Why Most “Culture Work” Actually Hurts Your Company—and the Simple Way to Ensure Your Culture Supports Strategy
About six years ago, I watched my company grow from 15 to 75 employees in under a year. It was a period of tremendous pressure, and our culture—once a strength—was completely unprepared for the rapid scale. The growth nearly wrecked the business.
We then undertook a rigorous, challenging transformation of our culture from the inside out while continuing to hit venture-backed milestones. With the help of many dedicated teammates, we rebuilt a culture that now serves as a solid foundation for sustainable strategy—and the company is back on track to win the market.
This journey taught me a hard truth: underinvesting in culture at a critical moment can threaten the entire business, yet with intentional work, culture can become a powerful driver of success.
Why “Culture Work” Often Hurts (and How to Do It Right)
The saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is widely cited—and it’s true. A strong culture is where effective strategy finds its footing.
So should every organization hire a culture team, give them clear directions, and step back? Not necessarily.
According to Fred Kofman, author of Conscious Business and a respected thinker on organizational culture, much of culture work does more harm than good. In fact, many well-intentioned efforts to shape culture end up undermining it. With billions spent annually on corporate culture, many companies would benefit from a more cautious, discovery-first approach.
Two crucial ideas guide effective culture work:
1) Start with discovery, not generation
When leaders imagine the ideal culture first and then try to “teach” it to the organization, they risk creating cynicism and disengagement. Culture work must begin with a genuine discovery of the existing culture.
Every organization already has a well-defined culture, with values and behaviors that are familiar to employees—whether or not leadership has named them. If new values don’t align with the lived reality, messages feel misaligned and credibility suffers.
An effective approach asks: What is our current culture really like? What values are we living today, whether or not we named them intentionally?
2) Do the hard work to uncover and address real behaviors
For transformation to be credible, leaders must acknowledge their own patterns that shape the culture. If leadership demonstrates behaviors that contradict stated values, employees will tune out.
Discovery can take two primary forms:
– Inside the company: Anonymous surveys can reveal how culture is experienced by staff. The anonymity helps capture honest feedback. However, it’s essential to act on the results; otherwise, you risk eroding trust.
– Inside the leader: The organization’s culture is often a reflection of its leadership. Personal reflection, 360-degree feedback, or coaching can illuminate blind spots and provide a clearer path to authentic change.
How to Move from Discovery to Change
Regardless of the discovery method, the path to cultural change that supports strategy follows a consistent pattern:
Step 1: Change yourself to live the values you want the organization to embody.
Step 2: Document and communicate those lived values openly.
If you’re wondering how this looks in practice, here’s a concise framework that has helped our team move quickly:
1) Conduct an explicit leadership reflection to identify personal behaviors that impact culture.
2) Engage in open, candid conversations about what needs to change.
3) Make public commitments to act differently and align actions with those commitments.
4) Implement changes in daily behavior across teams.
5) Observe culture shifting in response to consistent, ongoing actions.
The result? A culture that arises from authentic leadership and lived values—one that supports, rather than undermines, strategy.
From My Experience to Your Action
If you’re pursuing culture work, keep these guardrails in mind:
– Begin with discovery to understand the existing culture before you name new values.
– Ensure leadership models the behaviors you want to see.
– Pair feedback mechanisms with concrete, visible actions to close the loop.
– Expect a disciplined, ongoing process rather than a one-off initiative.
Ultimately, culture is not a cosmetic add-on. When genuinely understood and authentically enacted, it becomes a resilient force that sustains strategy, accelerates performance, and strengthens the entire organization.
