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You Can’t Declare a Culture Into Existence. You Have to Build One

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You Can’t Declare a Culture Into Existence. You Have to Build One

Nuveen’s CEO has the right instinct about culture.But “listen and learn” is a sentiment, not a behavior.

Nuveen just closed its $13.1 billion acquisition of Schroders, the 222-year-old British asset manager. The deal pushes Nuveen into the top 10 global asset managers, with $2.6 trillion under management.

The headline is the money. The more interesting part is what CEO Bill Huffman said about culture. After more than 10 acquisitions, he has a clear view of how most mergers go wrong. The acquirer walks in, decides it knows better, and starts making everything its way. His alternative is simple. The first job after a deal is listening and learning, “Right? Not telling.”

Not because Huffman doesn’t mean it. Because a cultural declaration, no matter how sincere, doesn’t tell anyone what to do differently when they walk into the next meeting.

Leaders love to declare culture. “We’re customer obsessed.” “We’re one team.” “We listen before we act.” Each statement is true in the leader’s head. In everyone else’s head, it’s an abstraction waiting for a definition.

And people will supply that definition themselves. A Nuveen operations lead hears “listen and learn” and thinks it means delaying system integration. A Schroders portfolio manager hears it and assumes nothing will change. A finance director hears it and decides it’s a nice line from the CEO that doesn’t apply to budget consolidation. Three people. Three cultures. One declaration.

This is the Translation Gap. Strategy is set at the top. Execution happens at the front line.


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