Even though it’s crucial for a new leader to show that he or she fits into the culture and “gets” it, the paradox is that you don’t want to settle in too comfortably if the culture needs modification. But of course, changing a culture is never as simple as ordering it to be so, especially if the organization is very proud of its traditions. And what organization isn’t?

The issue of trying to transform a culture, especially a deeply embedded one from many years of the corporate equivalent of geological layering, extends well beyond your first hundred days. Sometimes it takes years. The critical point for the early days in a new role is to be highly sensitized to the issue, make an effective cultural assessment, and plant the seeds for the long-term change you are committed to achieving.

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.

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.