Why Culture Change Never Sticks – And What to Do Instead

The Limits of Leadership Development as a Culture Change Strategy

Leadership training is one of the most common approaches organizations take to culture change. The assumption is that if leaders model the right behaviors, culture will shift. However, Matt highlights that this rarely works in isolation.

“We conducted an experiment on our own leadership development program. People raved about the training, but when we studied actual behavior change, there was no difference. Training gives people knowledge but doesn’t change their environment, so behaviors stay the same,” he says. Leadership training, while valuable, does not change the broader working conditions that lead people to revert to their old ways.

A large-scale review of behavior change by the University of Pennsylvania confirms that traditional approaches focusing on increasing knowledge or altering attitudes yield minimal behavioral change.

“Organizations assume that if people know better, they will do better. But behavior change is about making the right choice the easiest choice,” Matt explains.

Many corporate change efforts assume that motivation and capability alone drive behavior change. But research (and real-world experience) tells a different story.

The Problem: Why Traditional Approaches Fail

People often set ambitious goals but fail to sustain them. “If motivation and willpower were enough, we’d all stick to our New Year’s resolutions. But we don’t because the environment around us makes it too easy to fall back into old habits,” Matt explains.

This tendency to relapse follows a predictable pattern. Initially, motivation spikes, fueling change. However, as effort increases and motivation declines, people fall back to what they are used to. This creates a cycle known as the Triangular Relapse Pattern. This pattern repeats itself because motivation and willpower are finite resources.

“Motivation is like a battery that’s powerful at first but drains over time. If you rely on it alone, you’re setting people up to fail.”

Matt illustrates this with a wall-sit analogy. At first, holding the position feels manageable, but fatigue quickly sets in, making it unsustainable. The same applies to behavior change. People can sustain effort briefly, but without structural support, they revert to the path of least resistance. Matt highlights that organizations relying on willpower, training, or motivation for culture change are essentially asking employees to “hold a wall-sit indefinitely.”

Instead, lasting change comes from minimizing friction by redesigning environments and systems to make desired behaviors easy, natural, and sustainable. “When you lower the effort required, people don’t need to rely on motivation—they’ll just do it because it’s the easiest choice,” he adds. “By focusing on the environment, we eliminate the conditions that make relapse inevitable, breaking the cycle entirely,” says Matt.

He argues that instead of assuming people make rational decisions effortlessly, we should acknowledge their limitations and design for them. Rather than resisting these constraints, we should embrace them by designing change that works even when people are tired, stressed, or busy.

“You can minimize friction by focusing less on changing people and more on changing the conditions around them,” he says.

So, how can you ensure that desired behaviors become the most effortless? Matt takes an approach he calls Frictionless Change, which offers a structured, research-backed foundation for creating the right environment for sustained behavior change.

The Foundations of Frictionless Change

Regarding complex, systemic behavior and cultural changes, Matt argues, “Frictionless change isn’t being built on a blank piece of paper. We can and must stand on the shoulders of giants and existing research”.

He draws from four disciplines that shape our understanding of behavior and systems change to create an effective, scalable model for driving sustainable cultural transformation.

• Behavioral Science. A rich field of research that provides tools to predict and influence behavior by applying theories of habit formation, decision-making, and environmental triggers.
• Design Thinking. A discipline offering a roadmap for approaching complex changes with a user-centered perspective, ensuring that solutions are practical and actionable.
• Organizational Development. A framework that helps identify existing conditions within a company that can be leveraged to support new behaviors rather than attempting to overhaul the system entirely.
• Systems Thinking. An approach that enables us to visualize and solve problems across complex environments, ensuring that interventions consider all interdependent factors at play.

By integrating insights from these four disciplines, Matt offers a solid framework to help organizations and leaders shift behavior by changing the environment. “What that actually looks like pragmatically is typically three types of activities, which I call the Three Ds,” he notes.

The Frictionless Approach: Define, Design, Develop

Frictionless Change focuses on altering the structures and systems that influence behavior. This method consists of three core steps: Define, Design, and Develop (the Three Ds). These steps are practical and actionable, providing a clear roadmap for implementing sustainable culture change in your organization.

1. Define: Clarify What Change Looks Like

Organizations often set vague goals like “fostering a culture of innovation.” But what does that mean in concrete terms? The first step is to define behavior change goals clearly. Matt stresses that desired behaviors should be linked to business outcomes wherever possible so that it’s clear how and why those behaviors fit into the bigger picture.

Instead of abstract ambitions, companies must clearly define the specific behaviors they want to see in their workforce. For instance, rather than telling managers to “be more innovative,” they could make it more tangible and encourage them to “ask open-ended questions when others come to them with a challenge” or “proactively seek input from frontline employees.”

Defining these micro-behaviors makes change actionable. In addition, having specific outcomes in mind and establishing ways to monitor progress is a solid foundation for successful culture change.

2. Design: Create an Environment That Guides Behavior

People naturally choose the easiest option. Therefore, the goal is to make the right behaviors easier and the wrong behaviors harder. Sustainable change happens when the desired behavior is made obvious, effortless, and rewarding.

Matt shares an intriguing example from a London restaurant, Bob Bob Ricard, which sells more champagne than any other restaurant in Britain. Their secret? A simple button labeled “Press for Champagne” placed on every table. By removing the social friction of flagging down a server, they made ordering champagne irresistible. Matt explains, “When behavior is obvious, effortless, and rewarding, it becomes the natural choice. The champagne button removes hesitation, makes the action easy, and even adds an element of novelty and delight.”

A similar principle was applied in Colombia to combat an environmental issue. The Colombian government needed to reduce the population of invasive lionfish, which were damaging marine ecosystems. Rather than just educating people about the problem, they wove the desired behavior—eating lionfish—into existing cultural practices. By partnering with top chefs and Catholic institutions, they introduced lionfish into high-end restaurant menus and church gatherings, making it a normal and appealing dietary choice for Colombians. The success of this intervention demonstrated that embedding new behaviors into familiar environments increases adoption rates significantly.

Matt emphasizes that designing the right conditions for behavior change is highly context-specific. “You can’t apply a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, you need first to understand the context before you can deliver a solution that actually works.”

As part of the design stage of the Three Ds, Matt introduces a process that ensures interventions are tailored to the unique dynamics of each challenge:

• Explore: Map out the agreed outcomes, audience, and processes. This step focuses on understanding the current situation, uncovering what’s driving the behavior, and analyzing the environment. “You can’t solve a problem without understanding it first,” says Matt. Explore is about digging into the current situation to uncover what’s really happening and why.
• Target: Prioritize and define the specific behaviors to address. Identify the root causes of the target behaviors and narrow the focus to the most impactful elements. “Targeting is about being specific,” Matt explains. “You can’t tackle everything at once. Focus on the critical behaviors that will drive the change you want to see.”
• Design: Generate and select behavior change methods that make the desired behaviors obvious, effortless, and rewarding. This step combines creativity with behavioral science. “This is where you start shaping the solution. How do you make the right behavior the easiest choice?” asks Matt.
• Deliver: Pilot and roll out the intervention while continuously testing and iterating to refine the solution. “Deliver is about learning as you go. You test, refine, and adapt to make sure the solution sticks in the long term.”

By approaching behavior change design in this structured way, you ensure interventions are based on behavioral insights and real-world context. Businesses can apply these principles to make the preferred behavior the most straightforward choice and drive lasting change.

3. Develop: Equip People to Shape Their Own Systems

While environmental tweaks can drive change at an organizational level, individuals must also be empowered to create frictionless structures for themselves. Research on weight loss and habit formation reveals that the most successful behavioral changes stem from people designing their own systems. Whether it’s meal-prepping in advance or setting out workout clothes the night before, the fact that the person chose to do that themselves significantly impacts how successfully they stick to the new habit.

In a corporate context, this means helping employees design workflows that make desired behaviors easier. For example, if a company wants managers to give more regular feedback rather than relying on reminders or training, they could integrate feedback prompts into their project management systems to keep it top-of-mind.

A Mindset Shift: Change the Environment, Not Just the Individual

Cultural change efforts often fail because they rely on training or motivation, assuming people will naturally adjust their behavior. However, “People don’t resist change because they dislike it—they resist because it’s hard.”

The research shows that traditional methods often result in short-term outcomes, require excessive effort, and depend heavily on persuading skeptics. Moreover, the right thing to do is rarely the easiest option, which is why lasting change remains elusive.

On the other hand, the Frictionless Change approach addresses this challenge by redesigning environments to make desired behaviors easy, natural, and sustainable. It flips the script by embedding desired behaviors as the default choice. “Rather than trying to fight against human nature, we need to work with it,” Matt emphasizes.

Removing friction is key for those seeking meaningful and lasting change in an organizational setting. This approach simplifies actions, embeds behavioral cues, and creates structural nudges that naturally guide people toward the desired behaviors. Organizations can achieve long-term cultural transformation by defining specific actions, redesigning systems, and implementing personal behavior strategies without relying on fleeting motivation.