Choosing a culture change consultant
How to choose an organisational development consultant when the challenge is culture, not structure
Illustration by William Luz
'Rather than asking "what is wrong with these people?", systems psychodynamics asks 'what is the system producing, and why?'
Dr Mannie Sher, Principal Consultant/Researcher, Tavistock Institute
Organisational culture is the set of shared assumptions a group has learned to treat as valid because they’ve worked before, and then passes on to new members as the normal way to think, feel and act.
These shared ways of behaving and deciding may once have been an intelligent response to an earlier threat, task or stage in the organisation’s history. But culture tends to outlast any single leader or strategy, and often ends up poorly adapted to the demands an organisation now faces.
Culture is hard to see from inside. An outside consultant, less invested in an organisation’s established explanations for itself, can help uncover what purpose a culture served in the past, and make change feel less accusatory and more possible.
Culture change, like social change, is never linear or easily predictable. So you might question a consultant who can explain the outcomes easily for you.
"The ones who are really into culture change can describe how they'll design the process. And they'll contract on the points of time when you check in: Where are you with the change? What has changed? What hasn’t changed? What new data emerged that gives you new insights?"
Milda Autukaitė, Organisational psychologist and Principal Consultant, Tavistock Institute
- How do you know you have a culture problem?
Cultural problems show up as repeated patterns of behaviour, authority, relationships and decision-making that impede performance rather than help it.
- What are the patterns you might notice if there’s a culture problem in your workplace?
A leadership team that agrees in the room and fragments outside it.
A strength that's quietly also a weakness: professionalism that blocks collaboration, caution that blocks decisions.
A team that loses the ability to think clearly under pressure, repeatedly.
Values on the wall that the incentives and decisions don't actually reward.
- What kind of consultant is needed to work on culture change?
Look for someone who treats culture as lived behaviour, authority and decision-making, not your stated values.
Systems thinking matters a lot here. Your consultant will need the ability to step into the unknown with curiosity and courage and explore the uniqueness of your culture, and to connect your cultural ambitions with your strategy and business ambitions.
Above all, the consultant should commit to investigating before they prescribe.
In practice, that means open conversations across levels, real meetings observed rather than described, and a willingness to ask about informal power, history and the stories an organisation tells about itself. It also means treating you, the commissioning client, as part of the system under investigation, not as the neutral party standing outside it.
- The five questions to ask before hiring a culture change consultant
How will you find out what's really going on in this organisation?
How will you examine our decision-making and how we use authority?
What might emerge from your work that we won't want to hear?
How will we know if your work has made a difference?
Who will actually work with us day to day, and what's their background?
- What are five red flag answers to look out for?
'We have a proven methodology for culture change.' Proven where, and diagnosed how, before they've even met your organisation?
'We'll have this fixed in six weeks.' Cultural patterns take years to form. A confident timeline before diagnosis is a guess, not a plan.
'Just leave it with us.' Culture work that excludes people at every level rarely outlasts the consultant.
'That's more of a values and communications issue.' A redirect away from authority, power and decision-making, which is usually where the real problem sits.
"You'll be working with our senior team throughout." Meet the actual people who'll be in the room, not just the ones who pitched to you. A senior team that wins the work and hands it to others to deliver is one of the oldest patterns in consulting.
- What should you expect once the work is done?
Diagnosis: a specific account of what was found — named patterns, not generic themes — connected to real decisions and authority in your organisation.
Change: a clear set of next steps, involving and informing people at every level, not just among leadership.
Behaviours: more candid discussion, clearer authority, decisions being made and sustained, and previously avoided issues becoming thinkable.
Results: a plan for checking, over the following three to five years, whether the changes held and delivered what you wanted.