Culture Isn’t a Mystery: How to Define, Measure, and UpShift It at Work

(Work/Shift - Issue #6)

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Let’s get one thing straight: culture isn’t your mission statement, your values poster, or what your CEO says on LinkedIn. It’s not the healthy snacks, the golf putting green, or how many dogs are allowed in the office.

Culture is how things really work around here. It’s the lived experience of work: the unspoken rules, the tolerated behaviours, the norms people learn to navigate just to get through the week.

Culture is less about what’s promised, and more about what’s permitted. It lives in the space between strategy and reality.

In simple terms:

Culture is the sum of what’s expected, accepted, and repeated.

It includes leadership behaviour, team dynamics, communication patterns, decision-making rhythms, and how your space, systems, and policies support (or sabotage...) those experiences. Culture isn’t just emotional. It’s operational.

How to Spot Culture (And Measure It, Too)

You can’t shift what you can’t see. And too often, culture is treated like weather. Something we just live with, instead of something we can actually understand and influence.

Here’s how to make culture visible and measurable in real terms:

Start with Observation, Not Opinion

Forget the glossy surveys for a moment. The clearest signals of culture are right in front of you:

• Who speaks up in meetings, and who doesn’t?

• Where do people gather? Or do they avoid the office altogether?

• What gets celebrated? What gets quietly ignored?

• Are people collaborating across teams or staying in their lanes?

These aren’t vibes. They’re patterns. And they’re data.

Decode the Environment

Workplaces don’t just reflect culture. They reinforce it.

Look at your physical environment, your tech stack, your policies. They’ll tell you what behaviours are being supported or discouraged.

• Are there spaces for focus and disconnection, or is busyness rewarded?

• Is flexibility just a policy, or is it embedded in how people actually work?

• Are leaders accessible, or physically and psychologically walled off?

Design for signals. Every part of your workplace sends a message. Want psychological safety? Design spaces that invite open conversation. Think quiet corners for honest one-on-ones, transparent rooms where feedback isn’t a formality or a checkbox.

Your workplace is a mirror. Don’t just check the frame. Study the reflection.

And let’s be clear: culture isn’t limited to the office floorplate.

Your digital environment is a cultural stage, too.

• Is responsiveness expected at all hours, or is rest respected?

• Are remote workers included in key decisions, or are they quietly sidelined?

• Are your digital tools amplifying connection or just piling on noise?

If your in-office culture says “we trust you,” but your remote culture says “prove it,” you’ve got a disconnect. And culture doesn’t stop at the Wi-Fi edge.

Use Mixed Metrics That Actually Matter

Traditional engagement scores are useful, but not enough. Culture lives in nuance. Here's a more layered approach:

• Behavioural data: badge swipes, meeting load, collaboration analytics

• Experience signals: pulse surveys, sentiment analysis, exit interviews, whisper networks

• Space utilisation vs. intent: how people use space versus how it was designed to be used

Overlay these signals. Look for friction, gaps, and contradictions. That’s where culture hides.

How to Create, Reinforce, or UpShift Culture — By Design

Once you’ve mapped the culture you have, the real work begins. Are you trying to build it, back it, or break it?

This isn’t about better slogans. It’s about shifting the conditions that shape behaviour.

Creating Culture (When There’s No ‘There’ Yet)

Start by defining the behaviours you want to reward and protect.

• What principles guide how you work under pressure?

• What kind of interactions do you want people to have at every level?

Then anchor those principles in your environment:

• Design for signals. If you want psychological safety, create space for dialogue and feedback.

• Operationalise values. If flexibility matters, don’t just say it. Build workflows and spaces that flex for different needs and energy levels.

Culture isn’t declared. It’s demonstrated.

Reinforcing Culture (When It’s There but Fragile)

Maybe your culture is strong but under pressure from growth, turnover, or hybrid drift.

• Codify what works. Document and scale the rituals, rhythms, and behaviours you want to keep.

• Watch for misalignment. One leader acting off-script can unravel months of progress.

• Use design as reinforcement. If collaboration is core, give it real estate. If focus matters, protect it with norms and space.

Reinforcement is about consistency, not rigidity.

Shifting Culture (When It’s Not Working Anymore)

Culture drift happens quietly until it becomes the reason good people leave.

One of my client, a mid-size engineering firm said “collaboration” was a core value, but teams rarely mixed across silos. The physical layout reinforced it — isolated pods, locked meeting rooms, no central social space. After a simple redesign, with shared touchdown zones, open project walls, and cross-functional stand-ups, collaboration spiked within weeks. Culture didn’t change because of a workshop. It changed because the conditions did.

To upshift culture:

• Name the gap. Where is there disconnect between values and actual experience?

• Change the defaults. If you want trust, reduce the need for permission. If you want innovation, stop punishing failure.

• Prototype change. Use workplace design to test new rhythms, norms, and ways of working.

Navigating Resistance

Culture change doesn’t just meet silence. It often meets resistance. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s a signal.

People resist what feels uncertain, unsafe, or performative. So don’t sell change as a slogan. Instead:

• Acknowledge the loss. Even positive change replaces something familiar.

• Make it real. Tie shifts in behaviour to changes in systems, leadership modelling, and design.

• Give people agency. Co-create the upshift, don’t dictate it.

Change that’s done to people rarely sticks. Change that’s done with people does.

This isn’t a rebrand. It’s a reset.

Culture change starts by making the invisible visible, then having the courage to change the conditions that created it.

Culture Isn’t a Project. It’s a Practice.

We need to stop treating culture like something you fix in an offsite or refresh every few years.

It’s not a campaign. It’s not owned by HR. And it certainly doesn’t live in a PDF.

Culture is built or broken in the smallest moments, every day. It’s shaped by what leaders model, what teams tolerate, and what systems make easy or impossible. It’s embedded in the design of your office, your rituals, your metrics, and your silences.

If you want to change culture, start by seeing it clearly. Then be brave enough to redesign the conditions that shape it.

Because the workplace doesn’t just reflect culture. It creates it.

What’s one thing in your workplace that silently shapes your culture — for better or worse?

Let’s talk about it.

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