Most business owners know they have a culture, but that’s where the clarity ends. It’s not unusual to hear things like, “We’ve got a good culture here,” or “People get on,” or “We don’t have politics.” But when you press for details, it turns out culture is something they hope is working, rather than something they actively shape.
If you’re not managing your culture, it’s managing you.
You can’t fix what you haven’t named
Culture isn’t a slogan on a wall or a vague sense of being “nice people.” It’s the unwritten rules about how people behave, what’s acceptable, what gets rewarded, and what gets quietly tolerated.
It’s:
- Whether meetings start on time (or ever achieve anything)
- Whether people speak up or stay silent
- Whether poor performance gets addressed, or just worked around
- Whether people do what they said they’d do – or make excuses
In short, culture is how things actually happen in your organisation.
And just as a goldfish doesn’t notice the water it’s swimming in, your team probably doesn’t notice the culture either. Until it becomes a problem.
“We’re too busy for fluffy stuff”
I hear this all the time. And yes, culture can feel intangible when you’re chasing sales targets, project deadlines, or investor updates. But it directly affects performance.
Ignore it, and you risk:
- A growing disconnect between what leadership thinks is happening and what’s actually going on.
- Good people disengaging because no one’s addressing the elephant in the room.
- A blame culture, or a passive-aggressive one, or a ‘caring’ culture that avoids accountability.
This “invisible” stuff costs you money, time and energy.
What’s missing isn’t motivation – it’s tools
Most founders and managers are good at their technical or specialist role. Many are also pretty good socially – they know how to get on with people, have a laugh, maybe even go for a pint with the team on a Friday.
But that’s not the same as having strong professional working skills – and this is the real gap in most businesses.
Too often, leaders try to solve business problems using social solutions:
- Someone’s being difficult? Take them out for lunch.
- The team isn’t collaborating? Organise a team-building day.
- Performance is patchy? Have a friendly chat and hope it lands.
These things might help in the short term. But if you want consistent, high-performance behaviour across your organisation, you need something more deliberate.
Build the habits of high-functioning teams
This means getting rigorous about how work actually gets done – especially the human parts. You don’t need a psychology degree or emotional intelligence training. You need clear, repeatable practices that everyone can learn and use.
Here are just a few:
- Groundrules for meetings – so they’re productive, not a talking shop.
- Structured feedback – so people know how they’re doing, and what to change.
- Clear delegation – so there’s no fuzzy handover or missed deadlines.
- Agreements and accountability – so promises turn into action, not avoidance.
- Ways of listening and responding – so people feel heard and can challenge constructively.
These are learnable. They’re teachable. And they work.
Culture becomes how you run the business
When everyone in the organisation knows what’s expected and how to interact, you take a huge load off the founder and senior team. You stop relying on personality, goodwill, or having to “manage around” certain people.
You also make it easier to scale, easier to onboard, and easier to spot when something’s going off track.
In fact, when you embed these habits, culture becomes one of your biggest performance levers.
Because culture isn’t about being warm and fuzzy. It’s about setting people up to do great work, together.
And that goes straight to your bottom line.