The model
Plenty of people could tell me it mattered. Far fewer could tell me what to do about it. So I built a model with parts you can point at: four layers, six conversations, three gaps, drawn from a national study of 1,002 people leaders. This page is what each part is, why it matters, and how they fit together.
I’ve watched organisations spend a fortune trying to train people out of a problem that was never a skills problem. You can’t train your way out of a safety issue. You can’t survey your way to a behaviour change. Reading the parts as layers is what tells you where you actually are.
Let’s Talk Culture was published with five. The work since taught me a sixth: capability. You can’t fairly hold someone to a behaviour they haven’t been equipped for, which is why it sits before confrontation.
make the unspoken spoken
What it is. Agreeing how this team actually works, out loud, instead of leaving people to guess.
Why it matters. Most friction in a team is not disagreement. It is two people following different rules.
We all carry an invisible rule book and quietly assume everyone else is playing by it. They aren’t. Ask your team what they expect of the team, of each other and of you, and you find out how many different games have been going on at once.
Where it sits. This is where the themes come from. Everything after it is built on the five to seven words a team chooses here.
make the invisible observable
What it is. Turning a value into behaviour specific enough that you could point at it.
Why it matters. Respect means five things to five people until somebody defines it.
It’s the difference between ‘we value collaboration’ and ‘every new project has a clear owner and a list of contributors’. One is a hope. The other is something you can see, and hold each other to.
Where it sits. Takes each theme from the first conversation and turns it into behaviours. These behaviours are what Measure tracks afterwards, in the team’s own words.
make the words a language
What it is. The handful of phrases a team repeats until they become how it thinks.
Why it matters. Culture lives in what gets said often, not in a document nobody reads.
Every team already has phrases it repeats. Most of them were never chosen. This conversation finds the ones worth keeping, on purpose, and the stories that carry them, because a phrase with a story behind it gets repeated and a phrase without one gets ignored.
Where it sits. Gives the behaviours a language, so they get repeated without anyone reading them off a wall. It is how a culture spreads to people who were never in the room.
make the aspiration achievable
What it is. Making sure people can actually do the thing you’ve asked them to do.
Why it matters. A standard without the skills or support is unfair to hold anyone to.
A standard without the skills or support behind it is unfair to hold anyone to. Once the behaviours are agreed, this is the conversation about whether people can actually do them, and what it would take.
Where it sits. Sits between agreeing the behaviours and holding people to them. It is the bridge from the offsite to the leadership work, and the reason the two are never sold apart.
make feedback less difficult
What it is. Saying something while it’s still small, and saying it kindly.
Why it matters. Culture is built by what you’re willing to have a conversation about.
Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker said that ‘the culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is willing to tolerate’, which couldn’t ring truer. This conversation makes feedback less difficult by giving it a shape: think through, talk through, follow through.
Where it sits. Keeps the behaviours accountable once they exist. Without it, the first four conversations are just aspiration. With it, they produce a standard.
make recognition more meaningful
What it is. Choosing what gets noticed, rather than noticing whatever happens to be loud.
Why it matters. People repeat what gets noticed and rewarded. Recognition doesn’t just help people feel valued, it helps them feel seen.
‘If I do something terrible, tell me. If I do something great, tell somebody else.’ That is Lisa O’Neill, and it is the whole conversation in two sentences. People repeat what gets noticed, so what you notice is what you’re building.
Where it sits. Closes the loop. What gets noticed gets repeated, so this is the conversation that decides which of the behaviours actually survive.
The offsite ends with behaviours the team agreed, in their own words. Measure then checks in on those behaviours, anonymously and on a cadence, and reads every one of them three ways. A score on its own is interesting. A gap is useful. Measure tracks engagement alongside them, energy, focus and purpose, because that is the layer that moves when the behaviours do.
The distance between where the team is and the standard it set itself. Big gap, big ambition, or a behaviour nobody has started on.
Your read against your team’s. When you score it higher than they do, that is the gap most leaders never see, and it is the one that costs trust.
How much the team varies. An average can hide half a room. Low spread means a shared experience; high spread means some people are living a different culture from the rest.
It’s what turns a good day into change you can still see months later.
The model isn’t a diagram I show and put away. It is the shape of everything I do. The Culture Strength Review reads where a team sits across the layers and the six conversations, and tells you where to start. The offsite runs the conversations, in order. Measure reads the three gaps afterwards, on the behaviours your team agreed, in their own words, and tracks engagement with them. And the leadership work builds the capability the fourth conversation asks for.