Small Changes, Big Impact: How to Transform Organizational Culture Through Meetings

It’s no secret that many leaders find themselves frustrated by organizational culture challenges that impede performance. Poor customer satisfaction, inconsistent product quality, missed deadlines, and employee disengagement are often symptoms of deeper cultural issues. According to Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth’s insightful paper “Practice Makes Culture” (featured in the Spring 2025 Enterprise Technology Leadership Journal), the solution may be more accessible than many realize: deliberate practice of new behaviors in meetings.

The Power of Incremental Change

Hudson and Roth, co-founders of The Welcome Elephant consultancy, make a compelling case for breaking down seemingly overwhelming cultural transformations into small, actionable steps. Their paper offers a refreshingly practical approach that any leader can implement immediately.

The authors’ central thesis is that organizational culture isn’t some abstract concept beyond our control. Rather, it’s shaped by “the behavior, language, processes, and results we model, reward, expect, and tolerate.” By focusing on specific behaviors practiced consistently in meetings—where collaboration and business happen—leaders can catalyze meaningful cultural shifts.

The Practice Makes Culture Change Loop

At the heart of the paper is the authors’ “Practice Makes Culture Change Loop,” a six-step framework for implementing cultural change:

1. Describe the larger culture change: Articulate how your ideal organizational culture would look and feel
2. Identify one supporting behavior change or skill: Choose a specific, small behavioral shift
3. Choose a meeting in which to practice: Select a recurring meeting where you can modify the agenda
4. Prepare for the meeting: Create clear communication about the change and design supporting elements
5. Run the meeting: Execute your plan with clear guidance
6. Appreciate and improve: Acknowledge progress and refine your approach

The beauty of this approach is that it creates immediate momentum. Rather than waiting for organization-wide initiatives to take effect, leaders can begin making tangible progress in a single meeting.

Real-World Examples

The paper brings the framework to life through several compelling case studies:

Example 1: Making Business Value Clear

A Chief Digital Officer (CDO) discovered that stakeholders didn’t understand how their digital teams’ work contributed to business value. Technical teams were using “geeky” language and focusing on features rather than business outcomes.

The CDO implemented a simple change in their biweekly system demos: product managers would explicitly state the business value of each feature before the technical demonstration. Meeting templates were updated with business value prompts, and the CDO personally coached product managers on effectively communicating value.

The results were immediate. In the very first meeting, stakeholders responded positively to the clearer value statements. Over time, not only did presentations improve, but developers and stakeholders began asking deeper questions about value, leading to better alignment and more meaningful solutions.

Example 2: Practicing Active Listening

In another example, the authors describe how teaching active listening in team meetings dramatically improved system understanding and reduced misalignments. By having team members paraphrase what they’d heard from others and checking for understanding, teams built stronger collaborative skills and caught misunderstandings earlier.

Example 3: Creating Psychological Safety

A particularly powerful example involves creating psychological safety through vulnerability. At Humana, a leader facilitated an exercise where team members shared personal stories about overcoming adversity. This seemingly simple ice-breaker opened the door for team members to become comfortable saying “I don’t know”—a critical capability for honest discussions that improve decision-making.

Beyond the Single Meeting

While the approach starts with a single meeting, the paper outlines strategies for expanding cultural change throughout the organization:

1. Keep practicing the same skill in the same meeting until it becomes natural
2. Expand participation by involving more people or bringing the behavior to larger meetings
3. Add complementary skills to reinforce the cultural change direction
4. Practice in longer, more significant meetings like strategic planning sessions
5. Track and visualize progress using simple roadmaps

The authors emphasize that culture change is similar to product management – it requires intention, planning, visibility, and accountability. By treating culture change as a continuous process with incremental improvements, leaders can create sustainable transformation.

Why This Approach Works

This approach’s particular power is its foundation in established research on habit formation, value flow, strategy deployment, and organizational change. The paper references work by experts like Gene Kim, Dr. Steven J. Spear, Chip and Dan Heath, Charles Duhigg, Patrick Lencioni, and others.

Unlike grand culture change initiatives that often fail to gain traction, this meeting-focused approach leverages existing structures where people already gather. It creates immediate feedback loops, builds psychological safety, and demonstrates leadership commitment through modeling desired behaviors.

Practical Applications for Leaders

The beauty of Hudson and Roth’s approach is that any leader can begin implementing it immediately. Some cultural behaviors that leaders might consider practicing include:

• Speaking clearly about business value
• Active listening (paraphrasing and checking for understanding)
• Responding constructively to bad news
• Encouraging vulnerability and admitting when you don’t know something
• Avoiding blame and focusing on solutions
• Providing specific and constructive feedback

The authors argue that by selecting just one of these behaviors and practicing it consistently in a single recurring meeting, leaders can begin to shift the organizational culture in meaningful ways.

The Broader Impact

While the approach starts small, its impact can be substantial. As team members experience new behavioral norms in meetings, those experiences reshape their expectations and behaviors in other contexts. The ripple effects can transform how information flows, how decisions are made, and ultimately how work gets done.

The paper makes a compelling case that organizational culture isn’t just “the way things are” but rather the cumulative result of specific behaviors that can be intentionally changed. By focusing on meetings – where people collaborate and conduct business – leaders can make culture tangible and malleable.

Conclusion

“Practice Makes Culture” offers a refreshingly pragmatic approach to organizational culture change. Instead of broad, abstract initiatives, Hudson and Roth provide enterprise technology leaders with concrete steps they can take immediately to begin transforming their teams’ culture.

The paper’s core message is empowering: you don’t need to wait for organization-wide mandates or extensive resources to begin improving your culture. You can start today, in your next meeting, by practicing one behavior that moves you toward your desired cultural state.

For leaders struggling with organizational challenges related to information flow, decision-making, collaboration, or innovation, this paper provides both the theoretical foundation and practical guidance needed to create meaningful change. The full paper, available in the Spring 2025 issue of the Enterprise Technology Leadership Journal, promises to be an essential resource for forward-thinking technology leaders.

- About The Authors

Leah Brown

Managing Editor at IT Revolution working on publishing books and guidance papers for the modern business leader. I also oversee the production of the IT Revolution blog, combining the best of responsible, human-centered content with the assistance of AI tools.

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