Answers to my most common culture questions this year
This year I’ve worked with 20+ teams in 6 (soon to be 7) countries. Different industries, different challenges, different opportunities. Yet, three questions come up time and again, regardless of whether I'm working with a tech start-up in Switzerland or a financial services company in London.
The questions reveal the common barriers that prevent organisations from building the vibrant cultures they need to succeed. Here's what people have really wanted to know this year.
1. How do we get leaders to understand the value of investing in culture?
This is where everything starts. Without leadership commitment, you're wasting your time and money.
Leaders need to understand that culture isn't a nice-to-have or this year’s HR initiative. It's the foundation for every result they're chasing - service quality, sales targets, project delivery, product excellence, customer satisfaction and so on. None of these things happen consistently without a great culture underpinning them.
Many leaders have good intentions and ensure that money is ring-fenced at the start of the financial year, but then remove the budget when things get tight. They'll start the year full of promise, using words like 'transformation' and 'evolution', then quietly deprioritise culture work the moment pressure mounts elsewhere.
This confirms to employees that culture was never really important, and your high performers will leave for employers who actually so what they say they will.
So how do you get leaders on board?
Show them the cost of not investing. Calculate the attrition rates, the lost productivity from disengaged staff, the projects that failed because collaboration broke down. Make it tangible. Then show them what's possible - organisations that invest properly in culture see engagement scores rise by 30% in three months and productivity (whatever that means for you - sales, innovation etc.) accelerates.
Most leaders aren’t cynical about the need to invest in culture, they’re sceptical and are waiting for someone to prove to them why they should.
2. Who's actually responsible for culture?
Everyone. But that's not a cop-out answer, there are critical nuances.
Leaders set the tone. If they don't show up to culture initiatives, if they tolerate poor behaviour, if they say one thing and do another, the culture very quickly stagnates.
Middle managers activate it. They're the ones who translate cultural intent into daily action. They hold people accountable, they model the behaviours, they call out what's not acceptable. If your managers don't have the skills to do this, invest in developing them. The layer of ‘tar’ that I consistently see stuck between senior leaders and employees exists because we promote people based on technical expertise rather than people skills.
Employees own it. There needs to be a common language around culture that everyone understands and managers need to involve employees in the definition of culture. Then everyone needs to show up with the intention of contributing positively. The culture will only ever be as good as the bad behaviour it's willing to ignore, and that's everyone's responsibility to speak up about.
3. When will we see returns on our culture work?
Ah, the question that CFOs love to ask! The honest answer: it depends on your foundations.
If you're starting from a low bar - toxic behaviour, unsafe environment, no clear purpose, misaligned values, low trust - expect 12 to 18 months before you see substantial returns. You're rebuilding from the ground up and that takes time.
If you have decent foundations but need to evolve, perhaps post-merger, after rapid growth, or following leadership changes, you're looking at 6 to 12 months to see meaningful improvements.
But here's what many people don't realise: if you do the work properly, wins can come faster than that. Teams I've worked with have seen engagement scores rise by 30% in just three months. Why? Because when you give people the knowledge and autonomy to shape their own culture, motivation shifts immediately and people take responsibility for their conditions willingly.
The key is doing the work properly. Define your culture deliberately. Give managers the skills to activate it. Hold people accountable. Celebrate progress. Don't treat it as a box-ticking exercise or expect it to magically sort itself out.
Culture evolves every day. If you're not deliberately improving it, it's likely getting worse.
These three questions aren't going away. But once you understand what's really being asked, the path forward becomes clearer.
What question would you like to ask? Drop me a note at colin@colindellis.com
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To find out more about the work I do to help organisations achieve their culture goals, head to www.colindellis.com
