Where does a company new to culture change start? What should they be looking to measure and understand?
Culture is a living entity that is always there, whether you try to shape it or not. Here are five things to get you started on your culture change journey.
- Clarify the need for change. You’re probably thinking about culture change because there are problems at your organisation. But ask yourself: Setting culture aside for a moment, what needs to change to solve those problems? What do people need to learn and unlearn? Culture change is a long and difficult journey. It’s not something you start for its own sake. It should serve a purpose.
- Get leaders to commit: Leaders are crucial in setting the direction and modelling the right behaviours. They need to be convinced that the problems exist, that changes are needed, and that they need to be active participants in the change. In practice, this means getting leaders to articulate the problems themselves, commit to going through an uncomfortable unlearning process, and model new behaviours.
- Understand your culture. Once you know what needs to change at your organisation, let’s consider culture: What is your organisation’s culture right now? Talk to people across your organisation. Use a quick survey to get a picture of what’s going on. Organise group discussions and ask people what they think the culture is like. Don’t stop at collecting information about what people do. Dig deeper: Why do they do what they do? Do the “values” of the organisation match or conflict with what people are doing?
- Decide on culture change: Sometimes the existing culture (once you understand it) actually helps you solve the problems, and you don’t really need a culture change! Other times, you’ll start seeing how elements of the existing culture is a blocker to making the necessary changes. Have discussions with people in the organisation – including leaders, of course – on what specific aspects of culture needs to change, if at all.
- Support the change: Culture change often requires people to learn new ways of thinking and working. If there are clear set of behaviours for people to adopt, leaders should model them. If it requires trial and error on the part of each person, people will need to be given the incentives and structures to figure out what works for them. Learning new things are often difficult – everyone needs to be given the space to make mistakes, trouble-shoot, receive feedback, and be rewarded when they’re going in the right direction. Share quick wins with everyone. People are much more likely to get on board when they see the benefits of the new ways of doing things.
Culture grows strongest when people feel like they’re part of the journey, not just watching it happen. Sharing progress openly, and celebrating wins, will help make sure everyone feels involved. Ultimately, building a positive culture is an iterative process that begins with self-awareness – understanding what your culture is, why it exists, and how the organisation’s systems can be tuned to produce the results you want.
Do you worry that culture is a term that is used without understanding its impacts on the organisation and its employees?
There is a genuine concern that the word ‘culture’ is often used without a clear understanding of its real impacts on the business and on staff. Culture is, by nature, intangible, and this creates problems when the term is overly relied upon. It has become a catch-all explanation for everything that goes wrong, from low engagement to ethical lapses. People talk about ‘culture issues’ as if culture itself is to blame.
The components of culture – values, beliefs, assumptions and norms – matter, but they don’t stand alone. They are shaped by the systems, structures, and leadership behaviours around them. Saying that there’s a problem with the ‘culture’ can shut down inquiry into the real causes of the problems that the organisation is facing, like the leadership decisions and structural conditions that produced those behaviours (Hopkins, 2018). Over-focusing on culture risks wasting time and energy when the real problems sit elsewhere.
Some leaders might talk about culture without embracing their responsibility – to build and maintain the systems and structures that give rise to the culture, and to model the behaviours that align with the desired culture themselves. Moreover, they might treat culture change as just another communication exercise. But culture does not shift because a new slogan or narrative is introduced. It changes when systems change, when norms are demonstrated consistently through actions, and when leaders don’t just drive the change but live it themselves.
The danger of misunderstanding culture becomes evident when you look at the gap between actual and purported culture. Recent research from Nottingham Trent University (2024) surveyed 1,170 UK managers and employees. Only 18% felt their organisation’s stated values matched its real culture, and a quarter reported that leaders’ behaviours directly contradicted those values. It’s no surprise that this mismatch leads to loss of trust, disengagement, and lower performance. In fact, erosion of trust is strongly linked to burnout and higher turnover among employees. This reinforces the idea that misusing the term ‘culture’ obscures the real drivers of employee experience, and blaming culture without questioning what that means can compound issues rather than solve them.
In short, culture should be seen as a mirror reflecting what an organisation’s people, systems, incentives, and everyday actions produce. If we focus only on trying to change the reflection, we miss the mechanisms behind it. To truly understand culture’s impact, and to avoid misusing the term, leaders need to concentrate less on talking about culture and more on designing the conditions that allow the right one to emerge.
