This article is a rebuttal to HBR’s “To Change Company Culture, Start with One High-Impact Behavior.” Written by James Elfer, SiriChilazi and Edward Chang. Published on January 19, 2026, on HBR’s website (in case the link stops working)
I hope you have the opportunity to read the original article. It is useful to see both sides of the argument, and I always fear I may be selecting the angles that serve my position.
Let’s do this!
Behavioural Interventions Are Not the Same as Cultural Transformation
I have seen firsthand how a single executive can derail an otherwise well-supported change effort. In these situations, the issue is not insufficient behavioural insight or the need for data analysis.
Instead, I argue that executive leadership’s language and behaviour dictate what the organization actually values. Culture is a system of norms reinforced by power, leadership examples, incentives, strategy, and repeated institutional decisions.
If senior leaders ignore process, dismiss evidence, or act inconsistently with the change being promoted, those signals will outweigh any formal intervention.
Employees learn less from policies and training, and more from what is tolerated, rewarded, and modelled by those in positions of authority and their peers.
Behavioural interventions do have a role; my concern is that the article presents them as sufficient for addressing broader cultural problems, and in doing so, minimizes the critical organizational conditions necessary for change to last.
Change cannot be treated as a series of isolated behaviours; they must address the larger structures that give those behaviours meaning. Maybe my attitude would be different if the article’s title did not include “To Change Company Culture…”
The article also leaves open an important question: Where do these problematic behaviours come from in the first place?
I am always skeptical of approaches that focus too narrowly on mid-manager or employee behaviour without giving equal attention to the C-suite, board members, investors and other influential actors.
The article says little about the people who shape the environment in which those behaviours occur. But I guess, as a consulting firm, you cannot criticize the people who hired you. Right? But I’d suggest that leadership’s assumptions and behaviours also require scrutiny.
It is not enough to identify a behaviour that should change; we must examine the conditions that produced it. Habits rewarded by leadership become part of organizational logic.
When executives set priorities and define incentives, any real conversation about culture change must address their role in potentially perpetuating it and as agents of change; otherwise, responsibility risks being misplaced.
At the highest level of accountability, you must be held accountable.
Why The 4T Model Feels Narrow
Before I get into the why, I do appreciate what they mentioned in the hiring for inclusion case study:
“The words you use to describe your company have a significant impact on who decides to apply.”
In “To Change Company Culture, Start with One High-Impact Behavior,” the authors propose a four-part framework as a practical alternative to broad training and communication campaigns.
4T’s scientific model of behaviour change works as follows:
- Target a behaviour, decision or outcome
- Develop a theory of change
- Create a timely intervention
- Test the result
While 4T may influence discrete decisions, such as hiring or inclusion discussions, as outlined in the article, it remains limited in scope. Its primary weakness is its focus on visible behavioural adjustments without ensuring true alignment with senior leadership or addressing underlying organizational norms and structure.
I just have to mention, every time I say 4T, I think of T-4 from the Terminator franchise. Sorry.
I imagine the Terminator coming in with a gatlin gun and mowing down everyone then saying, "Hasta la vista 4T." Anyhow.
I’d also argue that some of the behaviours that undermine change are not overt. Some operate through silence, selective reinforcement, passive resistance, or the quiet protection of existing norms.
In those cases, the behaviour is often identified less through direct observations and more through the patterns it repeatedly produces, which are rarely attributable to a single person.
When I mention quiet protection of existing norms, I am thinking about ways the old culture is preserved without anyone openly announcing that they want to preserve it.
This happens through habits, permissions, omissions, and patterns that maintain the existing order. These patterns might show up through:
- Repeated delays:
- People stall the new thing until momentum dies. Reviews take forever, approvals sit untouched, meetings get pushed, and decisions are deferred. No one says “I oppose this,” but the delay itself protects the old norm.
- Inconsistent follow-through:
- Leaders publicly endorse the initiative, then fail to back it with action. Training happens, but nothing changes afterward. Policies are introduced, then forgotten. That inconsistency tells people the old way is ok.
- Mixed messages:
- An organization says it values collaboration, experimentation, or inclusion, but its day-to-day signals say otherwise. Officially, one thing is praised; unofficially, another is rewarded. Over time, people learn which message is real.
- Decisions that contradict stated goals:
- The company talks about transformation, but promotes the same kinds of leaders, funds the same priorities, tolerates the same conduct, and measures the same narrow outcomes. The decision patterns protect the norm.
- What gets rewarded versus what gets said:
- This is a big one. If speed is rewarded more than adoption, output more than quality, loyalty more than truth-telling, or compliance more than learning, then the real culture is not the one in the slide deck. The reward system guards the old norm.
- Who gets protected:
- If certain high performers, senior leaders, rainmakers, or politically valuable people are shielded from consequences, then the organization is teaching everyone what really matters. That protection preserves the norm more powerfully than any speech.
- Where resources actually go:
- Budgets, staffing, time, executive attention, tools, and implementation support reveal what the organization truly values. If the new initiative gets the “right” language but not the resources it needs to transform, the old norm is quietly being protected.
What stands out to me is how consistently the article speaks in the language of behaviour and intervention while giving little comparable attention to the organization as a system. That choice matters because it reveals the level at which the problem is being defined.
If culture is approached primarily as a behavioural problem, then intervention becomes the obvious solution. But if culture is understood as a system of incentives, norms, leadership signals, and structural conditions, then, by itself, this narrow 4T behavioural model, as scientific as it may be, is unlikely to be sufficient.
Interestingly, one of the article’s cited sources, The Great Training Robbery, by Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader, emphasizes the organizational context, senior-team-led change, and system redesign over the narrower behavioural framing Elfer’s article suggests.
I do not find the 4T model persuasive for guiding culture change. It is best understood as a piecemeal tool for shaping particular behaviours within existing systems, rather than enabling deep, lasting transformations.
Sustainable change requires more than selective interventions—it needs system-wide alignment, especially at the highest level. A corporation’s culture is a self-sustaining pattern of expectations and reinforcements.
Frameworks like John Kotter’s Leading Change address leadership, systems, and alignment, offering a more comprehensive approach than a behavioural focus alone.
And because people are at the center of every change endeavour, the HR departments have a pivotal role in keeping employees engaged. Leading Change acknowledges that change must be supported structurally and symbolically, not only behaviourally.
As well, Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline offers a useful lens, shifting attention from isolated interventions to the organization as a whole.
I would argue that if a company genuinely functions as a learning organization, then change is not dependent on a sequence of one-off selected interventions; it emerges from a culture where people at all levels are empowered to learn, reflect, adapt, and think systemically about the welfare of the company and its long-term impact.
In such environments, feedback is frequent, and improvements are routine. Targeted interventions have a role but are secondary to systemic efforts.
Organizations are systems that include teams, processes, tools, incentives, and leadership behaviour, as well as external forces such as clients, vendors, boards, investors, regulation, competition, and market conditions.
Lasting change requires an understanding of how the relevant elements interact to reinforce and balance each other. When organizations focus too narrowly on one behaviour without considering the larger system that produces it, they risk misdiagnosing the problem.
Without leadership alignment, institutional reinforcement, and a genuine commitment to organizational learning, change will remain partial, fragile, and easily reversed.
I love these books; I discovered the last one about two years ago via a coworker. Recommended Reading:
- The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
- Thinking In Systems by Donella Meadows
- Leading Change by John P. Kotter
This article wasn’t as much fun to write as Workplace Revolt Set to Music, I wasn’t as pissed off, but I felt it was necessary to comment.
© 2026 Ociola Samantha Williams. All Rights Reserved.
