Every organisation has a culture, so you may as well put it to work.

I was reading a thoughtful piece on LinkedIn about a culture specialist who managed to sustain a positive, valued culture right up until the day the business closed its doors. And I thought, Yes, that is lovely. In some ways. And in other ways, I believed it - entirely - yet also found it unrealistic and almost pointless. When a business closes down, do the employees need to be left wanting more? Should they be left clinging to the wreckage thinking, "It will never be this good again"?

We don't all think about this in the same way

People work in the culture space differently. There are those who create culture - typically in parts of larger organisations where leaders are so distant they don’t strongly pull the culture in a particular direction. Then there are those who rescue culture – removing detrimental practices that have been allowed to take hold. Working in SMEs, I sit somewhere in the middle. I will capture your culture - warts and all - and then, if required, help shift it to something that better supports your business goals. I am not inventing a vision board of cultural statements; I am working with what is already present, and making it work for  you.

Our method is our own, and I won’t give too much away, but we are effectively identifying and blending three things: the visible elements of culture, the hidden elements, and the stories you tell about yourselves (whether those stories are accurate or not). The third is usually the most aspirational and most aligned with organisational goals - even when it is the least real.

If that sounds dry, it can be - until we begin to uncover the hidden layer. These elements are not concealed on purpose; they are simply embedded in day-to-day behaviour. They show up in how you email one another, how meetings are run, what is said while the kettle boils, and what you tell your family at the end of the day. This is the meat on the bone. And yet it is the part most often ignored when people try to “create” culture. If those hidden norms are unattractive, the temptation is to replace them wholesale - without asking why they are there in the first place.

There are lots of examples where opportunities to add value to your business can be missed.

Let me take a small tangent. I attended a conference last year where an HRD proudly described the organisation’s work to support disabled colleagues. And she was right to be proud; it was impressive. All was well until I asked, “How does this support the organisation’s wider aims for its people?” I didn’t intend to unsettle her, but I did. Because none of this work is worth anything if it does not support the organisation to meet its goals. She could have said, “This keeps valued specialists developing and billing at a high level,” or, “This signals that we look after our people, which improves retention and trust.” But she didn’t. She was doing it because it was the right thing to do. Excellent - and yet it is never only that. There is always more value to be found.

That is how my brain works. Yes, do the positive thing - and also be very clear on why. Especially when it has financial cost.

With cultural work, there are three primary aims:

1. The culture must reflect both leadership and the wider team. This matters because when pressure hits - and it always does - leadership behaviours cascade at speed through the organisation, like the rains hitting Victoria Falls in November.

2. You amplify what already works. Whether strengths lie in behaviours, attitudes, or interpersonal norms, you press on those strengths hard.

3. You do not avoid the parts that don’t work. You address them through coaching, mentoring, training, process shifts - whatever is necessary. You do not sweep them under the carpet or rebrand them away.

When you work with reality, you create a culture people truly recognise - and can be proud of. And when the culture is not working, you lean heavily on what is working, so the appetite for change is kept alive.

The first piece of culture work I led had a clear purpose: a micro-team wanted to scale without losing the characteristics of its founding members. I diagnosed the culture when the team was eight people; later, that team reached close to ninety without the culture drifting in any meaningful way. That project made something clear to me very early on: culture work is not a “nice to have”. It has a purpose.

By contrast, I was once asked to diagnose the culture of a factory. Have you ever heard that “joke” about the boss who hired the carpenter to be the plumber, the plumber to be the driver, and the driver to be the carpenter, just to keep costs down? Oh yes – it is no joke. This was the reality for a team that stuck to each other like glue, in and out of work. It became immediately clear that the leadership group was the problem - morale was poor, communication was hostile, and people felt they had no voice. That diagnostic work directly supported the decision to remove and replace that leadership team. Culture can be uncomfortable. It should be. It tells the truth.

In another organisation, I was able to show that workers who were assumed to “just care about the day-to-day” were in fact hungry for growth, recognition, and advancement. The potential for that team was enormous. But in that case, the senior leader was removed before the work could be carried through, and the opportunity was lost. Culture work reveals what is possible - but someone has to be willing to act and to follow through.

Times have changed, but the opportunity to make your culture work remains.

So when I think about how this work fits the present moment, I have to acknowledge that the backdrop is different. Nine years ago, optimism was higher. Leaders now are stretched: working harder, under more scrutiny, for less reward. Teams may be earning more on paper, yet daily life feels tighter and more pressured. The energy is not “anything is possible” - it is “we have irritations, frictions, uncertainties, and we don’t quite know how to resolve them.” Cultural work today is happening against fatigue, not buoyancy.

And yet, the diagnostic approach does not need to change. We still go in, without judgement, to understand what is genuinely there. We still map the visible norms, the unspoken habits, and the stories organisations tell about themselves. The value may be quieter, but it is not smaller. True culture work has never been about expensive interventions or grand gestures. It is not Miami away-days, pool tables, or a new strapline. It is awareness and adjustment. Awareness of what is shaping behaviour, morale and energy. Adjustment to realign the system with what actually matters. And that work matters most when times are lean - because it keeps trust intact, reduces friction, and prevents drift.

Get it right now and it will still be right when optimism returns.

And when conditions shift - as they always do - a well-understood and well-embedded culture becomes an engine. It can power your recruitment process, reduce mishires, and make team building a breeze. In other words: when you are ready to move again, your culture will already be built for speed.