A client recently told me they needed more time to make changes happen. We were partway through an industry-defining transformation, working face-to-face every four to six weeks because our research consistently shows this cadence delivers the most sustainable behavior change. Between sessions, leaders apply what we agreed in the previous one, and we measure progress by what they actually do, not by what they intended.
The Conversation That Sparked This Article
The exchange was short and revealing. The client wanted to push the next session out by a few extra weeks, perhaps a month. My response was direct. If we book the meeting now, it will already be five weeks since we last met. So how much time do you actually need? My honest answer to my own question is the punch line of this article: if behaviors are not changing in four weeks, they will not change in 100 weeks.
That sounds blunt. It is meant to. The premise that culture takes years to shift is one of the most expensive ideas in modern leadership. It gives everyone permission to defer the very behaviors that constitute the change.
Behavior Can Shift Immediately. Systems Take Longer.
Let’s separate two things that often get conflated. Processes, technology, structures, reporting lines, policies, and contracts will not change overnight. Those have legitimate lead times. The behavior of the people inside those systems is a different question. People can show up differently tomorrow morning. The only thing they need is the willingness to do it.
Effective change does not require perfection. It does not require an enterprise-wide rollout. It does not need to wait for permission from a steering committee. By changing your mindset, you can change your behavior, and changed behavior is what produces new results. Everything else follows that, not the other way around.
Why Leaders Default to “We Need More Time”
In an increasingly complex world, leaders feel pulled to evolve faster while also feeling protective of their teams’ bandwidth. Asking for more time can look responsible. In practice, it often hands away personal power. We wait for other people to redesign the work or rewrite the rules so that change becomes easier. While we wait, the day-to-day pressures absorb our attention and the moment passes.
Gone are the days when coloring within the lines was a winning strategy. The more useful question is whether the lines are still relevant. If they are not, the right move is usually to ignore them and act on the new behavior anyway.
A Useful Mental Model: The Time Machine Test
When clients hesitate, I offer them a thought experiment. Imagine I had a time machine and could fast forward to the end of the next session. At that point, every leader in the room would tell you the session was powerful and impactful, and that you should have held it sooner. Knowing that to be true, what reason is there to delay?
It is easy from the outside to see beyond the immediate pressures and recognize that the change has to happen anyway. It is harder from the inside, where the calendar is full and the noise is loud. The job of an honest advisor is to name what is true even when it is uncomfortable.
What Actually Happens When Leaders Stop Waiting
The leaders who decide to act now, rather than wait for cleaner conditions, tend to surprise themselves. The behavioral shift unlocks faster than they expected. Their teams respond to the shift faster than they expected. The structural changes that originally felt blocking turn out to be more flexible once the people inside the structures start operating differently.
A few things make this easier to put into practice:
- Decide on the new behavior in concrete terms, not as an aspiration.
- Hold the next conversation now rather than waiting for a better moment.
- Treat the time between sessions as the actual change window, not a holding pattern.
- Accept that imperfect action this week beats a polished plan next quarter.
What This Means for Leaders
Culture change does not have to take years. It takes a decision and the willingness to act on it before the conditions feel comfortable. The brave move is rarely the dramatic one. It is choosing to behave differently in the next meeting, the next conversation, the next email.
The companies that compound an advantage on culture are not the ones with the most polished change plans. They are the ones whose leaders stopped waiting for permission and started showing up differently tomorrow. If behaviors really are not changing in four weeks, the answer is not more time. It is a different decision.