Culture can't be installed from the top down. Organisations have many cultures, and a leader's job is to cultivate the conditions where they can connect and serve a shared purpose.
There's this expensive delusion that many organisations are trapped in, and frankly, I think we need to talk about it:
If you’re a leader and you think you can control your organisation's culture.
You can't. And deep down, you know it.
I hear it constantly:
- "We need to align everyone with the new direction and values."
- "We've got silos everywhere, how do we get everyone on the same page?"
- "Our culture isn't working. People aren't embracing the change. They're institutionalised."
For decades we've been sold a seductive story.
That culture is this neat, controllable thing that flows from the C-suite down through org charts like instructions in an Ikea box. That you can craft the perfect mission statement, roll out some values, and voilà, cultural transformation.
And I get it: this is part of the corporate dance, and I fully appreciate the rules of the game.
The board wants change, stakeholders demand quick ROI, and your incentives depend on 'driving alignment', preferably by yesterday.
But here's the thing we both know.
Your organisation doesn't have a culture. It has cultures. Plural. Multiple. Messy. Magnificently complex.
And before you think you're off the hook because you've got a 'culture committee' or 'employee voice initiative', you're still playing the same game, just with fancier window dressing. I see you my friend :)
But I'll cement the point again:
This belief that culture can be controlled and managed is creating exactly what we're trying to avoid.
It's a slow, fat approach to solving problems and the gradual build-up of cholesterol that narrows every spark of human potential that could have made your company thrive longer.
There’s hope though, and plenty of things we can do.
There may be a little discomfort reading this, and because you know I'm all about productive disagreement, I welcome a little rumble on this, but I mean it with a deep sense of care (thanks for the rumble analogy, Lizzy Yarnold).
Who's familiar with this picture?
Someone senior commissions HR to "fix the culture."
Everyone is surveyed, "cultural problems" are identified, and a rollout plan is designed. Town halls happen. Values branded. Posters go up. Managers get talking points (okay, some of these have merit).
12 months later? The executives are wondering why engagement scores haven't budged and why the "resistant middle management" won't embrace the new values (shout out to the middle management who are not the problem here, btw).
Here's what actually happened.
They tried to install culture like an iOS update.
And like many of these interventions, it was treating culture like it can be fixed, and it cannot. And because social currency within organisations is meant to simplify complexity (another buzz term), it's oversimplified to the point where the outcome is meaningless and more complicated.
And I'm not kidding. These were the words of a wonderfully talented project manager within a global retail firm.
"They kept telling us we needed to 'embrace the new culture' like we were misfits who didn't understand how to behave. The worst part wasn't the values posters or the one-way town halls: suddenly, we're in mandatory sessions learning how to 'collaborate effectively' and 'embrace our values.'
Top-down cultural interventions have an impact, just not the ones we expect. The impact is what I call the 7 deadly symptoms of artificial alignment:
- Agreeableness: People nod along in meetings while having the real conversations in Slack/Teams channels afterwards
- Consensus-seeking: Decisions get watered down to the lowest common denominator to avoid anyone feeling excluded
- Conformity: The most creative minds start self-censoring because they don't want to appear "not aligned"
- Complacency: Why challenge the status quo when the goal is harmony, not excellence?
- Conflict-avoidance: Problems fester beneath a veneer of politeness rather than being addressed directly
- Mediocrity: Innovation requires disagreement, but an alignment culture rewards staying in the safe middle
- Suffocation: The energy and authenticity that made people want to work there in the first place slowly dies
Your Culture is Already Emerging (Whether You Know It or Not)
Research shows over and over again that organisations are complex adaptive systems, much like immune systems and ecosystems.
In other words, you could think of culture like a thriving city.
It should have a soul. An identity. A story. Something that makes itself distinctively and unmistakably itself. You know that feeling you get.
The same is true for organisations. You absolutely need to know what you stand for, your non-negotiables, your core identity, and your reason for existing – Owen Eastwood writes spectacularly on the theme of Belonging in his book.
But there's a crucial difference between having strong organisational DNA and trying to control how that DNA expresses itself.
You can influence the conditions, build better architecture, create gathering spaces, and establish guidelines and boundaries. However, you can't dictate the spirit of the place (spirit is still my favourite culture word Claire Stibbon).
No urban planner designed the spirit of Manchester's voice or the vibrant energy of Berlin's startup scene.
These emerge organically from millions of individual choices, interactions, and adaptations over time.
Culture emerges from countless daily interactions, and it's been happening with or without your input.
So the real question isn't "How do we create a more united culture?" like it's a branding exercise, a communication strategy. It's beyond that (I often see Kerri O'Neill Chartered FCIPD sharing some good stuff on this).
It's "how do we cultivate the conditions where the culture that's already emerging can serve our shared purpose?" (not create, control, design: cultivate, tend to)
The zero sum culture trap
So yes, leading organisations are moving "from 'One Shared Culture' to 'Culture as a Neighbourhood'", where overarching cultural principles guide behaviour while allowing for contextual variation and local adaptation.
Don't get me wrong, there's a need for rules. This isn't anarchy.
I loved reading David C. Baker's article on how a scarcity mindset creates chaos – a wonderful writer.
With a scarcity mindset, you hear things like:
- "If different teams develop their own approaches, we'll lose control."
- "If people disagree with our values, they're not aligned."
- "If subcultures emerge, we're failing as leaders."
I've watched brilliant executives pour millions into culture initiatives only to discover their "unified culture" exists mainly in PowerPoint decks and poster campaigns.
Observe any sustainably successful mid-to-large firm, and you won't see a uniform one-team culture.
You'll observe multiple cultures. Showing somewhat seemingly contradictory patterns of behaviour. This really is a call-to-arms for 'Paradoxical Leadership' - people who see tensions between things, not binary problems to 'be solved'.
Your people are already leading cultural change. The question is how we encourage this to become a movement of change. How do we help those silent or active disruptors, with the skill sets and information, to be incredible catalysts of change? I love Bruce Daisley lens on this.
The Moment of Choice
We're at an inflection point.
When you see healthy cultural patterns emerging, such as innovative problem-solving, courageous conversations, or ways to ritualise values, find ways to recognise, celebrate, and support their spread.
The organisations that will thrive in our complex, rapidly changing world are those that harness the collective cultural intelligence of all their members. They understand that culture isn't something that happens to employees, it's something that emerges through employees.
Every organisation has cultural islands: departments, teams, or functions that rarely connect. Be the person who builds bridges. Share insights across boundaries. Translate between different professional languages.
The uncomfortable truth we started with becomes a liberating opportunity. It wasn't that bad was it :)
Stop trying to create one culture. Start cultivating the conditions where multiple cultures can emerge, connect, and create something extraordinary together.