implementation, often resist change. Why? Because they are overloaded, risk-averse, and frequently excluded from the why behind the transformation. A McKinsey analysis and Brandpie’s own CEO Study recently confirmed that change initiatives stall in the middle at the intersection of strategy, process, and people.
32 Brandpie Energy - Issue 3
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