The Customer-Driven Culture: A Microsoft Story

Chapter 6. Meet Teams Where They Are

Voltaire once wrote, “The best is the enemy of good.” Or, put another way, we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good enough. This can be so true when we consider how we go about promoting culture change.

I’ve seen so many change agents become frustrated because they can’t influence their teams to change their behavior, but they propose an all-or-nothing approach. You’re either all in or all out. The truth is that change can’t always be that simple. Product teams will find themselves caught between two cultures: the one that is rooted in the values from before and the one that’s being built on new values going forward.

Change is a hero’s journey in which we leave the status quo, are confronted with trials and tribulations, and return forever changed by our experiences. It’s during these trials and tribulations when our anxiety is highest. It’s when we’re most likely to doubt our abilities and second-guess our direction.

So if we’re in the business of encouraging cultural change, we must realize that we should be in the business of making change less difficult. That requires us to apply the hack of meeting teams where they are.

In this chapter, we discuss the power of pragmatism and how giving over some ground is actually one of the best ways to encourage others to join you. It’s not that we should give up our principles or change our cultural vision, but we must understand that we will need to meet people in the context of their current ...