Cultural Transformations

Chapter 1Understanding Your Culture and Understanding the Culture You Must Create

YES, CULTURE CAN BE TRANSFORMED.

As we discovered in interviewing some of the top CEOs in the world, successful CEOs and senior leadership teams can and do nurture and reinforce new mind-sets. Individuals, teams, and entire organizations can adapt, mature, and increase preparedness to deal successfully with current and future challenges. They learn to transform successfully what they do and how they do it. As a result, they create and sustain a “think different, think big” culture that is matched only by a “do different, do big” culture. The magic is not in espousing a bold vision or executing an untargeted strategy, but in the match.

Take a client of mine, Claro Colombia, the America Movil subsidiary in Colombia. America Movil has operations in 18 countries throughout South and Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States as well as in eight countries in Europe through its Austria Telekom operation. Partly as a result of a corporate-wide initiative to laser focus on enhancing customer experience but also to sustain its leadership position, Claro required a game-changing think-big vision and strategy to ignite its cultural change initiative. Led by Claro Colombia CEO Juan Carlos Archila (see his interview in Chapter 11), Claro started its transformation journey by leveraging its considerable corporate people strengths—an unwavering focus, discipline, and flawless execution in such ...