Martin Egan, Judge in the Culture Leadership Category of the Business Culture Awards, reflects on what true culture alignment looks like and why the most effective leaders go beyond role modelling to embed systemic change.
As a judge for the Business Culture Awards, I see leaders navigating extraordinary complexity. Artificial intelligence is redrawing the map of work, while hybrid models are reshaping connection and collaboration. ESG expectations are intensifying scrutiny from stakeholders, and trust in leadership remains fragile. In this context, culture is no longer a “soft” issue. It is the decisive factor in whether businesses adapt or falter.
One theme stands out in organisations that achieve lasting impact: they do not treat culture as a brand campaign, but as an integral system of behaviour patterns that must be aligned and embedded to deliver results.
Culture is not a slogan on a wall or a set of values in a glossy report. It is the lived reality of how decisions are made, how people collaborate, and how success is defined. As Steven Bartlett recently put it, “Your culture is how your team actually behaves.” More precisely, it is the pattern of behaviours that are encouraged, discouraged, or tolerated by people and systems over time. When those patterns align with business strategy, culture becomes the most powerful driver of performance. When they don’t, culture quietly undermines progress.
Beyond Role Modelling: Aligning your Systems
Much has been said about the importance of your business leaders modelling the culture they want to see. It matters. Employees quickly notice whether leaders live the values they espouse. But role modelling is not enough.
When judging this year’s nominations, leaders stood out when they aligned business systems and processes to their strategy, in addition to their leadership qualities.
The most effective leaders know that people don’t just watch them, but that they also “read the system.” If your leaders talk about innovation while governance processes reward caution, the system speaks louder than the words. If your executives preach collaboration while bonus structures incentivise silos, your employees will follow the money.
That is why leading culture alignment is not simply about personal consistency. It is about ensuring that systems, processes, and rituals reinforce the desired behaviours at every level of the business.
Culture Patterns in Practice
At Culture Impact, we’ve seen how culture alignment transforms outcomes. One global client wanted to shift from siloed operations to a unified, client-centric model. The CEO and executive team spoke passionately about collaboration, but behaviours remained competitive.
By analysing their culture focus areas, we identified the root misalignment: leaders were still being measured on unit-level results. The system rewarded competition, not integration.
Working with the leadership team, we reframed KPIs, rewired incentives, and embedded new leadership rituals that reinforced joint ownership of outcomes. Within six months, collaboration across functions rose sharply, and client satisfaction scores followed. Culture shifted not because leaders gave inspiring speeches, but because alignment made collaboration unavoidable.
Lessons from Bold Leaders
This principle is evident in the work of leaders who have reshaped organisations at scale.
Satya Nadella’s transformation of Microsoft went far beyond declaring a “growth mindset.” He re-engineered performance systems to reward curiosity, elevated collaboration as a metric of success, and amplified stories of leaders who embodied these shifts. The culture became systemic, not symbolic.
Another worthy example is Google. The business’s ‘20% time’ policy, which allows employees to dedicate 20% of their work time to projects they have a passion for, hardwired innovation into the fabric of the company. This led to the development of many of the products we enjoy today, including Gmail and Adsense.
These leaders understood that culture lives in patterns, not pronouncements.
A Call to Today’s Businesses
In 2025, culture leadership means asking uncomfortable questions:
• Do our systems reinforce the culture we say we want?
• Are the behaviours we reward aligned with the strategy we claim to pursue?
• Have we created rituals and processes that hardwire trust, collaboration, and adaptability?
Leading culture is not about running employee engagement drives or organising out-of-the-box campaigns. It is about embedding alignment between words, behaviours, and systems so consistently that people no longer need to guess what matters to the business.
Building Patterns of Success
The Business Culture Awards celebrate leaders who do more than articulate a vision. They recognise those who embed patterns of behaviour that make culture real, systemic, and sustainable.
At the heart of every thriving organisation lies a culture aligned to strategy. Leaders who embed this alignment are not simply keeping up with the times, they are leading a business that doesn’t solely rely on their presence. A business that will adapt and accelerate sustainably and systemically. Because when culture and strategy move together, success follows.
At Culture Impact, in our Culture Strategy Workshop, we work with leaders to uncover the current patterns of behaviour within a business and identify the new behaviours that will support their wider strategy. With this understanding, we can then create a roadmap to true, transformative alignment. Find out more about how we help organisations assess and align culture.