--- title: "Culture Transformation: Why is it still one of the priorities?" description: "Culture transformation in business - leadership establishes the vision and the mandate for a cultural change: then a miracle happens!" --- [Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights](https://insights.btoes.com) # [Culture Transformation: Why is it still one of the priorities?](https://insights.btoes.com/why-is-culture-transformation-still-a-priority-for-operational-excellence) Written by [Ricardo Estok](https://insights.btoes.com/author/ricardo-estok) | Jan 11, 2018, 4:07:00 PM ***In this time of continuous disruption and innovation, [The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends](https://insights.btoes.com/grab-your-copy-global-state-of-operational-excellence-2017-industry-report) found that Culture Transformation is, for the 2nd year in a row, the number 1 most pressing issue for OpEx practitioners.*** # **[Cultural transformation](https://insights.btoes.com/resources/operational-excellence-and-company-culture-transformation) -** Leadership establishes the vision and the mandate for a cultural change: then a miracle happens! **Research shows it takes seven years to shift a company’s culture.** Also, research continues to show that **70% of enterprise-wide initiatives fail to achieve their intent**. The question then is not what to do. It is what to do different, and what not to do. The Johnson Controls Manufacturing Excellence Transformation strategy and deployment [**took a top honor at the BTOES awards in March 2017**](https://insights.btoes.com/four-foundations-the-johnson-controls-manufacturing-system). We began the transformational journey in 2013, and in 4 years, we achieved significant sustained achievements across more than 125 global facilities. These achievements included **exceeded target improvement** in year over year (YOY) conversion costs. Some examples of yearly improvements include:  **22 percent reduction in safety recordables, 12 percent improvement in quality, 3X increase in energy saving projects and 2X internal measures of customer satisfaction**, among other key performance indicators (KPIs). The key success factor is shifting the **way of thinking and acting of all employees**: - **From pockets of excellence *to* one common way of operating** - **From targeting outcomes *to* ensure robust processes (not procedures) are in place based on the voice of operations and ensuring the ‘what is it in for them’** - **From a lagging metric based system *to* leading metrics driving results** - **From corporate pushing cultural programs *to* the business teams developing and owning strategies embedded into daily operations** - **From hallway posters including tag lines on changing culture *to* visual factories driving behaviors** - **From compliance *to* measurable empowerment, where employees are proud and capable of identifying issues, problem solving and improving performance day-in and day-out** So far this year, more than 30,000 shop-floor employees are part of High Performance Teams, over 350 Plant Champions are certified in the manufacturing system including Plant Managers. Globally, 250 subject matter experts are equipped to coach plant teams, **more than 250,000 training sessions have been completed** and **employee retention has improved by 68 percent** as an example of yearly improvements. Leaders are role-modeling behaviors and ‘walking the talk’ of the transformation. They demonstrate these behaviors because the transformation is proving to be a robust foundation for sustained value delivery.      ***For additional information, please contact Ricardo Estok, at [francisco.ricardo.estok@JCI.com](http://francisco.ricardo.estok@JCI.com), or download the full report below:*** *******[The Global State of Operational Excellence: Critical Challenges & Future Trends](https://insights.btoes.com/grab-your-copy-global-state-of-operational-excellence-2017-industry-report)seeks to understand the most crucial issues, priorities and successes faced by OpEx Practitioners in 2017. We’ve compiled the responses of hundreds of Operational Excellence practitioners to offer key insights into the state of Operational Excellence, including measures of success, the greatest developments, and much more in the following report.*** **About the Author** Ricardo Estok, has over 20 years of experience driving sustainable Operations, Commercial and Business Excellence Transformations. He has multicultural and functional experience at global companies in the US and LA, including Johnson Controls, S.C. Johnson, Abbott and Pepsi. Currently, his role is as the Enterprise Principle Leader, Global Manufacturing Operations & Council at Johnson Controls Inc. **[Follow Ricardo on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-estok-04524218)** [View full post](https://insights.btoes.com/why-is-culture-transformation-still-a-priority-for-operational-excellence) ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Ricardo Estok" }, "dateModified" : "2018-01-11T16:22:29.996Z", "datePublished" : "2018-01-11T16:07:00Z", "headline" : "Culture Transformation: Why is it still one of the priorities?", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 722, "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/480025/Screenshot%202017-12-12%2012.21.21.png", "width" : 1482 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://insights.btoes.com/why-is-culture-transformation-still-a-priority-for-operational-excellence", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 60, "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png", "width" : 60 }, "name" : "BTOES Insights" } } ```