How can one change a culture--or do they end up compromising or leaving?

Profound question. New babies get two big "gifts:" a set of genes and a set of VABEs  that begin to be imprinted on them, deeply, from ages 0 to 6-10. (Depending on the developmental psychologists that you read.) We can think of genetics as our "hardware," early childhood programming as our "firmware," and adult thinking as our "software." The simple test is this: If we had been born in a different region of the world would our worldview be different? Of course, and dramatically so.

I surveyed informally all the participants in my worldwide seminars on every continent except Antarctica about degrees of human habituality, mindless repetitions. At Level One Visible Behavior the average answer was 75%. At Level Two the way people think the average answer was 85%. At Level Three VABEs the average answer was 95%+ usually 100%. If these perceptions of managers worldwide are even modestly accurate, humans tend to be LARGELY creatures of habit.

This is true even among the scientific community. Consider deductive vs inductive logic. Deduction begins with a conclusion and searches for data that fits or forces data to fit. Induction begins with data and infers patterns and conclusions. The vast majority of people think deductively based on their childhood VABEs. Kahneman got a Nobel Prize for identifying this phenomenon, something we in LOB understood long since. In short, VABEs trump data. (Pun intended) People make serious decisions based on their VABEs. See for example, Fast Thinking, Slow Thinking by Kahneman and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. In the latter, the scientists who looked for data to fit their VABEs literally had to die off before the new paradigm (sun vs earth revolving and Newton vs Einstein) was broadly accepted. Creatures of habit.

Having lived deeply in that deductive world for 48 years, I had a mid-life crisis and started over again with "data first." I concluded as does Csikszentmihalyi in The Evolving Self that the vast majority of people live and die simply perpetuating their genes and VABEs, passing the last generation on to the next. Look at Northern Ireland. Central Africa (Ruanda and Burundi, Hutu's and Tutsi's.) India/Pakistan. Croatia/Serbia. China/Tibet. Pick your favorite place. Charlottesville even.

Culture is a set of shared VABEs. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. (Ford Motor Company) People who live "outside-in" allow their surrounding cultures to guide them--what's okay, what's not? We all need to "fit in" to some extent. We conform because of the fear of rejection. A small minority of people live "inside-out" asserting their point of view on the culture around them. The vast majority simply replicate like viral shells. The #1 question in life is IMO: "will you ever be anything more than a viral shell transmitting the genes and VABEs of previous generations on to the next?" In my informal surveys, that few is about 0-25% only. I believe true leaders live about 75% inside-out, not outside-in in the main. Egocentric narcissists are more like 90%+ inside-out.  

Changing VABEs is very difficult. People CAN change AND the odds are low. Change is NOT easy. I went to the brink of death before becoming willing to change my core VABEs. I see worldwide BILLIONS of people who believe deeply in the mountains of mythological rubbish represented in the world's major scriptures -- all of which I have read. These documents are full of imagined answers to "mysterious" phenomena that people at the time did not understand.  

Seeing Larry Sabato taking on the Constitution in his book 23 Ways to Improve the Constitution emboldened me. So I wrote after retiring A Song of Humanity: a Science-Based Alternative to the World's Scriptures "simply" to provide an alternative to those millennia of compiled mythological answers to phenomena earlier humans did not understand. Presumptuous yes. AND I wish every child worldwide would read it. 

What do we know about the world from an INDUCTIVE point of view rather than a DEDUCTIVE point of view as taught us when we were defenseless children? I encourage people to live more inside-out and less outside-in. Executives manage their cultures whether they realize it or not. We all "represent" our cultures even mindlessly and habitually. In the end, it's all about VABEs.

SOME organizations include a VABE about reviewing and examining their VABEs.  One can have an influence on this kind of organization.  And if "reviewing our VABEs and changing to adapt to the world around us" is NOT a part of an organization's culture, the odds of one person changing it are very low. 

Some ways that one can affect an existing culture include:   

1. Identifying the existing VABEs and bringing the dysfunctional ones to people's attention.  See Ed Schein's work in Leadership and Organizational Culture.
2. Hiring different people--slow process and has an impact over decades.
3. Challenging the VABEs of senior managers.  If they are open to it, great, if not, your chicken head just got cut off.  Pioneers also get a lot of arrows in their chests.  
4. Historically, unions provided some protection from exploitation.  They became their own form of authoritarian abuse.  
5. Organizing peaceful demonstrations to bring the dysfunctional VABEs to light. Best examples of course are Gandhi and King.  
6. Demonstrating the cost of ignoring the dysfunctional VABEs.
7. Highlighting the dysfunctional VABEs to the HR department.  HR in Japan has a big influence; HR influence in the US varies widely.
8. Whistleblowing is another avenue and in resistant-to-change cultures, a dangerous one.

Becoming aware of a culture (identifying its dominant VABEs), managing a culture, and leading a culture are vital aspects of modern executive management.  Many executives still resist or ignore this responsibility often because they subscribe to the "maximize profits" VABE.  

IMO, the maximize profits VABE is a derelict and immoral one--because historically that motive has caused businesses to abuse the Commons--the things we share namely air, water, soil, flora, fauna, and underprivileged Others. I much prefer a core principle of "maximizing sustainable profits" meaning that businesses manage in a way to protect the Commons rather than abuse it.  The world is so interconnected now that we ignore the impact of the profit maximization VABE at our own peril. Sadly, throughout history, Homo Sapiens tend to take a short-term view and abuse the Commons until it collapses around us.  

In the end, it's all about VABEs.  And managing the collections of shared VABEs, cultures, remains a central and critical task for every person and especially every executive.