The Hidden Pyramid That Controls Your Company’s Fate — And How to Master It!

Behind every successful organization lies an invisible structure shaping its destiny — the Results Pyramid. Roger Connors and Tom Smith’s Culture of Accountability reveals that culture is not a vague concept but a system made of four interconnected layers: Experiences, Beliefs, Actions, and Results.

At the base, Experiences are the daily interactions and events employees undergo. These experiences form Beliefs — the deeply held convictions about how work gets done and what is valued. Beliefs then drive Actions, the behaviors people exhibit. Collectively, these actions produce the Results that define organizational success or failure.

Why does this matter? Because most culture change efforts focus only on changing behaviors (actions), neglecting the beliefs and experiences that underpin them. This approach is like painting over rust — the problem returns quickly.

Consider a retail chain that wanted to improve customer satisfaction. Training employees to act differently (changing actions) failed until management addressed the underlying belief that customer feedback was ignored. By creating new experiences — open forums to discuss feedback and rewarding customer-centric behaviors — they shifted beliefs. This led to genuine behavior change and improved results.

Leaders must therefore work bottom-up, designing experiences that challenge old beliefs and nurture new ones. This requires intentional, consistent effort and leadership commitment.

By mastering the Results Pyramid, leaders gain a blueprint to diagnose culture issues and design effective change strategies that deliver lasting impact.

Sources: BYU leadership insights, Forbes leadership books on change management, Amazon reviews on accountability culture 2 3 4