How to Grow Your Culture by Design Versus by Chance

Challenging misconceptions about culture design and why successful organizations grow their culture intentionally, not by accident

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Workplace culture design is not a new concept, yet many people still struggle with the idea. Detractors argue that culture should just happen organically. However, if that’s the case, why do many company cultures thrive while so many others suck?

Culture plays a significant role in predicting employee performance and overall business success. A study by Glassdoor shows that companies with a strong culture outperform the Standard & Poor's 500 index, delivering almost twice the gain. However, these organizations did not make the list by accident. They were intentionally focused on cultivating their culture.

So, what drives the resistance to culture design? And why do some people immediately associate it with control? Recently, someone even compared my approach to that of a dictator (more on that later).

In this post, I will explain why organizations need to grow their culture by design, not just chance, and why culture design is not rigid but a collaborative, iterative, and organic approach.

Culture Design Is About Being Intentional

Last week, I shared a post on LinkedIn about the Culture Design Canvas, a tool I created a few years ago to help teams and organizations become more intentional about their culture.

As usual, I received a lot of great feedback and some pushback. However, one comment that caught me off guard stated that culture design was something that dictators do. It compared my approach to Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, or Hitler. Everyone familiar with my practice and work would find that insulting or funny.

At first, I was shocked, but then I revisited the comment through a positive intent lens. What's driving the misunderstanding?

Often, the conversation about workplace culture revolves around two opposing viewpoints. On the one hand is the notion that culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be defined or controlled. On the other hand is a prescriptive, top-down approach to managing workplace culture. Either culture grows organically or you control it.

However, these extreme perspectives often overlook the potential of a balanced approach: being intentional about the culture you want doesn't mean controlling it or harming its organic nature.

Despite its potential, culture design is often misunderstood.

Many people still think of design as "someone who decides upon the look and functioning of an object/ thing." Rather than a human-centric and collaborative approach, they believe design is about one person (the leader) imposing their views on how things should be.

Culture design is both fluid and organic.

Culture design is not about imposing a specific path but creating a collaborative environment.

After Japanese landscapers design a park, people walk freely without a predefined walkway. Rather than deciding which path is right, they let the users find (design) the way. After some time, by looking at where the grass has worn away, landscapers pave the paths most people have chosen to follow.

This analogy represents the notion behind culture design: a combination of intentionality and co-creation.

Culture design is about creating the right conditions for people to do their best work.

Design doesn't mean controlling culture but being more intentional about it.

Zappos' founder Tony Hsieh believed his job as CEO was to be "the architect of the greenhouse." Rather than being the plant others aspired to be, he created the right conditions for everyone to bloom.

Culture design is about caring for the soil, hiring fertile talent, and letting them grow in the right direction.

It's true that, left to its own devices, company culture is organic – it happens naturally and emerges freely. However, successful organizations intentionally design theirs. HubSpot treats its culture like a product. Culture design should be treated as consciously, starting and ending with the user in mind – not precisely what Mao or Hitler did.

The Case for a Human-Centered Approach to Culture Design

Design Thinking revolutionized the idea of design. Human-centered design puts real people at the center of the development process, using empathy and collaboration to uncover better solutions. Companies that prioritize design show remarkable 10-year returns of 219%.

Attending a change leadership program at Stanford's d.school not only expanded my design thinking horizons, but it also caused me to pivot my career focus toward workplace culture.

After more than two decades in the marketing and innovation world, I have realized that most organizations do not lack ideas but a conducive culture to help bring those ideas to fruition.

Culture design is about making the invisible more visible.

The idea that culture is invisible reinforces the feeling that it's abstract and difficult to act upon. Culture design, however, uses frameworks and conversations to make people more aware of beliefs and behaviors that shape the workplace. This awareness enables them to positively and proactively become more intentional about growing culture.

A culture-by-default happens without much thought. This is either because no one spent time designing it or because leaders believe that having a purpose statement or listing their core values is enough.

On the other hand, an intentionally-designed culture results from an inclusive, iterative process.

One of the aspects people love most about our Culture Design Masterclass is the human-centered, flexible, and iterative method. It encourages tangible and actionable conversations.

At its core, culture design is built on leveraging organic elements – what's already working – and enhancing them through intentional design. Importantly, it considers the different subcultures within a company, integrating them rather than neutralizing their peculiarities.

Professor Dave Snowden encourages mapping subcultures within an organization to uncover stories told by employees. This helps drive changes by saying I want "more stories like these..." and "fewer like those..."

Culture design is about facilitating conversations that drive understanding and change.

From water-cooler chitchat to how colleagues give feedback to each other - the conversations that people have (or do not) shape your organization's culture.

Human-Centered Design is a creative approach that starts with the people you are designing for and ends with new solutions. It's all about building deep empathy with the people you're designing for to discover compelling human stories that can generate better solutions.

Compare this to how culture is managed in most organizations. Instead of a deliberate design process, company culture usually just happens. It's an afterthought. Even those organizations that put some thought into it fail to include their employees (the user) in the process – defining the culture is limited to a few people from HR or senior management.

The Principles of Culture Design

"A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneur's job is to build the foundation." —Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky

The key misconception that culture design faces is that it's seen as a form of control. This misinterpretation stems from a misunderstanding of the term 'design.' In reality, design is not about imposing rigid rules or structures. Instead, it's about understanding needs, identifying problems, and creating solutions.

In the context of culture design, this means focusing on the needs of the people in the organization – their aspirations, values, and ways of working. It involves identifying problems or gaps in the current culture and collaboratively creating solutions.

Design Is About Being Intentional

Culture design is about intentionally defining who we are and who we want to be – most notably, who we don't want to be.

Intentional leaders practice what they preach. They consistently match their words with actions and celebrate behaviors reinforcing the culture.

Web development company Automattic, best known for its WordPress product, considers communication "the oxygen of a distributed company." The company interviews developers over text-based chat to identify clear and to-the-point candidates. As I share in my book Remote Not Distant, Automattic has a writing-first culture. Having good writing skills is not just nice-to-have but a must-have.

Start with Mapping Your Current Culture

Mapping your company culture is vital to understand what your organization stands for. It helps reveal the gap between the "official" culture and the real one, uncovering growth opportunities.

Codifying your current culture is discovering how employees view your company culture. It's the process of mapping the beliefs and practices that are already in place.

Jeff Bezos said, "You can write down your company culture, but when you do so, you're discovering it, uncovering it – not creating it."

Even organizations with a well-defined culture are surprised by the depth of insights that culture mapping provides. Consolidating the results across different areas provides a rich view of how different groups live the culture. Most importantly, leaders realize the gap between what they see and what people actually experience.

A Collaborative Process

Culture is not just the result of what leaders do but the sum of everyone's behaviors. Culture design is a collaborative, co-creative process. Smart leaders tap into collective wisdom to find solutions that will help improve theirs.

Why have one person or committee responsible for creating a workplace culture intended for the whole company?

One thing that positively surprises our clients (and the Culture Design Masterclass participants) is the democratization of culture design. Even though company culture should be CEOs' number one priority, that doesn't mean they should exclusively own it.

When Airbnb decided to refresh its core values, the leadership team involved the entire company. By asking what inflated or deflated the culture, Airbnb realized some values looked good but didn't connect to actual behaviors. Not only did the company reduced the number of values, but it also chose more meaningful ones.

Culture Design Is an Iterative Process

Culture design is an iterative process, not a one-time activity. It's a never-ending job. What worked yesterday probably won't work tomorrow, so be prepared to adapt.

Evolve your culture through experiments, continuous learning, and growing the good that already exists.

Software company Atlassian treats its culture as a dynamic, evolving entity. It has an open company, no-bullshit policy, which promotes honesty, transparency, and feedback. Atlassian considers culture a continually-evolving construct that can be continuousl improved upon. Employees have regular retrospectives where they reflect on what's working and what isn't, then iterate on it.

The Culture Design Canvas: a Living Framework

I created the Culture Design Canvas to fill a void and help organizations map their culture on one page. It's easy to use, but that doesn't mean it doesn't require the proper training and practice.

Some people view the Culture Design Canvas as a collection of boxes, thinking mapping the culture means putting it into a box. It's a system – all the building blocks are interconnected.

That's something I encourage my clients and students to remember. Frameworks help us understand reality, but they're not the reality. The Canvas is a tool to represent culture, but it is not the culture. They need to see culture as a system. Although each building helps us double-click on one aspect of the culture (purpose, feedback, rituals, decision-making, etc.), they're all interconnected.

Most importantly, the canvas should be treated as a living document. It should continually evolve, just like your culture. Rather than map the current and future state, the canvas should have many iterations representing the evolution – from practices that are added to behaviors that are eradicated.

The Power of Intentional Culture Design

Culture design is not about imposing a rigid model but a human-centered, flexible, and iterative approach. It challenges the idea that culture is either left to chance or imposed from the top. Instead, culture design provides a middle ground – shaping culture intentionally, collaboratively, and adaptively.

Culture design also leverages the value within an organization. It considers the different perspectives, ideas, and experiences of all employees. Integrating these varied inputs makes the designed culture more comprehensive, innovative, and effective.

Culture design is not a one-time activity but an iterative process that requires continuous input and feedback from everyone in the organization – not precisely a dictator’s approach.

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If you’re wondering how I can help you design your team or company culture, book a free call with me.

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