The bottom line is that in order to minimize your risk, you need to really familiarize yourself with the subtleties and idiosyncrasies of the culture, understand the power bases, recognize that a mandate from above may not automatically ensure a mandate from below, and not try to change the world in your first hundred days. Patience is often an essential virtue when it comes to cultural transformation at a large scale.

As Lou Gerstner says, “Changing the attitude and behavior of hundreds of thousands of people is very, very hard to accomplish. You can’t simply give a couple of speeches or write a new credo for the company and declare that the new culture has taken hold. You can’t mandate it, can’t engineer it.

“What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But at some point you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.

Creating the conditions for a cultural transformation takes all the tools at your disposal. You can’t, for example, command an internally focused culture to magically metamorphose into one that canonizes its customers. You have to nudge, suggest, cajole, and ultimately convince people that the new environment you’re proposing really is the best one for the business and, perhaps more important, for themselves. That takes time - and a good sense of timing.

Some leaders look back on their first hundred days and say, “If I could do it again, I wouldn’t hesitate so long to make those key people changes or that strategic move.” Others were glad they exercised restraint. In most cases the timing are dependent on the situation.

Just remember that too much change can break the culture - or more likely destroy the change-maker. You have to pace yourself and continually assess the tolerance of the organization.

Ten Guidelines for Starting to Transform the Culture:

1. As a new leader, work to understand the culture of the organization, diagnose how great a change is required, and take the right steps to start making the transformation.

1. Recognize that many new leaders fail because they cannot make headway against an intransigent culture, pushing too hard in the wrong ways, resulting in the proverbial “body rejecting the organ.”

1. The way to start assessing a culture is to listen and observe. How do people really describe the place? Words are powerful clues - within most generalizations there lies an inner core of truth. Look for physical evidence - how people dress, how they communicate, how happy they look, and the kind of furniture and artwork that fill the offices.

1. Next, identify how “things work around here.” Hunt for the knowledge networks, key influencers, decision-making protocols, and unwritten and unspoken conventions that are the nervous system of any organization.

1. Be sensitive to the fact that even having a change mandate from your board or boss may not be enough. Understand where other sources of power lie, and make sure you gain the support from that power source.

1. With a truly obstinate culture, you may need to make structural and people changes, but do so with the bought-in support of the key power center and also establish a concerted program to address the cultural legacies of the organization.

1. Create the conditions for cultural transformation: Adopt new measures of success; institute new operating processes; choose a new management team; set new expectations; identify change leaders; and lead by example.

1. Make your first moves count. In your early days, when people are most open to change, you can have a magnified impact by implementing carefully considered, concrete changes to long-established organizational and cultural structures.

1. Experiment with ways to convince employees to pledge their hearts and minds to change. Be aware of what is working and what is not and refine your approach.

1. Remember that too much change can break the culture - or more likely the change-maker. Pace yourself, continually assess the tolerance of the organization, get feedback, and adapt along the way.