Shaping Culture by Design

Cultivating the 'critical few behaviors' creates a workplace where everyone can thrive.

Every good leader aims to create a healthy culture. But what is culture, really?

My favorite definition is from author and strategist Jon R. Katzenbach. He says culture is made up of "the self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking and believing that determine how things are done in an organization." And those patterns are powerful. They drive results. Workplace culture - the health of an organization - matters not only to people, but to business performance.

However, healthy culture isn’t built by accident. It’s shaped by design, through collaborative, intentional commitment. It lives in the daily choices everyone makes about what’s said and done, what’s accepted and redirected, and what's reinforced and rewarded.

So how does an organization actually go about shaping a culture? It starts with recentering core values - the principles that matter most - and identifying the critical few behaviors that bring those values to life.

From Aspiration to Activation

Values are important, but too often they are merely aspirational. Without translation into action, values are nothing more than words on a wall or a website.

When values are left abstract, people fill in the blanks for themselves. That creates inconsistency. One team may interpret the value of “innovation” as taking big bold risks, while another sees it as incremental process improvement. This incoherence creates conflict and confusion.

By contrast, when values are grounded in a critical few behaviors, chosen collectively, people know what's expected, and they have permission to reinforce those expectations with one another. The culture becomes something shared ("this is how we do things here"), not something imposed ("do this or else").

Defining and activating the right critical few behaviors moves values out of the abstract and anchors them in daily practice - actions everyone can recognize, demonstrate, and hold one another accountable to. The culture shifts from aspiration → activation. People feel collective ownership, and experience coherence between what the organization says it values and what it actually does.

The Process of Culture-Shaping

Shaping culture in this way involves several structured steps:

1. Articulating the core values that matter most to the organization’s success.

2. Translating those values into a handful of clear, observable behaviors.

3. Empowering influencers to spark and spread the new behaviors.

4. Embedding new widespread norms, policies and protocols to support the new behaviors.

5. Measuring how often behaviors show up, tracking progress.

6. Reinforcing behavior change with recognition and redirection as needed.

Find the right critical behavior can trigger a wave of positive culture change. One organization I work with named compassion as a core value. They challenged themselves by asking, "What does that actually look like in daily practice?" Of course there are many ways to show compassion. We explored several, and their team carefully selected one universal, easy, repeatable behavior to focus on: “Greet people by name.” That single critical behavior is changing daily dynamics in a powerful way. It drives people to actively learn and use the names of people around them. To smile and acknowledge others with warmth. To start up new conversations with each other. To create a shared sense of being known in their space. In their culture, compassion begins with a simple thing people can see, hear, and do every day. This practice of greeting people by name is becoming a cornerstone within that community, creating more meaningful human connection and a stronger, healthier culture.

The Bigger Picture

Workplace culture impacts everything...from the employee experience, to engagement, to overall effectiveness and even financial success. It matters to people and to organizational performance.

But culture cannot be created by decree. True organizational health must be shaped collectively at all levels of the organization. It's the only way to build a real shared commitment.

Shaping culture takes careful intention, but the work is worth it. Together with your entire team, you can cultivate the kind of space you all want to work in - where everyone can operate at their very best, in pursuit of your mission, on behalf of the communities you serve.

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Need Support? We're here to help. If you’re looking for guidance on shaping a healthier culture at your own organization, check out our consulting partnerships, keynotes, and Empowerment Labs.

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