Choosing a culture change consultant
How to choose an organisational development consultant when the problem 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, Tavistock Institute principal Consultant/Researcher
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.
- 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 more here than organisational design expertise.
Above all, the consultant should commit to investigating before they prescribe.
In practice, that means confidential 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.' Ask who's actually in the room. The people who win the work aren't always the people who do it.
- 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, incentives and authority in your organisation.
Change: a clear set of next steps to shape and enact change (with or without the help of the consultant), 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.