A Roadmap For Next Generation Of Leaders Driving Culture-First Change

 
The transformative success of everything today’s leaders are driving – including AI (Artificial Intelligence) – will be determined not by whether they are “good” or “bad,” but by whether their organization’s culture embraces them. 

Decades of failed efforts prove that successful change can’t be mandated. That’s what Phil Gilbert believes and professes.

 
“Change is a product, not a mandate,” says Gilbert. “Transform your initiative into a desirable offering that teams choose to adopt rather than an edict they’re forced to follow. Your organization is the market, and every project team is a potential customer who must be convinced that your approach will solve their problems better than the status quo. This product-centered mindset creates voluntary adoption that spreads organically.” 

This proven approach to making transformations is something people run toward, not away from. You’ll learn how this happens in Gilbert’s new book, Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success. 

Gilbert isn’t just theorizing. As General Manager of Design at IBM, he boldly led one of the largest and most formidable transformations in corporate history – fundamentally changing how nearly 400,000 employees worked, without ever mandating a thing, according to Gilbert. 

In the book, Gilbert reveals how to make change as desirable as any premium brand, scale it globally across tens of thousands, and make it stick, embedded so deeply it becomes the new normal.  

Plus, you’ll learn cultural exercises like how to:  

• Navigate today’s empowered and increasingly skeptical workforce, who resist top-down mandates and crave autonomy, clarity, and meaning. 
  
• Get buy-in for change – the biggest challenge that holds back even the most ambitious initiatives – by proving its value, not evangelizing its benefits. 
  
• Treat change like a high-stakes product, deserving of the same resources and rigor as your most successful business lines. 

“Most change efforts fail because they treat transformation as a quick fix – a new tool, a new process – rather than what it truly is: a cultural shift,” adds Gilbert. 

Therefore, Gilbert recommends that you create a distinct brand identity for your change program to distinguish it from other corporate initiatives. And, that you infuse it with values that make it desirable, even coveted. 

In addition, he explains that success depends not simply on how well people understand the new change, but also on how thoroughly the organization’s systems and processes reinforce it. 

Finally, Gilbert suggests that leaders focus communications on authentic firsthand accounts from team members rather than visionary proclamations from program leaders. That is because team members’ genuine enthusiasm carries more credibility than any management messaging, especially when they describe real improvements to their work and careers. 

Part-memoir, part-field guide, Irresistible Change replaces outdated “change management” thinking with a startup-inspired culture-first approach that has already reshaped global companies, military institutions, and creative teams alike. 

Irresistible Change is an essential roadmap for the next generation of change leaders in organizations of any size. 

Phil Gilbert 

Gilbert shares these additional insights with us: 

Question: Why do most change efforts fail, and what’s the one shift that makes all the difference? 

Gilbert:

They treat change as a mandate, not a choice. Compliance isn’t adoption – rarely leads to the outcomes the mandate is meant to address. Behavior change that matters only happens when people have agency.

They focus on tools, not culture. Whether it’s AI, agile, or design thinking, the tool becomes the headline instead of the outcomes, values and behaviors that make it stick.

The shift that matters: Treat change like a premium product. Design it so people want to adopt it – because it makes their work better – not because they’ve been told to. This means giving teams the option to participate and having them pay for the privilege of joining the program.
 
Question: What are the biggest mistakes companies make when launching a change initiative? 

Gilbert:

Starting with the wrong teams. Too often leaders choose “tiger teams” or innovation groups stacked with stars. They may produce flashy pilots, but they don’t represent the real culture – so nothing spreads. Start with mainstream teams working on some of the highest profile problems.

Enablement vs. adoption. Traditional training programs focused on individuals, and using generic exercises don’t move the needle. So “butts in seats” is a useless metric to evaluate how the program is spreading. Instead, focus on getting a few teams to adopt the behaviors, then let them tell their stories in their own words.

Worrying about scale before you know barriers. Work with just a few teams to begin with. Learn about external barriers to continued adoption: legacy tooling and HR systems, for example. It’s the old “go slow to move fast” dynamic. 

Question: What’s the very first step someone should take to make change feel irresistible? 

Gilbert:

Find a product person, not a SME, to lead the effort. You need an accountable business team, not just an expert in the new tool or method.

Name it. Give the change a brand that feels bigger than the tool or method. At IBM, we called our program “Hallmark,” not “design thinking.” Then we filled the Hallmark brand with all the intentions and values we wanted to convey. It also gives you permission to change the things around the headline tool, which doesn’t happen when you’re laser focused on the new tool.

But #1: Pick the right initial teams. Start with intact, mainstream teams – not one-off “tiger teams.” Their success proves the change is taking root in the core business. Just as important, they’ll expose the cultural and system-level barriers that special teams–by design – are often shielded from.
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Gilbert is best known for leading IBM's 21^st century transformation as their General Manager of Design. After selling his third startup to IBM in 2010, he was asked by IBM in 2012 to use design thinking, coupled with agile, to update how IBM's teams worked. The transformation became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, the documentary film The Loop, and feature articles in the New York Times and Fortune Magazine.  

His 45-year career spans startups, large corporations, and board memberships, where he has led organizations ranging from solo ventures to those with 400,000 employees.

  
Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.