Too right. This company had survived a close encounter with a hostile suitor a couple of years before I showed up, and surviving as an independent company forced out most of the deadwood and forced those remaining to take a good, hard look at how and why they did things. Only a very small number of the companies I’ve worked with over the years would even try to do that.

As you say, it has to be baked into the corporate culture. But it can be done.