Culture is always up to something. You may not have asked it to be, but it is.
It shapes what people prioritise. It influences how decisions get made. It affects who speaks, who waits, and what happens next.
Organisational culture is not a backdrop. It is a system. It moves through our language, pace, silence, reward, and resistance. It creates the conditions for progress or indeed, makes it harder than it needs to be.
Edgar Schein spent decades studying how culture shapes organisational life. He once wrote:
"The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you."
It aligns closely with something I often say in my work with leaders:
Culture is the day job.
I’ve even started experimenting with a Substack by the same name.
You can find me here.
Leadership shapes culture through what gets attention, what gets ignored, and what gets normalised. Meetings, decisions, silences. Each one contributes to the culture that is our context.
Recently, a senior leader said to me, “We keep calling culture strategic, but we still treat it like an HR deliverable.” How are you treating culture?
How is your culture treating you?
Noticing where culture sits, and where it doesn’t, is often where the shift begins.
This month, I'm excited twelve executives are joining me in the first Leading Culture cohort. They are bringing their context, constraints, and leadership challenges into the room. Drawn from a range of industries and locations, I'm confident they will be learning as much from each other as they will from me.
Our focus is not just on tools (although I will be sharing access to my Cultureshift suite). The focus is on our attention. On seeing what culture is already doing, and where to step in with purpose. On leading culture.
And! Next month, the 🎧 audiobook version of Shift will be released.
Reading it aloud was a fascinating experience. It brought a different kind of clarity. I heard things I had forgotten I wrote. The ideas felt familiar, but sharper somehow.
There's something different about listening to a message than reading it. We take away different things. As the kids might say, "it hits different".
"Culture: it hits different"? Perhaps it could be a social post one day :P
Listening to Shift reminded me why these ideas still matter and how they land differently when we’re willing to really hear them.
Culture, when led deliberately, still feels like the most practical lever we have.
Culture is always up to something.
What is yours doing right now?
Regards,
Meredith
PS I have one Executive Mentoring place opening up in September. If you've been considering this, please let me know as there are limited places each year.
Culture can take you further than Strategy can imagine.
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