Do Cultural Differences Really Block Agile Adoption?

When agile adoption struggles, cultural differences are often the first explanation that comes up.
Different countries. Different mindsets. Different ways of working.

But are cultural differences really the problem?

In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I explore this question with Jérôme Bourgeon, an agile coach at Zenika, based in Singapore.

Looking beyond national culture

Jérôme and I share a similar conviction: national culture is rarely the real blocker when agile practices fail to take root.

What we see far more often is that:

trust does not yet exist
beliefs remain unchallenged
and the local company culture works against the change

Building trust, in particular, can take very different amounts of time depending on context. But that difference is not primarily explained by nationality.

What really influences agile adoption

In our conversation, we discuss several elements that have a much stronger influence on agile adoption than country-level culture:

Company culture matters more than national culture
Jérôme refers to Frederic Laloux’s model from Reinventing Organizations to explain how organizational worldviews shape behavior.
Beliefs matter more than practices
What people believe about work, authority, learning, and responsibility has a direct impact on how agile practices are interpreted and adopted.
Trust is a prerequisite, not a byproduct
Without trust, frameworks remain mechanical and fragile.

Using Appreciative Inquiry to move forward

We also explore the power of Appreciative Inquiry as a way to approach change differently.

Rather than focusing on what is broken or missing, Appreciative Inquiry helps teams:

build on what already works
surface what people care about
and create movement without forcing alignment

This approach is particularly useful when working across perceived differences.

Accepting meaningful differences

Not all differences need to be resolved or normalized. Some differences are deeply important to people and deserve to be respected.

Agile adoption becomes more sustainable when teams can:

accept these differences
make them visible
and design ways of working that acknowledge them

A final invitation

If you are working in a multicultural environment or facing resistance to agile adoption, this episode offers a different lens.

Instead of asking “What culture are we dealing with?”, it invites a more useful question:
“What beliefs, relationships, and conditions need attention right now?”

If this topic resonates with you, feel free to reach out and share your experience or propose a question for a future episode. We can even record the answer together.