You’ve probably seen it happen. Maybe you’ve even been part of it.
Leaders gather in a conference room. Maybe their communication advisors are part of the meeting. Together they create and rehearse talking points. They create a PowerPoint presentation. Then, they deliver that presentation to employees in an all-hands meeting: “Starting Monday at 8 AM, we’re rolling out our new and improved culture!”
And then… crickets.
After years of working with healthcare systems across the country on culture enhancement initiatives, I’ve learned something critical: Culture transformation doesn’t happen because of an announcement from the top. It happens because of engagement, trust, and giving people ownership over the solutions that affect their daily work.
The Problem With the Announcement Approach
When culture transformation efforts come from the top down as a finished product, it triggers resistance—not because people don’t want improvement, but because they’re being forced to swallow something rather than being brought along on the journey. They’re being told to adopt someone else’s vision of what their workplace should be like. But that someone else hasn’t really walked in their shoes. They don’t fully understand what they deal with on a daily basis.
The announcement approach assumes that culture can be implemented like a new software program. But culture isn’t a program you implement. Culture is the lived experience of every person in your organization, shaped by thousands of daily interactions and decisions.
There’s a critical balance here: getting things done while involving people so you get more ideas and more success.
So, how can you build trust before building change?
Building Trust Before Building Change
Before you can introduce meaningful culture shifts, you need something more valuable than a polished rollout plan: you need trust and buy-in.
And trust isn’t built in boardrooms. It’s built on the front lines, where the real work happens.
Here’s what actually works: Go to where the work is done.
Sitting in the board room with other leaders and brainstorming solutions won’t get you–or your team—to where you need to be. You need to get out in the trenches. Visit the units. Go to the clinics. Spend time in the hospital. Round with staff on patients, and on employees. Seek to understand the workflows. Notice the workarounds that staff have created. See the reality that exists between what policies say and what people actually do.
Ask about the irritations.
Every team has them—those persistent frustrations that make their jobs harder than they need to be. The supply that’s always in the wrong place. The form that requires duplicate entry. The meeting that could have been an email.
I used to run a program called “What’s Bugging You?” where every department would identify their irritations. We even had a logo with bugs on it. When administration would support teams in finding solutions to get rid of those bugs, we built tremendous buy-in. These aren’t trivial complaints; they’re insights into barriers that drain energy and enthusiasm.
Ask them to find the solutions.
This is where the magic happens. When you invite the people closest to a problem to solve it, several things happen at once. They bring practical knowledge that leadership doesn’t have. They’ll create solutions that will actually work in the real world. Most importantly, they’ll be personally invested in making sure that those solutions work.
As one Entrepreneur article on innovation perfectly captures: “As a leader, your role is to enable innovation, not dictate it.”
What are you doing to enable innovation? I’d love to hear from you.
