These reviews focused on very basic, very fundamental questions with the intent of helping the team make better strategic choices. The group would spend three or four hours chewing on the few critical issues together. We had three reasons for the shift in process.

First, we wanted to shift the culture of the organization to one that was more dialogue oriented. Second, we wanted to create a structure in which the business teams could truly benefit from the experience and cross-enterprise perspective of senior leaders. And finally, we wanted to build the strategic-thinking capabilities of P&G’s executives, asking them to practice thinking through strategic issues with others in real time. P&G executives are great operators in the businesses and the functions. The company needed its leaders to become better strategists because better, more choiceful strategies would enable yet better operations. P&G needed multidimensional leaders who could both make tough strategic calls and lead effective operating teams.

Peter saw no problem with a system in which he and the analysts who worked for him made so many of the company’s decisions. Meanwhile, businesses around us were adapting to a world that was changing at blinding speed. We needed to change, we needed to be more nimble, and we needed to do it soon.

Even to the survivors of Blake’s staff reduction, his full-steam-ahead approach made many within the USOC administration feel disenfranchised. It is important to remember that Blake was following an action plan for which he was hired and mandated by the board. Despite this, his failure to marshal support, among the athletes, their parents, and their coaches chafed deeply. Feelings erupted six weeks later, at a mid-March meeting to approach Blake’s overall plan for restructuring the USOC.

... Blake failed to appreciate the true balance of power and the deep cultural influence of the Athlete’s Advisory Council. He felt that he had his ducks in order, with a board mandate and plan approval to carry out the change that he - and many others - believed was essential. In a corporate setting this may have been relatively straightforward, given the generally clear scorecards of financial and organizational performance. Then again, it may very well have been just as difficult and ultimately unsuccessful. Why? Because whether it’s a powerful group of employees, retirees, restive shareholders, or even customers, a failure to assess the culture and the readiness for change among different interest groups can be lethal.

One of the important points regarding assessing the culture is to think through the implications of trying to change it. When Merrill Lynch appointed Stanley O’Neal as CEO, his lack of history on the retail brokerage side of the business was an important signal that the firm was ripe for change. Amid a chaotic financial services industry environment buffeted by the bursting of the tech bubble, the shutdown of the IPO market, the recession, and 9/11, O’Neal’s relative outsider status from the cultural and historical core of the operation freed him up to lead an aggressive and ultimately highly successful restructuring. He unapologetically cut billions in costs, shaped the management team to his preferences, streamlined decision making, and ultimately repositioned the firm to come out of the recession a leaner, meaner fighting machine.