Culture Change is Leadership Development in Disguise: What a new study tells us about how to do organisational culture change better

At LIW, we always enjoy and value our work with the London School of Economics. Collaborating with the next generation of researchers and leaders brings fresh insight and energy into our practice, and we consistently gain deep value from the projects we support. This time round, we had the pleasure of working with Beatriz Hernandez and Lynical Ng, who explored how to remove the barriers to organisational culture change. Their work forms the basis of this blog, and we’re proud to share and reflect on their findings here.

Organisational culture change (OCC) is often described as elusive, slow, and difficult. This LSE dissertation confirms that reputation and offers a path through the complexity. Based on interviews with culture change practitioners across sectors, the study distils a compelling truth: successful culture change isn’t a standalone initiative. It is fundamentally a leadership challenge. Or more precisely, a leadership development challenge.

The study identifies a unified approach to OCC that resonates strongly with our own practice at LIW: change that is top-down led and bottom-up built, enabled by five key success factors: leadership, participation, communication, project management, and rewards.

In other words, real change doesn’t come from a plan. It comes from people. It’s not what you do to the culture, it’s how leaders at every level show up and invite others into a different way of thinking, relating, and working.

So how do you build the leadership required for culture change? Let’s look at what the study reveals and what we’ve learned from practice.

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1. Leadership is the lever, not the label

It’s not enough for leaders to sponsor a culture change program. They must embody it. The study surfaces a wide range of leadership roles: directing, role modelling, facilitating, enabling. Style matters too. Change works best when leaders can flex between transformational and servant leadership; when they are able to inspire belief and; create safe space for uncertainty.

This reflects a truth we see every day: the culture you get is the behaviour you reward, but also the behaviour your leaders tolerate, model, and practice. Leadership isn’t just a job function, it’s a way of being. And during change, it must be emotionally intelligent, grounded, and visible.

For HR and OD leaders, this means treating leadership development as a key driver of change, not an adjacent effort. If leaders can’t grow in the process, neither will the culture.

2. Participation isn’t a value-add. It’s the engine.

The old view of culture change was that it started in the boardroom. This study confirms a shift we’re seeing across the industry: participation is not just a step in implementation, it is the very foundation of legitimacy and momentum.

From the insight that employees should co-create the culture, to the emphasis on listening, psychological safety, and unlearning mental models, the study makes one thing clear: people don’t resist change. They resist change done to them.

Participation must start early, include multiple layers of the organisation, and enable genuine ownership. This isn’t about consultation theatre or crowd-sourced values posters. It’s about giving people the space and skills to shape the future they will be expected to live.

3. Communication is more than messaging

The study offers a refreshingly human take on communication. The most effective messages aren’t polished memos. They’re honest conversations. And the most trusted communicators aren’t always senior leaders. They’re often middle managers, peers, or local influencers who can translate change into context.

Communication in culture change must do three things: make meaning, reduce fear, and build connection. And it must go both ways.

We were glad to see storytelling and metaphor named as enablers. These are not just ‘nice to haves’, they are some of the most powerful tools for translating strategic intent into felt experience.

4. Project management matters more than you think

It’s easy to assume culture is too intangible to manage. But the study affirms that structure matters. Culture change requires preparation (diagnostics, stakeholder mapping), implementation (clear priorities, agile delivery), and evaluation (both qualitative and quantitative).

Project management creates the scaffolding for behaviour change. It helps organisations pace the work, monitor the energy, and hold leaders accountable.

Our experience backs this: when change lacks structure, it loses credibility. When it’s over-structured, it loses life. The key is disciplined flexibility.

5. Rewards reinforce the real message

Finally, the study underscores the role of rewards in making change stick. This includes both formal mechanisms (e.g. KPIs, incentives) and informal signals (recognition, rituals, artefacts).

What gets recognised gets repeated. If collaboration is praised in comms but punished in targets, people won’t buy the story. Real alignment means rewarding the behaviours and mindsets the future culture requires.

The most insightful finding? That consistent, meaningful rewards from senior leaders send a powerful message. However, they must be backed by systems and structures that don’t contradict them.

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Culture change isn’t mysterious. But it is human.

The LSE dissertation offers a hopeful, grounded roadmap for culture change. Its key contribution is not a brand-new model, but a clear affirmation of what works: participation, emotional intelligence, leadership at all levels.

From our perspective, this reinforces a simple truth we return to often: leadership development is culture change. When leaders grow, cultures evolve. When leaders connect, people contribute. And when leadership becomes everyone’s responsibility, change no longer relies on a rollout plan.

It becomes real.

If you would like to know more about the research or the work we do here at LIW, please reach out.