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 positive energy that came out of my early days made some people - and me - think that we had that cultural issue fixed. The unfortunate fact, though, was that there was deep-seated resistance to change - a feeling of ‘This guy will be gone in three years and I’ve had my job for twenty, so why should I change?’ With three hundred thousand employees, the problem is inevitably in the middle. It was relatively easy to get to the top management in line - if not, I could fire them - but I couldn’t do that far into the organization. I couldn’t personally determine, for example, who in the tax or logistics department was obstructing progress.

When you go through that degree of structural change,” Lacy adds, “in hindsight it turned out to be more of an opportunity for cultural change than I thought. We disoriented people so much that we couldn’t go back; things were so different that people lost most of their reference points, so they couldn’t regress to the old ways because there was nothing remaining to regress to. In fact, we could accelerate the pace of change and make the change stick better.

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.

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.