Most leaders focus on strategy—not because they undervalue culture, but because strategy feels concrete. It has structure, timelines, metrics, and deliverables. It’s visible and defensible. When pressure is high, strategy gives leaders something they can point to and steer.
Culture doesn’t always feel that way. It’s harder to define, harder to measure, and often lands in the “important, but not urgent” pile. That’s not a leadership flaw. It’s a gap in how we’ve equipped leaders to lead.But if you want to change how your organization operates, you have to start with what people experience every day.
Below are six no-fluff actions from our recent event, Culture Without the Fluff, designed to help you leave your team stronger than you found it.
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1. Build shared habits
If strategy defines where you’re going, culture determines whether you’ll get there.
Strategy can shift quickly, with a new market, goal, or CEO. Culture can’t. It’s shaped by the beliefs, habits, and norms that don’t pivot on command—and that’s where friction starts.
The disconnect doesn’t usually show up in big moments. It shows up in how decisions get made, what’s prioritized under pressure, and whether feedback is honest or avoided. These daily behaviors signal what really matters, regardless of what the strategy says.
That’s why high-performing organizations go beyond communicating direction. They turn strategy into clear expectations for how people should work, lead, and collaborate—and then reinforce those expectations through routines, incentives, and leadership behavior.
Try this:
Pick one strategic priority and ask: What should people be doing differently if this is truly our focus?
If you’re not seeing those behaviors, there’s a gap.
Ask yourself: Do our daily habits match the future we’re trying to build?
2. Use the levers you already own
Culture change doesn’t have to start with a massive initiative. It can start with the levers you already own.
Culture lives in the mechanics of your team’s work: how meetings are run, how frontline decisions are made, how failure is treated, and what behaviors leaders model. These small signals shape big beliefs. That’s why abstract values and vision statements alone often fall flat. They’re not wrong, but without action behind them, they’re just words on a page.
Real change starts by zooming in on specific moments that shape how work gets done, and making small, intentional shifts. Want a culture of accountability? Focus on what happens after meetings. Want more innovation? Look at how failure is handled during team reviews.
Start here:
Pick one lever (like how meetings are run) and ask:
- What messages are we sending through how we meet?
- Who speaks up? Who stays silent? What actually gets decided?
Then make small adjustments that reinforce the culture you want—not the one you’ve inherited.
3. Avoid the tempting pitfalls
If you’ve ever rolled out a new set of values, launched a culture initiative, or shared a bold new vision, only to see behavior stay exactly the same, you’re not alone.
Most culture efforts stall not because leaders don’t care, but because they start with what’s visible and familiar: messaging, posters, kickoff events. These feel like the right moves. But they rarely shift what people actually do, and rarely resonates in a meaningful and lasting way
In our recent webinar, we shared six common traps that organizations fall into often with the best intentions. Here are three that come up again and again:
- Relying on values to do the heavy lifting. Most teams have clear values, but that’s not the problem. The challenge is turning those values into real habits. If the way you run meetings, make decisions, and give feedback doesn’t reflect what’s on the wall, people notice—and disconnect.
- Expecting HR or culture champions to lead the culture shift alone. HR and champions play a big role in culture, but they can’t do it without leaders. People take their cues from credible influencers in the business: what gets rewarded, what gets ignored, and how leaders show up under pressure. That’s where real culture change starts.
- Announcing culture change before actually changing anything. This is a classic case of show don’t tell. When leaders talk about change without shifting the day-to-day experience, people become skeptical. They’ve heard it before. What earns their belief and commitment is seeing leaders act differently in ways that directly affect their work.
P.S. We’ve rounded up 3 more pitfalls worth avoiding. See them here.
Start here:
Surface the unspoken. Ask: What do people believe they’ll be rewarded for today? What would they have to believe to behave differently?
Culture change requires shifting the mental models that shape behavior.
4. Shift the beliefs beneath the behaviors
You can’t shift behavior without understanding the beliefs behind it.
If teams aren’t collaborating across silos, it’s probably not because they don’t want to—it’s because they’re rewarded for competing, not collaborating. If leaders aren’t taking smart risks, it might be because failure has been punished, not treated as a learning moment.
These everyday behaviors are just the surface—what’s driving them are deeper, often invisible beliefs that probably outlast the tenure of some of your employees.
Start here:
Ask: What are the unspoken rules here? What would someone need to believe for this behavior to feel natural, safe, and worth it?
Until you name and shift those beliefs, culture efforts will stay stuck at the surface.
5. Don’t let your culture fall behind your tech
Honestly, the real surprise would be if AI wasn’t reshaping your culture. Some organizations are going all-in on experimentation. Others are still figuring out what their approach will be. But wherever you are on the curve, one thing’s clear: this moment feels a lot like the wild west.
And your talent is picking up on that.
Leaders are signaling the need to adapt and innovate—but rewards and incentives often tell a different story.
Without clear signals from the culture that it’s safe to try, valuable to learn, and worth the risk, even the smartest tools won’t be used to their full potential.
Ask yourself:
- How are we capturing what’s working with AI—and making those insights visible and usable across the organization?
- What are we taking off people’s plates to give them the time and space to learn, experiment, and adapt?
- Have we updated the priorities, deliverables and expectations to reflect the new reality—or are we layering AI on top of an already full workload?
- Are leaders helping people see the personal value in this shift—so AI feels like a path to growth, not a threat to their role?
6. Start small, scale fast
Most leaders assume culture change has to be slow and sweeping. But it doesn’t.
We’ve seen major progress start with one small shift—the kind that’s visible, repeatable, and high-impact.
The key? Start where the energy already is: a team that’s eager, a leader who’s ready, a process that’s stuck. Then focus on one behavior that’s holding things back—and change it.
From there, scale what works.
Start here:
Use this simple 3-step exercise to find a small, high-impact place to start:
- Pinpoint a stuck spot: Where is strategy getting delayed, deprioritized, or lost in translation? Common areas include:
- Team meetings that always run long but lead to no decisions
- A new tool or process people aren’t adopting
- A frontline team disconnected from the broader strategy
- An area with low engagement or slow execution
- Identify the blocker behavior:
- What specific habit, mindset, or expectation is in the way? (e.g., defaulting to top-down decisions, rewarding speed over learning, fear of trying something new)
- Make one shift—and scale what works
- Change that behavior in one team, one moment, or one process.
- Capture the impact. Then share the story and replicate what worked.
Change spreads through stories. Show people what’s possible, and they’ll move with you.
Culture change is hard. Doing it alone? Even harder.
We work with teams around the world to:
- Spot what’s working—and what’s getting in the way
- Test small shifts that create big ripple effects
- Keep momentum going as change starts to spread
Reach out to us to start a conversation!
