Tools ≠ Transform Companies. Cultures do.
Companies are pouring millions into AI tools and training programmes. By the time the rollout finishes, the technology has already moved on.
The advantage is not in the platforms. It is in the culture. An organisation that moves at software speed is the only one that keeps pace. ⚡
Change starts at the top
That pace of change puts the spotlight on leadership. Technology will not slow down, so the question is whether leaders set a culture that can keep up.
Change always starts with the CEO. If the chief executive treats adaptability as optional, the organisation will too. When they make it non-negotiable, cultures shift fast. Leaders set the pace and the culture follows.
Satya Nadella understood this at Microsoft. His mantra was simple: "Don't be a know-it-all, be a learn-it-all." This was not a slogan, it was a signal from the top that experimentation and learning mattered more than certainty. The result was a company that grew from $300 billion to over $3 trillion by making adaptability its reflex.
That was leadership from the top. But sustainable culture change requires more than CEO commitment. It needs systematic building blocks that work together.
When culture fails, and when it wins
One company built what seemed like the perfect solution: a sandbox with dozens of AI tools, continually updated, with no approvals and complete freedom to explore. It was the best I had seen. Yet only a handful kept using it. What was missing was not more tools, but the cultural foundation for adoption at scale. ⚡ Even the best infrastructure fails without clear incentives, leadership direction and shared purpose.
"At pace, you need people who fuel the journey, not drag it back."
At another business, I saw an office marked for closure become the most profitable it had ever been within six months. The strategy did not change. The clients did not change. The culture did. When change happens fast, you need people who fuel the journey, not drag it back. We focused ruthlessly on energy givers over energy sappers. High potential with positive energy accelerated progress. High performance with poor attitude would have killed the momentum we needed.
The building blocks of adaptive culture
Culture eats tools for breakfast. The companies thriving in an AI-first market are not the ones with bigger tool budgets. They are the ones with cultures built to change.
When I work with senior leadership teams, three building blocks show up again and again. They either work together or not at all: Capital, Courage and Culture.
Capital means investing before you are forced to. Create safe spaces to experiment, simple ways to measure progress, and bring in people who think beyond today's brief. At one client, we ring-fenced 5% of budget purely for experiments with no business case required. Within months, one pilot uncovered a breakthrough that scaled globally.
Courage means making adaptability a career expectation, not an optional extra. I have seen organisations where promotion criteria explicitly included adaptability and curiosity. It sent a clear signal that standing still was not an option.
Culture is where adaptability becomes lived behaviour. It shows up when people anticipate client needs before they are voiced, and when teams are celebrated for experimenting rather than waiting to be told. The strongest cultures reward people for spotting problems early and testing fixes, even if the first attempt fails.
Get these three right, and adaptability stops being a slogan. It becomes your organisation's reflex and the reason clients pay a premium to stay with you.
"Culture eats tools for breakfast."
The evidence is clear
Adaptive cultures consistently outperform.
NVIDIA has reinvented itself multiple times, from graphics chips to gaming GPUs to the backbone of the AI economy. CEO Jensen Huang focuses on creating the conditions for people to do their life's work. That leadership has created a culture of reinvention that drove a 28-fold increase in market value over the past five years.
IDEO's culture of fail fast, learn faster became the foundation of design thinking, now adopted worldwide. Teams were empowered to scrap projects and start again when the evidence pointed elsewhere. What looked wasteful to others became their engine of innovation.
PMG won 30 new accounts in 2024 and maintained 83% client retention by building a culture of continuous optimisation, not just deploying better tools. Teams are trained to test relentlessly, learn what works and discard what does not. It is culture, not tools, that turns a platform into performance.
Amazon offers proof at scale. Its "Day 1" culture was not a slogan, it was a system. Principles like "Bias for Action" and "Invent and Simplify" built an environment where reinvention was the expectation, not the exception. That culture created AWS, Prime and Alexa — category-defining products that reshaped entire markets.
The stakes are real
The rewards are real, and so are the risks.
Agency margins have collapsed from 25-35% to about 17% while three in four multinational advertisers are rethinking how they work with partners. This pressure is not limited to agencies. Private equity firms consistently pay premiums for companies with cultures built to change, because they can deploy capital faster and pivot strategies without resistance. They are buying your ability to capitalise on market shifts rather than be diminished by them. ⚡
McKinsey research shows companies with top-quartile cultures deliver 60% higher returns to shareholders than median companies and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile. The market is already rewarding organisations that bring Capital, Courage and Culture together, while punishing those that do not.
The choice ahead
Tools will keep changing faster than any company can train for. The only way to keep pace is to build adaptive cultures.
That is a leadership responsibility that cannot be delegated. CEOs and senior leaders set the tone. If they treat adaptability as optional, the organisation will too. If they make it non-negotiable, the culture follows.
Three actions matter most:
Invest early. Build the capital to experiment and measure before you are forced to.
Set expectations. Make courage and adaptability conditions for progression, not optional extras.
Reward behaviours. Celebrate people who anticipate needs and try new approaches, even if the first attempt fails.
The real question is whether today's leaders are ready to take that responsibility.
The winners won't be those with the biggest AI budgets. They'll be those whose leaders make adaptability their reflex and culture their competitive edge. 💡
Tags: #AdaptiveCulture #OrganisationalTransformation #CultureChange #FutureOfWork #BusinessAdaptation #TransformationStrategy
Originally published on LinkedIn on 17 September 2025.
