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Episode 99

Transforming Your Organization by Overcoming the 75% Failure Rate

May 7, 2025

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Transforming Your Organization by Overcoming the 75% Failure Rate

Episode 99

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Featured Guests

D

Dr. David White

Founder
Culture Logics | Former Director of People & Org. Capability at Microsoft
David is a partner at Culture Logics, a boutique consultancy focused on culture, leadership and change. Prior to this he was a founding partner Ontos Global. As he has for over three decades, he is dedicated to helping organizations manage and sustain transformation. From 2003 until 2010 he was Director of Talent and Organizational Capability at Microsoft, where he led the development of an integrated platform for people management and leadership development. This competency, career path and key experiences platform was deployed to 100,000 people worldwide.

Show Notes

Ever wonder why 75% of major organizational transformations fail? Dr. David White, cognitive anthropologist and transformation expert, reveals the hidden dynamics blocking your company's change efforts.

Most leaders approach transformation by focusing on people: hiring new talent, reorganizing departments, or implementing top-down mandates. Yet the real barriers to change lie in what Dr. White calls "dominant logics" - the deeply embedded ways of thinking that have driven your organization's past success but now actively block its evolution.

These dominant logics aren't abstractions - they manifest in concrete business practices. Your budgeting processes, strategic planning methods, meeting structures, and decision-making frameworks all quietly reinforce the status quo, making transformation nearly impossible without systemic intervention.

Through fascinating examples, Dr. White explains how risk-averse cultures might excel in quality control while suffocating innovation, or how customer-centric organizations can become trapped in patterns that prevent necessary pivots. The paradox? The very dominant logics that created your success now prevent you from adapting to changing market conditions.

Transformation requires more than surface-level changes. Dr. White outlines how organizations must map their entire system of practices, identify where dominant logics are helpful versus harmful, and develop leadership teams capable of implementing sustainable change. This isn't a quick fix - it demands patience, objectivity, and the willingness to examine practices leaders themselves may have created and championed.

Whether you're navigating digital transformation, implementing AI, scaling rapidly, or managing a merger, this episode provides crucial insights into why your smart, experienced team keeps hitting invisible barriers. Discover how to diagnose your organization's cultural DNA and craft transformation strategies that actually stick.

Visit https://www.culture-logics.com/ to connect with Dr. White, or explore his book "Disrupting Corporate Culture" for deeper insights into breaking through organizational barriers to change.

About the Multifamily Innovation® Council:

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The Multifamily Innovation® Council is for Multifamily Business leaders who want to unlock value inside their organization so they can create better experiences and drive profitability inside their company.

To learn more or to join, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com.

For more information and to engage with leaders shaping the future of multifamily innovation, visit https://multifamilyinnovation.com/.

Connect:
Multifamily Innovation® Council: https://multifamilyinnovation.com/
Patrick Antrim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickantrim/

Topics Covered

multifamily innovation
dominant logics

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