Culture Is a Verb: Jill Delgado on Human Behavior and Organizational Change

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Tell My Story, the podcast where we explore real-life stories, career journeys, personal growth, challenges, and the lessons that can inspire others. I'm Henry Chuitilu, and today's conversation takes us from the boardroom to the backyard as we explore one of the most important parts of transformation, the human side. My guest today is Jill Delgado. Did I get the name correct?

Yes, Delgado, yes.

All right. a human system architect, executive advisor, mindset author, and global transformational practice leader. For more than 20 years, Jill has worked with organizations navigating complex and sometimes massive transformations. Through that experience, she noticed a recurring pattern. Organizations can have the strategy, technology, and resources they need, yet transformation can still be stalled because of human behavior and cultural resistance. But Jill didn't stop at identifying the problem. She began asking a much bigger question. What if we started developing these essential human behavior much earlier? That question eventually led us to create the Bieber and Booba children's book series and develop the concept of cultural buoyancy. helping people build the ability to adapt, innovate, and strive. Today, we're going to explore her journey, organizational culture, resistance to change, parenting, leadership, and what it might take to prepare the next generation for a rapidly changing world. Jill, welcome to Telling My Story. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today.

Thank you so much, Henry. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome, Jill. So let's start with your story. After more than 20 years working in organizational transformation, what's led you to create a children's book

series? This is ironically a question I get quite a bit is why children's books? And there's a few reasons. few inspirations that led me down this path. But yes, as you mentioned, for 20 plus years, and I still am a practice leader of global complex change targeting human systems. And I like to talk about systems for quite a bit, especially now with the big theme of AI coming out. A lot of organizations keep asking, well, how do I get my people to adapt and to change faster? Well, that's not just a people focus. That's also a systems focus. But on the people side, what we're talking about is their mental alignment, how they show up and how ready they are to engage, to align, and to drive successful results tied to your business strategy. That's not a tool issue. That's not even a training issue. We're talking about mindsets and how people show up. That's a culture issue. That's a culture opportunity. And it's literally a strategy and is a strong component of human systems. So as I talk with organizations about the culture side of their teams, of the work, of their strategy, at the core, regardless of what organization we're talking about, what industry and what country we're in, if we're global or not. This could even be something you parallel with an organization that's not even on the business side, more on the local side or a church, every group. has goals. And at the core of how we show up, there