Why culture is the growth engine you can't ignore
Funny, isn’t it? Organisations invest a huge amount of time and energy setting strategy, developing growth plans, and carefully mapping out how they’ll make it all happen… Only to find themselves facing the same challenges they did before all of the new, shiny thinking: change is slow, teams aren’t aligned, execution is inconsistent, and the growth they dreamt of never quite materialises.
The truth Is, most innovative businesses don’t scale because of a killer strategy, the slickest execution or adopting the latest technology. Their secret weapon? Culture. According to McKinsey, 70% of business transformations fail, and 70% of those failures are because of culture-related issues.
That’s why culture is a business performance issue, not a HR initiative.
The organisations outperforming their competitors understand something different: people and culture are the engine that powers growth. They scale because people believe in, embrace, execute and sustain a strategy. Culture is the force that turns ambition into growth, plans into action, and ”doing a job” into achieving (and feeling) something meaningful.
Your not-so-secret weapon
Yet, culture remains one of the most overlooked drivers of business performance. At a time when businesses are facing workforce disruption, AI adoption, skills shortages, changing employee expectations, market saturation, and increasing pressure on margins – culture has become one of the few genuine differentiators left. To put it another way, culture Is becoming your most powerful strategic asset.
That’s because culture is the only competitive advantage your competitors can’t copy overnight.
Think about it. Products can be replicated. Prices can be undercut. Technology can be purchased. AI can automate. But a deeply embedded culture, built around a shared purpose, clear values and people who genuinely believe in what they’re building? Well, that’s much harder to imitate.
Don’t take our word for it
The numbers back this up too. Research consistently shows that organisations with engaged people and aligned leadership all rallying around a strong brand purpose and culture consistently outperform those that focus solely on process and performance metrics. This isn’t just about creating a nicer place to work. Gallup’s research reveals the cost of disengagement: businesses with highly engaged employees are 23% more profitable. Culture has a direct impact on the bottom line.
Whilst most leaders understand culture matters, many underestimate the true cost of getting it wrong.
Time and time again, we see a disconnect between a brand’s external promises and its internal reality. Leaders aspire to create dynamic, high-performing workplaces – the kind that fuel growth, the kind that attract great talent, the kind that believe in profit-for-good. You know, a Sunday Times best-places-to-work kind of culture. But, the reality for most organisations is: they often fall short.
And it’s rarely because the intention isn’t there.
Bad culture costs more than no culture
They say it can take years to build culture in an organisation, and only moments to break one. When culture starts to unravel, the warning signs aren’t always obvious at first, but it can be extremely damaging for your business if it’s not addressed quickly. This is when leaders need to act fast.
Anticipatory leadership is what’s needed – this means recognising what’s happening and having the courage to address it before the consequences hit. This leadership style relies on high emotional intelligence to sense shifts in morale, spot friction points before they happen, and take action to create the conditions for teams to thrive before the symptoms start showing. These can show up immediately – a drop in morale, lack of engagement, lower productivity. Left unchecked, the consequences become much more expensive and the full effects are felt – high employee turnover, poor customer experiences, slower growth.
It may not show as a line item on your P&L, but make no mistake, it’s costing you money. It’s cash-leakage at its best.
The good news? Culture is something you can intentionally design, build and strengthen.
What exactly is culture?
Culture should be a living, breathing thing. It evolves, it listens, and it’s never stagnant. It’s the shared values and behaviours that define how an organisation operates, at every level. It shapes how your people communicate, make decisions, learn. It shows up in daily work practices.
The famous quote from Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines – “Culture is what happens when no one is looking” is true, it’s the instinctive choices individuals make when they’re working alone. But it also happens in plain sight too.
Ultimately, when thinking about it in relation to business performance, culture is the collective mindset that determines how people perform. It’s how we choose to show up to give our best for the organisation we work for.
(Of course, as a sidenote, it’s also worth highlighting what culture is not. It’s not fruit bowls. It’s not comfy bean bags. It’s certainly not organised or enforced fun days.)
How to know if you’ve got a culture problem
Sorry to all you leaders and bosses reading this, but culture problems often start at the top. Many leaders don’t realise they have a culture issue because they focus on symptoms rather than causes. Some sure fire ways to spot the rot:
- Slow decision-making
- Leadership bottlenecks
- Departments operate in silos
- Poor communication
- Resistance to change
- Accountability is always someone else’s job
- People stop speaking up
- The grapevine is working overtime
- Burnout becomes the norm
- High employee turnover
Look out for “the culture gap.” The biggest sign of all is a gap between leadership intentions and leadership actions – what leaders say, what leaders do, and what employees experience. When those three things fall out of alignment, culture becomes a barrier to performance rather than a driver of it.
10 steps to building a world-class culture
You’re probably thinking where and how do you start. It might feel like a long road ahead to get your business to the high-performing, agile, creative organisation you deserve to be, but we’re here to tell you it is possible. But like most good things in life, it’ll take work. It’ll take consistency. And it’ll take time.
Treat it like a science. There’s an order to things; there’s no cherry-picking in this list. Skip some of the vital first steps and foundationally you’ll fail. You need to build each building block of your culture, one at a time.
1. Be emotionally honest with yourself
Don’t believe your own hype! Find the real objective truth and strip away the assumptions and leadership folklore. What is actually happening in your organisation today? Do you really have a clear strategy? Does your culture reflect the brand you present to the outside world? You can’t fix what you’re unwilling to acknowledge.
2. Create absolute clarity around your purpose and vision
One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is assuming people automatically understand the bigger picture. Your purpose explains why your organisation exists. Your vision paints a picture of where you’re going. Together, they give people something to believe in and rally behind.
Ask yourself: could every person in your organisation recite your purpose and vision statements verbatim? If the answer is no, then you have work to do. Then ask, is your purpose and vision genuinely compelling? If it doesn’t inspire people to believe in what you’re building, it needs to be redefined. Your people must understand the “why” at a fundamental level. And they need to buy into it. According to Deloitte, 86% of Gen Zs and 89% of Millennials say purpose is important to their job satisfaction and wellbeing. Remember, the first people to buy into your company’s ethos are your employees.
3. Define your values that actually drive behaviour
We’re pretty sure you’ll have some values that are written somewhere. The question is: does anyone know what they are? And does anyone actually use them? Too often, values are created during a leadership away day, beautifully designed onto a wall mural by your Creative team, and then quietly forgotten about. They become completely disconnected from how the business actually operates.
The fact is that your values should influence almost every decision your organisation makes. They should shape who you hire, who you promote, how performance is measured, and what behaviours get recognised and rewarded. They should help people make decisions when there isn’t a policy, process or manager available to provide guidance.
And when we say “values”, we don’t just mean words that sound like an Apprentice team name (Integrity, Innovation, Excellence are a few that spring to mind). We mean translating each value into clear, everyday behaviours that reflect the organisation.
Embed them into every touchpoint across the employee experience – from recruitment, onboarding, performance reviews, recognition schemes, the list goes on. If they’re only visible on the office wall, they’re not values. They’re decoration.
4. Make your strategy crystal clear
Ensure your team are clear what your strategy is. Without clarity, teams become task-focused. People turn up, complete their work and go home. With clarity, they understand how their individual contribution connects to a much bigger mission. That sense of meaning is powerful. It creates alignment. And alignment creates momentum.
Ask yourself: Is your strategy genuinely clear? Do people understand where the business is heading, what success looks like, or the company’s growth ambitions? More importantly, do they understand the role they play in getting there?
Once defined, involve your teams in bringing it to life. Give your people ownership of that strategy – never present it as the finished article. Create opportunities for teams to shape how the strategy is delivered. As humans, we’re naturally more invested in things we’ve helped create.
5. Build a strong internal (and external) brand
Culture and Brand are inseparable. End of story.
Many organisations will invest heavily in building their external brand. They obsess over logos, websites, campaigns, messaging and CX. But they often overlook the one thing that determines whether that brand promise is actually delivered: their people.
Remember, your external brand is a promise. Your culture determines whether employees can consistently deliver on that promise, and the strongest brands are built from the inside out. Before customers believe in your brand, your people need to believe in it first. When employees genuinely buy into your brand, something powerful happens. They stop acting like employees and start acting like advocates.
Get your internal brand experience right and the external customer experience becomes infinitely stronger. To build that world-class culture, you must create belief in your brand internally. That’s when the magic happens. When culture and brand become one and the same.
6. Understand your people
Not everyone thinks, communicates or works in the same way. Invest time in understanding your people. Their differences and their similarities. What motivates them, how they like to communicate, what frustrates them, and the conditions they need to perform at their best.
Too many organisations take a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership and communication. The reality is that what energises one employee can zap the will to live from another. What one person interprets as direct and efficient, another may perceive as abrupt or dismissive. Understanding these differences is critical if you want to build high-performing teams.
A good starting point is to carry out a behavioural colour profiling exercise with your team. It helps individuals understand their natural behavioural preferences, communication style and decision-making tendencies. It provides a simple framework that helps people better understand themselves and those they work with. We use this in many organisations to strengthen leadership capability, improve team cohesion and create greater self-awareness across organisations. Ultimately, a culture where people feel understood, is a culture where they are able to perform at their best.
7. Hire the right people
Thankfully, the days of hiring people who simply ‘fit in’ are gone. The best employees don’t want to be carbon copies of everyone around them. Yes, culture should provide a framework of shared values, behaviours and expectations. But great people also want the freedom to contribute, challenge ideas, and leave the organisation better than they found it.
Be careful not to think of a strong culture as a place where everyone thinks the same. That can be a pitfall. You want to create an environment where different perspectives can thrive whilst remaining aligned to a common purpose.
That’s why hiring for cultural alignment is so important. Often, when an organisation’s values are so deeply embedded, a poor hire stands out like a sore thumb. It’s a clear sign to act. Not because they lack technical ability, but because their behaviours, attitudes and ways of working clash with the culture you’ve worked so hard to build. Skills can be developed. Attitude is much harder to teach.
8. Make your leaders the living example
Culture follows leadership. Every leader sets the standard through their actions, not their words. Your people are always watching and they notice how you behave under pressure, how you communicate, and how you don’t. If your leaders don’t embody the culture, will anyone else?
That’s why leadership development is one of the most important investments an organisation can make. Time and time again, we see brilliant individual team members promoted into managers. The problem is, they don’t always carry the people-management experience required to effectively lead.
Don’t neglect your managers. Protect them. Invest in their development and build their capability and confidence. Coaching and mentoring can play a vital role in helping managers become the leaders your culture needs them to be. Peer groups can also be a powerful way to give leaders a safe space to share challenges and learn from peers outside of their organisation.
9. Make culture intentional
Values and behaviours by osmosis aren’t enough so don’t assume that if you’ve executed steps 1-8, now culture will simply take care of itself. Your culture will be created deliberately through the ongoing decisions you make.
Progressing on the path towards your desired culture must be intentional. Define it, measure it, talk about it and reinforce it consistently. Create systems and frameworks that keep it front and centre, even when the business is busy, growing quickly or navigating change. This is where frameworks such as B Corp can be incredibly valuable. Following a framework can help you think intentionally about your impact on employees, customers, the environment, etc. It provides structure and accountability – after all, what gets measured gets managed.
10. Communicate relentlessly!
We’re shamelessly borrowing Tony Blair’s famous campaign mantra: “communication, communication, communication”. Ok, so we adapted it but you get the point. In other words: overcommunicate. Then communicate some more.
Most leaders don’t communicate enough. The higher up an organisation you go, the easier it is to assume everyone knows what you know. They don’t. So, information starts getting hoarded, updates become fragmented, and different people hear different versions of the same story. Before you know it, rumours are spreading faster than facts and people are filling in the blanks themselves.
Great cultures don’t operate like that. They make all of their people feel like insiders, part of the journey, they spring no surprises. They communicate across departments. They communicate from the top. They communicate consistently. And they make sure it sounds like their brand. Every. single. time. Every update, team meeting and town hall is another opportunity to reinforce who you are and what you stand for.
11. We know we said 10 steps, but we couldn't resist one more … Consistency is king
And finally, like in most other areas of your life, habit formation is hard. The clever folks at UCL say it takes around 200 days for habits to become embedded. That’s 6 months of consistency – showing up, doing the things and reinforcing the behaviours you want to see.
Your culture will be built through hundreds and thousands of small actions repeated over time. Values become behaviours. Behaviours become habits. Habits become culture.
Consistency also means aligning every part of your organisation with the culture and brand you’re trying to create, everything should reinforce the same messages (this is when it starts getting good for your Brand team!). When these things are out of sync, people notice. When they’re aligned, culture becomes stronger and more authentic.
How do you know you’ve nailed it?
It’s innate. Sometimes It might be difficult to articulate, but you’ll feel it. When culture is deeply rooted, people become genuine advocates for the organisation. They care about its success as if were their own and people stop working for the business and start building it with you.
While culture itself may feel intangible, its impact on business performance Is anything but. High-performing cultures leave a measurable footprint:
- Higher employee engagement
- Faster decision-making and execution
- Better attraction and retention of talent
- Greater innovation
- Stronger customer experiences
- Increased accountability and ownership
- Sustainable business growth
But perhaps the biggest of them all: You create an organisation that you can be proud of, and people genuinely want to be a part of.
We said it before and we’ll say it again. Culture is the only competitive advantage your competitors can’t copy overnight. Products, prices, technology… they can all be replicated. But a unique culture is harder to imitate.
Business remains, at its heart, a human endeavour. When people are firing at their best, the company does too. And if culture isn’t central to your growth strategy, it should be. It isn’t something to check off your HR tick-list along with ‘coffee machine’ or ‘fire alarm tests’. Make it the force that shapes decisions, drives behaviours and brings your strategy to life.
Because in the end, culture isn’t just how your organisation works. It’s how your organisation wins.
If you’re looking to build stronger leaders, healthier teams, and a culture where people and performance can thrive together, we’d love to help. Book a complimentary Discovery Session and we’ll be happy to listen and explore what’s possible for your business
