Fuzzy, Disconnected, or Missing: The Real Work of Building Culture
If you ask most leaders about their culture, you'll likely get the reply, “It's great!”
If you press a bit and ask them to describe their culture, they might say, “We have great people. We're like a family.”
But a business isn't a family. Families come with people you don't always like, and you're stuck with them anyway. In a business, if someone isn't a fit for the culture, you can (and should) let them go.
There's a reason people reach for that phrase, though. A family usually shares an unspoken sense of what matters — what's acceptable, what's not, how you treat each other. That's what people are actually pointing at when they say “we're like a family”: not the structure, but the shared values underneath it.
When you push a bit more and ask them to actually describe their culture: what it really is, they tend to struggle (and will give vague answers). They aren't alone. Many people can recognize a good culture (or a bad one), but they struggle to articulate what exactly it is. What makes it good (or bad)?
If you can't clearly describe your culture, though, then you can't intentionally cultivate it.
What Exactly is Culture?
Culture is how people act. It's all the small stuff nobody writes down, like how someone responds when a deadline gets missed, whether people speak up in a meeting or wait until the hallway afterward, what get silently rewarded.
Decisions and actions are not random; they are driven by what people believe is important. As leaders, you need to clearly define that for the organization, or people will define it for you. At best, you end up with a bunch of different unwritten rules operating at once. At worst, these decisions and actions are contrary to what you want for your organization.
For many organizations, that “important” part is fuzzy, disconnected, or missing entirely. This happens because core values weren't defined, so people are free to interpret them through their own lens, making them fuzzy. When they are not extrapolated into hiring, decision making and accountability, there is a disconnect. For some organizations, they haven't ever chosen core values and so there is a missing element altogether.
Identifying and defining your core values provides the base to building your culture.
Core Values Are the Root
Many organizations choose values because they sound good, but then they stop. They add them to the employee handbook and maybe hang posters, but they skip the work of integrating them into decision making, hiring, expectations and accountability (SEE BLOG for more information).
Culture is easy when a founder is small enough to be in every hire, every meeting, every decision. The company is the founder, so the culture is the founder too.
Take a founder who built her business on outstanding customer service. Every email got a response within 24 hours, no exceptions; it was easy because she was the one answering them. It wasn't written down anywhere. Those around her saw it and internalized the expectation. They aligned with her belief about delivering outstanding customer service.
Then the business grew, and she handed off customer service to a team and the complaints started rolling in: inquiries taking days instead of hours. Lost business and clients. The value was never named, so it got lost in the transition from “how she worked” to “how the team works.”
As the business grows, the founder can't be everywhere anymore. If the values behind the culture were never made explicit, the culture starts to drift with every new hire who never quite absorbed what “the way we do things here” actually means.
Identifying your values, and then defining the behaviours that demonstrate them provides the foundation for building your culture.
Three Ways to Build the Culture You Want
So, what are the steps to building an intentional culture?
Define and embed your core values.
Once you've clarified the behavioural expectations related to your core values, you need to integrate them throughout the organization. Use them as a hiring lens in your recruitment process. When you recognize someone's contributions, tie their actions to a core value. Hold people accountable when their behaviour is not aligned with a value (don't just ignore it because they are a top performer). Align your decisions to your values.
Improve communication through DISC.
A lot of culture breakdown isn't about people disagreeing on what matters. It's people communicating in ways that land differently than they intended. DISC gives a team shared language for that — a way to understand why the same message feels supportive to one person and abrupt to another, and how to close that gap before it quietly erodes trust.
It also gives you a roadmap for managing people well. A manager who understands DISC knows where an employee can be handed a project or a task and can run with it, and where they'll need more support or check-ins along the way. Teams start to see their own strengths and blind spots too. They recognize where they naturally work well together, and where friction is likely. This awareness can often thwart interpersonal conflict as each person understands those they work with.
Develop leaders from within.
Jim Collins' research in Good to Great found that companies who made the leap from good to great overwhelmingly promoted from within rather than importing outside CEOs. His “First Who, Then What” principle applies here too — the right people, in the right seats, matter more than having the perfect strategy figured out first. Build out a plan for who may be promoted and ensure you train them on the necessary skills before promoting them. Identify your culture leaders and determine if they would be a fit to move into management positions. Don't wait until you need someone in that position and then set them up to fail because they don't know how to manage a team. Promoting your cultural leaders expands their reach and helps ensure your culture stays solid as you scale.
Where Does This Leaves You?
You have an organizational culture. You can build it intentionally, or ignore it and hope for the best.
A few questions worth asking yourself:
If a new hire shadowed your team for a week, what would they learn is actually true here, regardless of what's written down?
Where are your values a real filter, and where are they absent?
Who in your organization already embodies your culture, and are you developing them, or overlooking them?
What's Next
Read this blog:
Your Core Values Aren't Wall Art: Intentionally Creating Your Culture
Learn more about Jim Collins’ “First Who, Then What”
Learn more about DISC:
DISCover Connections (team workshop)
Sign up for my Free Leadership Toolbox
If you want help with building an intentional culture, email me.
