Is "Culture Change" the IBS of the Organisational World?
“Culture change” is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot. It's cited as the solution to just about every organisational problem going. Disengaged staff? - culture change. Compliance failures? - culture change. Racism, scandals, poor leadership, inefficiency, resistance, siloed teams? You guessed it - culture change.
Rob Briner, Professor of Organisational Psychology and a leading advocate for evidence-based management, recently shared a striking post highlighting seventeen vastly different organisational problems — each met with the same proposed solution: culture change. He rightly challenges the logic of this, questioning whether we really know what we mean by culture, whether we can measure it reliably, and whether there’s enough robust evidence to justify its place as the default answer to such varied and complex challenges.
And he’s got a point. It’s become something of a magic word. A catch-all. A label we use when we know something is wrong, but we’re struggling to define exactly what.
Personal parallel
It reminded me of something I’ve been going through on a more personal level, with my cat.
It started with him throwing up almost daily (sorry for the graphic description, but it will make sense soon). His appetite was huge, but he kept losing weight. He was going to the toilet constantly, and nothing we tried made a difference. What followed was two years of trips back and forth to the vet, multiple scans, two operations to biopsy his intestines, and a fair amount of worry and speculation, including the possibility of cancer.
Despite all the tests and procedures, no definitive answers emerged. Eventually, the diagnosis came: IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). He was prescribed steroids, which have helped ease the vomiting and slow the weight loss, but many of the original symptoms remain.
The diagnosis didn’t fix the problem. But it gave us somewhere to start. A label. A language to talk about something we could see and feel, even if we still didn’t fully understand it.
And that’s when it struck me: “culture change” in organisations often plays the same role as an IBS diagnosis in medicine.
The IBS analogy
In healthcare, Irritable Bowel Syndrome is what clinicians turn to when they’ve ruled out all the obvious causes but symptoms persist. It’s a genuine condition, but it’s broad, often ill-defined, and frequently a diagnosis of exclusion. There’s no single test or root cause. Just a cluster of ongoing symptoms that don’t resolve easily.
That’s remarkably similar to how “culture” is used in organisations.
When things feel off, trust is low, behaviours are out of sync, values aren’t being lived - it’s common to point to culture as the root cause. But the concept itself is often vague, inconsistently measured, and subject to endless interpretation. Like IBS, culture is real, but the way we talk about it can be frustratingly imprecise.
Why we still use these labels
Despite all that, both labels persist. And for good reason.
In medicine, a diagnosis like IBS can be reassuring. It acknowledges that something is genuinely wrong, even if we can’t pin it down. It creates a shared understanding and allows for a management plan, however imperfect.
In organisations, “culture” serves a similar function. It gives leaders and teams a way to talk about hidden dynamics, interpersonal tensions, and the emotional undercurrents of working life. It's often the only socially acceptable language we have for naming dysfunction, misalignment, or moral unease.
So while it’s easy to criticise the overuse of “culture change,” it’s also understandable. It offers coherence when everything feels messy. It helps us say, “we don’t quite know what this is, but we know it matters.”
From labels to specifics
The challenge is not to reject these labels entirely, but to use them as a prompt, not a prescription.
As a psychologist working with teams and organisations, I’ve had to gently shift many clients from talking about “culture” in broad terms to exploring the specific dynamics and psychological mechanisms underpinning the symptoms they’re observing. This is the essence of an evidence-based approach: working back from the observable issues and identifying what’s actually driving them.
It’s not always a comfortable shift - it requires slowing down, asking specific questions, and sometimes letting go of popular narratives. But it’s where real, targeted change begins.
What do we actually mean by culture in this situation? What behaviours are we observing? What systems or power structures might be driving those behaviours? What psychological or social processes are involved? And crucially, what does the evidence tell us about how to influence them?
This is where evidence-based practice comes in. The Center for Evidence Based Management (CEBMa) champions an approach grounded in:
Clearly defining the problem
Drawing on multiple sources of evidence (research, data, practitioner expertise, stakeholder experience)
Testing assumptions
Running small, adaptive experiments that can inform better decisions.
Final Thoughts
Culture matters. It shapes how people feel, behave, and interact. But we need to stop treating “culture change” as a cure-all and start treating it more like a working hypothesis - something to explore, define, and respond to thoughtfully.
Just as a good vet wouldn’t stop at “IBS” without continuing to monitor, question, and adapt treatment, responsible organisational practitioners shouldn’t stop at “culture” without digging deeper into what’s really going on.
The label might offer a starting point. But it’s what we do next that determines whether real change actually happens.
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