Anton Schneerson is a former CEO and advisor with over a decade in M&A, industrial transformation and complex global operations.
“We’ve done it this way for a couple of decades.”
That’s not an excuse. It’s a warning sign and a symptom of something deeper: When cultures prize consistency over agility, they slowly lose the capacity to respond or reinvent.
In many engineered industrial and manufacturing companies, especially in countries like Germany, Japan or Switzerland, I’ve found this mindset can run deep. Predictability becomes purpose and order becomes pride. However, pride, left unchecked, becomes the biggest barrier to transformation.
If you lead in these environments, particularly in mid-size companies with a few hundred employees, you’re not just managing operations. You’re inheriting decades of behavioral code and the quiet fear of breaking it. You need more than vision; you need cultural literacy to crack the code.
But change isn’t easy. In many organizations, systems are built around precision, planning and engineering excellence. These are cultures that don’t do well with ambiguity or untested paths. This is often called “uncertainty avoidance,” a concept originally introduced by Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede that describes how comfortable a society is with change.
If you fail to understand how culture avoids uncertainty, your efforts to drive transformation will stall before they begin. Especially if you’re younger or stepping into a culture you didn’t grow up in, understanding cultural dynamics is critical. For me, as a Ukrainian leading operations hands-on in executive roles in plants in Germany and France for years, often working directly with workers’ councils, learning cultural literacy wasn’t optional. It was the difference between traction and pushback.
Trust takes presence, not micromanagement.
In mid-size industrial companies, presence is everything. I’ve often heard, “Micromanagement is bad.” But when you’re managing change or leading through crisis or transition, being consistently present isn’t an interference; it’s commitment.
I’m not talking about symbolic leadership—but real leadership. That means walking the floor, sitting in on shift briefings, watching how products move from drawing to delivery and listening when things go wrong. A lot of CEOs don’t spend enough time on the edge of the business. That’s not because they don’t care but because the calendar stacks up. I believe that mistake happens more often than many leaders admit. But in places where people avoid uncertainty, trust doesn’t build from afar.
Be present. Be patient. Go where the product gets made and where relationships live. You’re not there to supervise. You’re there to understand and get into the rhythm. That’s where culture starts to move: not through slogans, but through shared momentum.
Diversity isn’t cosmetic; it’s collaborative.
Resistance in high-structure organizations doesn’t come from apathy. It’s baked into the way things run. To unlock change, you don’t have to flip everything upside down. You need a few key allies—people who know how critical points work but want to build something better.
Find them. Build with them. More importantly, listen to them. The right internal voices can challenge assumptions and shift thinking in ways that strategy alone can’t. That’s where things start to shift. If I could recommend one thing to my younger self, it would be this: Don’t assume logic will win. In legacy cultures, trust opens more doors than strategy ever will.
Diversity isn’t a branding exercise. It’s practical. When you bring in different perspectives across gender, background and nationality—and actually back them with training and clarity—you get energy where there used to be routine.
Promote from within when you can. Internal leaders already have trust, and trust is the currency of change.
Transformation breaks beneath the surface.
It’s easy to assume that once the executive team’s aligned, you’re good. But in legacy organizations, things often stall deeper down in the layers with the most embedded knowledge. This is where uncertainty avoidance really builds up. And as you go deeper, hierarchy gets stronger, too. In many of these same cultures, hierarchy isn’t questioned; it’s expected. That slows feedback, blocks open conversations and makes it harder for change to reach the ground floor.
This is another reason why it’s important for leaders to be present. Being on site isn’t a threat; it’s a signal. And it can allow you to create a real safe space where people can admit mistakes without fear. These realizations didn’t come on day one. They came the hard way—through real missteps—so let your team share and learn from them.
The slowest part of change happens where knowledge is oldest. Flattening hierarchy isn’t a slogan. It’s a method. Cut the blockers. Create loops. Bring in workers’ councils or unions as partners, not just brakes.
Culture moves when people feel seen, safe and part of something real. That starts with trust. And trust? That takes time and the willingness to go where most leaders don’t: into the quiet, uncomfortable middle of the organization where change either dies or begins.
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