Great post. From my perspective – having been both a management consultant, product manager, and analyst there is only one way to ‘change’ culture and that is very slowly. The best approaches that I’ve seen is to be very realistic about what the corporate culture will accept and work in that direction. As you build tools and processes, they need to be close enough to what the culture will accept while nudging people in a slightly new direction… but not so much that they will reject it. It’s a very similar approach to good education – be just a bit ahead of where your students are. I’ve worked with a few user experience professionals who have an anthropology background which is enormously helpful in understanding where that fine line is. And, of course, leadership support and incentives are always useful tools as well but they alone can often only change things temporary rather than fundamentally.

Any company who is not seriously evaluating and accommodating their culture before a social initiative will find it will likely cause some friction later.