Most organizations treat culture as a feeling.
With words like Engagement. Atmosphere. How people get along.
That is hard to manage and almost impossible to scale.
If you want culture to become a strategic advantage, you need a different lens.
You need to see culture as a system, and the feel of your culture as the result of that system.
A system is something you can design, test and improve. It sets a few non-negotiable rules, then allows teams to express them in their own way.
Below is a practical way to work with culture on that level.
1. Start with what the culture is meant to support
Before you touch values or behavior, be very clear on one thing:
What is your strategy asking from your people?
Keep it simple and concrete.
- Maybe you need faster decisions closer to the customer.
- Maybe you need more consistency across countries.
- Maybe you need higher innovation speed in a specific product area.
- Maybe you need better cooperation between a few key functions.
Write that down in plain language.
Then ask a follow-up question:
What kind of behavior and decision making do we need for this to happen?
Now you are no longer talking about culture in the abstract.
You are defining what the culture system is there to enable.
This becomes your reference point.
Every cultural choice should make these behaviors easier, not harder.
2. Map the culture system you actually have
Most leaders know the slide version of their culture.
That is not what people experience.
To work with culture as a system, you need an honest picture of how it works today.
Bring a small group together. Include senior leaders and a few people who see the day-to-day reality.
Use questions like:
- Who gets promoted here, and why?
- How are important decisions made when time is tight?
- What happens to people who speak up with bad news early?
- What do new hires tell us what is really valued?
- What do high performers have in common beyond skills?
Write down what actually happens. Not what should happen.
You will see patterns emerge.
That is your culture system in its current form.
And you will also see something else: you do not have one single culture experience. You have many local cultures sitting inside the same organization.
That is not a problem in itself.
The question is whether those local versions are different expressions of one underlying system, or drifting in completely different directions.
3. Decide what to keep and what to change
No culture is fully good or fully bad.
Every system has strengths and blind spots.
Look at the map you have just made and link it back to your strategy needs. For each pattern, ask if it either help us deliver our strategy or hold us back?
Fast, informal decisions can be a strength in a growth phase.
The same pattern can be a risk if you need more reliability.
Heavy consensus can support inclusion.
The same habit can slow down change when you need speed.
Mark three types of elements in the system:
- Strengths you want to protect.
- Neutral habits that do not need attention right now.
- Weaknesses that actively work against your direction.
Now you know where culture work is strategic rather than cosmetic. You can also start to see where local cultures are healthy variations on a theme, and where they break the underlying system. A sales team and an engineering team do not need to feel the same, but they should still feel like the same company.
4. Work on the main levers of the system
A culture system is shaped by a few powerful levers.
You do not need to pull all of them at once. You do need to be deliberate.
Think in four areas.
Leadership behavior
People watch what leaders do more than what they say.
As a leadership team, ask yourselves:
Which one or two behaviors must be visible from us if we want this culture.
What is one habit each of us is willing to change in the next quarter.
Agree on a small number of clear leadership standards and follow up on them.
This is where you set the non-negotiables for all those “small cultures” across the organisation.
People processes
Processes either reinforce culture or dilute it.
Look at hiring, onboarding, performance and promotion.
Do they support the behaviors you want, or contradict them.
For each process, ask:
If we truly wanted this culture, what would look different here?
Then make a few visible changes in criteria, questions and rituals.
Explain why you changed them.
This is how you prevent local cultures from drifting too far. The same system applies everywhere, even if the expression is different.
Structure and decision rights
Organizational structure also shapes culture. So check a few simple things.
- Who can decide on what without asking permission.
- Where do decisions regularly get stuck.
- Which teams never speak to each other but should.
Sometimes a small structural change sends a big signal. For example, a cross-functional team with specific authority in a key area.
Symbols and stories
People learn what matters through stories.
Promotions. Public praise. How failures are handled.
Look for one or two symbolic acts you can change.
- How you welcome new people.
- How you talk about a project that failed.
- What you celebrate in all-hands meetings.
These symbols anchor the system in daily life and give local cultures a shared narrative to work from.
5. Build simple feedback loops
A system needs feedback. Without it you cannot see if your changes work.
You do not need complex dashboards.
Pick a few signals that sit close to your strategy and your culture goals.
For example:
- How new hires describe the culture after 90 days.
- Whether managers notice a change in how decisions are made.
- Whether different behaviors are praised in performance conversations.
- Whether people feel it is easier to do the right thing than before.
Check in on these every quarter with your leadership team.
Ask:
- What has become easier.
- What is still getting in the way.
- What is one adjustment we can make in the system now.
This keeps culture work moving without turning it into a massive project. It also helps you see where local cultures are aligned with the system and where you may need to step in.
6. Treat culture as ongoing design work
Building your culture as a system is not a one-time effort.
Markets change. Strategies evolve. People come and go.
Local teams will always have their own flavor.
The point is not to freeze a perfect culture. The point is to keep a clear line between three things:
- The strategy you want to deliver.
- The culture system you run at organization level.
- The experience people have in their own team every day.
When leaders see that line and work with it regularly, culture stops being a soft topic. It becomes part of how you design your organization to win.
And you can honestly say:
We have one culture system.
Within that, our teams have different expressions.
But wherever you go in our organization, it still feels like us.
