Part 4 of the Cultural Alchemy series
In my previous article, I introduced the concept of culture as a living system with different pace layers—from fast-changing behaviors to slow-moving assumptions. I shared how treating culture like a machine rather than a climate system leads to failed transformation efforts, as I experienced firsthand with a robotics company where we had fundamental misalignments at the assumptions layer.
Now, let's explore how we can work effectively with these pace layers to foster meaningful cultural evolution rather than simply implementing superficial changes.
Working with, not against, pace layers
How do we work effectively across these different speeds of change?
1. Match your timeframe to the layer
Behaviors can shift in days or weeks. Processes and structures in months. Metrics and rewards may take quarters to show effects. Values statements become lived reality over years. And assumptions? Those might outlast entire leadership tenures. Be realistic about the pace of change at each layer. And recognize that attention follows the fastest-changing elements, while power resides in the slowest-changing ones.
2. Create alignment across layers
The most successful culture work ensures that faster-moving elements (behaviors, processes) reinforce rather than contradict slower ones (values, assumptions).
Ask yourself: Do our metrics reward the behaviors our values claim to support? Do our structures make it easy or hard to live our stated principles? Do our processes reinforce or undermine our assumptions about trust?
Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety demonstrates how surface behaviors (speaking up, admitting mistakes) only become sustainable when deeper assumptions (it's safe to be vulnerable) support them.
3. Start with small, safe-to-fail experiments
In complex systems, we can't predict exactly how interventions will play out. Instead, we need what Dave Snowden calls "safe-fail probes"—small experiments that give us information about the system without risking catastrophic failure.
These might include:
- Changing one meeting format to prioritize different voices
- Creating a blameless postmortem process for a single team
- Adjusting how one leader responds to bad news
The key is close attention to results. What changed? What didn't? What unexpected patterns emerged?
From cultural change to cultural evolution
Rather than positioning culture as something to "shift" or "fix" (which still implies directing it), successful leaders create conditions for cultural evolution:
- Creating psychological safety for new behaviors to emerge
- Providing nutrients in the form of time, attention, and resources
- Removing toxins like fear, status games, and zero-sum thinking
- Letting better patterns emerge naturally through experimentation
- Celebrating and amplifying what works
In complex systems, the path forward isn't forcing change. It's fostering emergence.
Culture isn't just a story. It's everywhere.
Complex systems don't need control. They need coherence. Culture work is about helping people feel part of a story that makes sense. A story that's honest. Shared. Generative.
But this story isn't just told—it's embedded in everything:
- Physical spaces: Does your office layout reflect your stated values about collaboration?
- Rituals: Do your meetings, celebrations, and transitions reinforce what matters?
- Language: What metaphors dominate your company vocabulary? War? Sports? Family?
- Heroes: Which behaviors get someone celebrated in company lore?
These cultural artifacts aren't just expressions of culture—they're active shapers of it. They're how abstract values become concrete experiences.
The cultural debt we carry
Just as organizations accumulate technical debt when they prioritize speed over code quality, they accumulate "cultural debt" through:
- Unaddressed tensions
- Unspoken agreements
- Conflict avoidance
- Success theater
This debt compounds over time, making change increasingly difficult. Each workaround, each avoided conversation, each unacknowledged elephant in the room becomes part of the invisible infrastructure everyone must navigate.
And like financial debt, cultural debt demands interest payments—in lost productivity, diminished trust, and emotional labor.
What now?
As leaders, we need to shift our approach from cultural engineering to cultural gardening. We can't force the right culture into existence, but we can create conditions where it can flourish:
- At the behaviors layer: Model what you want to see. Show, don't just tell.
- At the processes layer: Design for the outcomes and interactions you want to enable.
- At the structures layer: Create connections, not just hierarchies.
- At the metrics layer: Measure what truly matters, not just what's easy to count.
- At the values layer: Articulate principles that align with reality, not aspiration.
- At the assumptions layer: Make the invisible visible. Name the unspoken beliefs.
This isn't easy work. It's not quick. But it's the only way to create lasting change.
So before you launch another reorganization or framework implementation, ask yourself:
- Which pace layer are we actually trying to change?
- Have we aligned interventions across faster and slower layers?
- Are we allowing enough time for deeper layers to evolve?
- What small, safe-to-fail experiments could we run today?
Culture isn't something you fix once and forget. It's something you tend continuously. It's not a project. It's a practice.
If this resonates, follow along with the next article in this series. Or better yet, share it with someone navigating the complexity of cultural change who senses there's more beneath the surface than their latest framework addresses.