Why this story still matters
Some stories age quickly.
Others quietly deepen over time.
This video was recorded several years ago.
Yet the questions it raises feel, if anything, more relevant today.
How do organizations move from pressure to purpose?
From blame to accountability?
From performance at all costs to collaboration that actually works, for people and for results?
In this webinar, Paul shares a multi-year culture transformation journey within a pharmaceutical organization. Not as a success story with a neat ending, but as a lived process. With friction. With setbacks. And with moments of genuine breakthrough.
What makes this story worth revisiting is not the method, the model, or even the impressive numbers.
It’s what happens when leaders are willing to look at themselves, honestly.
When performance problems point to something deeper
The organization reached out in 2018.
On the surface, the issue was quality. KPIs were under pressure. Alignment was missing. Teams were not working together in the way they needed to.
Yet, at the same time, people were deeply committed, working day-in day-out for their personal mission and for the mission of the company. Not taking the easy route, going out of their way to solve a problem, or to help a colleague.
Beneath that, something else was going on.
A Barrett Values Assessment revealed 30% cultural entropy, a clear signal of stress in the system. (Cultural entropy is defined as the amount of energy that people in a culture lose on things that they consider not productive, limiting or even harmful).
Patterns of blame, control, confusion and short-term focus were dominating everyday behavior. So, altough the mission was clear, they did not succeed in reaching alignment about priorities, creating systems that worked for them and emboying leadershipstyles that empowered and encouraged people.
This was not a failure of strategy. It was a culture under pressure.
And this time, the leadership team didn’t ask for a quick fix.
They were ready and willing to include themselves in the inquiry.
The real shift: from blame to accountability
The first phase of the work combined surveys, interviews, workshops and coaching.
Not to diagnose people, but to make the invisible visible.
A crucial turning point came when leaders began to recognize how they sometimes were enforcing the patterns they were experiencing.
Not as something to feel guilty about, but as something to take responsibility for.
Blame slowly gave way to accountability.
Judgment softened into curiosity.
KPIs were reconnected to a shared sense of purpose.
This inner shift changed the quality of conversations.
And with that, trust and openness started to grow.
A leader said: “We changed and the organization changed”.
What changed, and what required ongoing work
One year later, the follow-up assessment showed a dramatic shift.
Cultural entropy dropped from 30% to 8%.
Values such as coaching, mentoring, customer focus and leadership development became part of the lived culture.
But the story didn’t end there.
As the work expanded to senior staff, new layers appeared. Progress was real, yet people asked for something more practical, support they could apply in daily interactions, under real pressure.
This led to focused work on empathy, conflict, growth mindset and releasing judgment.
And when COVID hit, the emphasis shifted again: stress, resilience, personal leadership and care for one another became central.
Culture, it turned out, is never “done”.
Why this still resonates today
What this story shows is something we see again and again:
Sustainable performance does not come from tighter control.
It comes from awareness.
From leaders who are willing to look inward.
From cultures where people can speak honestly and choose differently.
That was true then.
It is just as true now.
Especially in times of uncertainty, transformation begins not with answers, but with the courage to see what is really happening, in ourselves, in our teams, and in the systems we are part of.
Watch the full webinar
In the video below, Paul walks through this journey in more detail and reflects on what made the difference over time.
If you’re working with culture, leadership or collaboration, or if you’re sensing that performance issues might be pointing to something deeper, this story may offer useful mirrors.
Sometimes, the most relevant insights are the ones that quietly stand the test of time.
