What is TRUE Culture Change?

Jamie Woolf

You're sitting in an all-staff meeting, watching leadership unveil the company's new values. "Integrity," "Innovation," "Customer Service."  You feel that familiar tightening in your stomach that says something isn't quite right here.

Recent research reveals what most of us already suspected: 64% of employees can't remember even one of their company's official values. Worse, 72% say those stated values don't match the behaviors they witness daily.  

The discouraging thing isn't that companies care too little about culture. It's that they're working so hard at it in ways that simply don't work.

Most organizational values emerge from a predictable process: senior team retreat, facilitated visioning session, wordsmithing committee, design phase, rollout comms strategy. It's corporate theater at its finest—all performance, no transformation.

The fundamental flaw isn't the intention; it's the assumption that culture can be manufactured from the top and distributed downward. Values created in conference rooms feel exactly like what they are: artificial constructs designed by people who may be completely disconnected from the daily reality of how work actually happens.

When Pixar faced their own culture crisis—leadership departures, misconduct scandals, budget upheaval—we asked a question: What if our values already exist in the stories people tell about working here?

We collected over 170 stories from across the organization. Not aspirational stories about where they wanted to be, but real stories about moments that made people proud to work there. Stories about risk-taking on new technology that meant a film would take seven years instead of four. Stories about families seeing representation in their films for the first time.

The process of gathering these stories became culture-building itself. People weren't just identifying values—they were living them, remembering why they mattered, connecting over shared experiences that had shaped them.

Here's the provocation: Your real values already exist. They're alive in the stories people tell about your organization when they think leadership isn't listening.

The Question That Changes Everything

When Pixar identified "Community" as a core value, we didn't stop at the warm, fuzzy definition. We attached a specific question that leaders could ask when making decisions or policy changes: "Who might feel excluded?" Suddenly, values weren't poster material—they became decision-making tools.

Planning a meeting? Who might feel excluded? Launching a new initiative? Who might feel excluded? Making a hiring decision? Who might feel excluded?

This approach transforms abstract concepts into immediate, actionable frameworks. "Innovation" becomes real when paired with "What else is possible?" "Ownership" comes alive through "How can I contribute?"

These aren't feel-good mantras. They're practical instruments for navigating the complex, messy reality of organizational life. They help people make better decisions in real time, not just remember inspirational words during annual reviews.

Here's an uncomfortable truth: your employees know exactly what you really value, regardless of what's printed on your website. They know because systems don't lie.

If you say "collaboration" but only reward individual performance, people learn what actually matters. If you claim "diversity" but your leadership team looks identical to the one from five years ago, the message is received. If "work-life balance" is on your values list but you consistently contact people after hours, nobody's confused about the real priorities.

Culture change fails when organizations try to change messaging without changing systems. It's like repainting a house while the foundation is crumbling—cosmetically appealing, structurally doomed.

The companies that achieve lasting culture change start with systems alignment. They ask hard questions: Where do our current processes contradict our stated values? What behaviors are we actually incentivizing? What would we have to change—really change—to make these values true?

One organization discovered their hiring process completely undermined their stated commitment to diversity because interview panels were consistently homogeneous. Another realized their "collaborative culture" was impossible to maintain when performance reviews only measured individual contributions.

The fix wasn't better communication about values. It was changing the systems that shape daily experience.

The Leadership Mirror Moment

The most decisive factor in culture change isn't employee buy-in—it's leadership behavior. And not just during town halls and strategy sessions, but in the unglamorous moments when they think nobody important is watching.

Employees are remarkably sophisticated culture detectives. They notice when leaders preach transparency but make decisions behind closed doors. They observe when executives champion psychological safety but react defensively to challenging feedback. They watch when the stated value is "people first," but layoffs are communicated via email.

The sequence matters enormously: leaders must change their own behavior first, then work with their teams to embed those changes in systems, and only then expand the transformation across the organization. 

This doesn't mean leaders need to be perfect. It means they need to be courageously consistent, especially when it costs them something personally. When a leader admits a mistake publicly, changes a decision based on employee feedback, or enforces a value even though it means losing a high performer—those moments carry exponentially more weight than any inspirational presentation.

Middle Management: The Culture Make-or-Break Point

Most culture initiatives die a slow death in middle management, and it's not because middle managers don't care. It's because they're asked to implement values they didn't help create, with behaviors that weren't modeled for them, in systems that haven't been aligned to support them.

Middle managers become the uncomfortable bridge between senior leadership's aspirations and frontline reality. They're expected to translate abstract values into concrete daily practices while navigating their own performance pressures and resource constraints.

The organizations that succeed invest heavily in this layer. They provide specific training on having difficult conversations. They offer coaching on inclusive leadership practices. They create regular forums for middle managers to surface challenges and successes in living the values.

Most importantly, they make culture work part of how middle managers are evaluated and promoted. Not as an add-on to "real" business metrics, but as integral to their success and advancement.

Whether you're a senior leader, middle manager, or individual contributor, you have more influence over culture than you might realize. Here's where to start:

• Get curious about the stories. What tales do people tell about your organization when they're proud? When they're frustrated? Those stories contain your actual culture, not your aspirational one.

• Ask the uncomfortable questions. Before your next meeting, project launch, or decision point, pause and ask: how does this align (or misalign) with our values?

• Look for the system contradictions. Where do current processes undermine stated values? What behaviors are actually being rewarded versus what's being proclaimed?  

• Change your own behavior first. Model the culture you want to see, especially in small moments when you think nobody's watching. Consistency in the mundane creates credibility for the meaningful.

• Support the people in between. If you're senior leadership, invest in your middle managers. If you're an individual contributor, flag what's working and what isn't, and share ideas with those leaders who will listen. Form a coalition, not to complain but to generate good ideas and solutions that align with company priorities. 

Culture change isn't a project to complete—it's a practice to maintain. It's not about finding the perfect values statement; it's about creating organizational muscle for ongoing culture development that evolves with your business and your people.

The question is whether you're ready to do culture work authentically—focusing on systems rather than slogans, and accepting that the hardest work happens in leadership behavior.