Organisational culture is the system through which strategy lives or dies; an ecosystem shaped by stories, decisions and conversations at every level. So agreed presenters at the recent Business Culture Connected conference where the audience was provided with a sharp, more grounded understanding of how culture really works in practice, not theory. There was much rich material shared on the day but here we pull out five key lessons:

1. Culture lives in conversation

Despite decades of effort and endless employee surveys engagement remains stubbornly low. Gallup’s most recent global report reveals that 90% of UK employees are not engaged at work. Farley Thomas, co-founder of Manageable, pulled no punches in identifying one major culprit: we’ve forgotten how to talk to each other. “All conversations at work are about performance and everyone is being paid to have conversations,” he said. “But we’re not intentional about them. We’re on autopilot.”

What’s striking is that no one thinks they’re the problem. “We all believe we’re good at conversations,” Thomas noted. “But then we get irritated when the other person is on autopilot.” This blind spot is everywhere, from rushed 1:1s to leadership offsites that talk about culture while modelling the exact opposite. Citing a global firm currently on its 27th learning management system Thomas said: “We’ve over-indexed on content and under-indexed on feedback.”

To address this he developed the CLICK model, a simple framework to help managers lead better conversations:
• Connect – begin with genuine attention and presence
• Landscape – explore the context before jumping to conclusions
• Insight – shift perspectives to generate deeper understanding
• Challenge – test assumptions constructively and kindly
• Key points – close with clarity, accountability and meaning

Several organisations shared how they’re tackling this issue. Noble Foods introduced behavioural shifts for their exec team. Leaders now deliberately wait until everyone else has spoken before offering their view. At Dole the Key Talent Programme creates structured opportunities for leaders to practise enterprise-level conversations, solving live strategic problems across functions and countries.

Culture, in this sense, is less about what you say it is and more about how consistently you create space to listen, challenge and connect with intent.

Tips:
• Train managers in conversational practice, not just policy.
• Make intentionality part of how performance is assessed.
• Give every layer of leadership the opportunity, and expectation, to improve their dialogue.

2. History shapes the present – don’t ignore it, work with it

One of the most pointed insights from the day was that cultural transformation doesn’t begin in the present, it starts with the past. Culture isn’t just the way we do things but also the way we used to do things and, importantly, what people remember about it.

Several speakers described how the residue of earlier eras still shapes the lived experience of work. Claire Smith, Former Chief People Officer at Mortgage Advice Bureau, recalled joining an organisation where staff were still talking about an email, four years old, about the removal of a long-standing sickness bonus. The policy had been promised as temporary. Nothing had ever replaced it. “People kept a hard copy of this email,” she said. It was a symbol of broken trust and a demand for accountability.

Phil Vickers, Chief People Officer at Foresters, brought this to life with a phrase that echoed across the day: “There’s still a lot of ghosts walking the halls.” Stories about how it’s not safe to speak up, even though the people involved left years ago, still guide behaviour. These lingering myths become unwritten rules, quietly shaping how decisions are made, who speaks up and who doesn’t.

“You’ve got to try and find those totemic moments that then allow you to actually shift the dial. But sometimes you’ve got to wait for those to come along, and that’s not always that easy,” Vickers admitted.

At Noble Foods cultural change began with a commitment to listening. “We kept hearing, ‘We want it to feel like a family again,’” said Group HR Director Louisa Hogarty. But that required more than nostalgia. “What does family mean? It’s an easy word to say but can you explain it? she asked. Only by listening to all employees could a narrative be crafted that was authentic and spoke to the wide variety of people in the business.

Tips:
• Take time to surface the hidden narratives that still govern behaviour.
• Honour the past without romanticising it. Build bridges, not shrines.
• Use storytelling not only to inspire the future but to lay old ghosts to rest.

3. Culture and strategy must move in step

The term ‘alignment’ gets thrown around frequently in culture work but it often masks vagueness.

“Only 30% of CEOs think their culture is aligned to their strategy,” Amanda Fajak, Global Culture Practice Lead at ZRG Consulting Solutions pointed out. “So if culture eats strategy for breakfast, I think we’ve got a problem.”

She noted that organisations are frequently overextended, trying to embody too many ideals: customer-centric, innovative, operating for the greater good, people-first, acting as one team and profit-driven. The problem is executives don’t like to trade off. But, said Fajak, prioritising is key to success. Otherwise the result is noise, confusion and a lack of focus.

Phil Lewis, Founder of Corporate Punk, took this further, describing culture as “an ecosystem”, not a campaign. Culture can’t be ‘delivered’. It must be cultivated across systems, stories and practices. That requires clarity about what behaviours matter most and how they are reinforced daily.

At Dole culture and strategy intersect through a unique leadership experience that’s as commercial as it is developmental. The Key Talent Programme isn’t just a training intervention but a strategic engine. David Frost, Group People & Organisational Development Director, explained how the company realised it could unlock collaboration across its newly merged global operations, bringing people together to solve real business problems while developing them at the same time.

“We had real opportunities to join up our procurement, our supply chains, to find commercial benefits from the scale we now had. So people come together to run a virtual company and discover how they added value to that business. People coming into teams that have never met. Coming from different parts of the world, with different languages.”

Along the way, they learn financial principles, commercial acumen and operational decision-making. But it’s not just theory. Each cohort is briefed by senior executives with a real, unresolved strategic challenge, from market expansion to supply chain optimisation. Teams spend several months tackling their brief and present their findings at the programme’s finale, with board-level visibility.

Meanwhile, in the legal space Squire Patton Boggs is turning cultural alignment into a differentiator. Partner, Labour and Employment, Janette Lucas noted how a strong culture is vital in today’s business environment, where much is out of the hands of leadership. “What we can do is to make sure that we have in place that strong foundation in terms of a clear, consistent, truthful and visible culture so that our teams can adapt with confidence and embrace the opportunities that that change provides to us as well as navigating through the challenges,” she said.

This kind of integration doesn’t happen by accident. It requires discipline, revisiting culture whenever strategy shifts and treating cultural initiatives as part of strategic execution, not separate from it.

Tips:
• Align cultural priorities to strategic outcomes not just value statements.
• Simplify: identify two or three core traits that enable strategic delivery.
• Use leadership programmes as engines for enterprise-level execution.

4. If you can’t measure it, you won’t move it

Culture work often leans too heavily on belief and too lightly on evidence. But as Engage for Success’s Jo Moffatt reminded the room in her closing remarks: “Engagement is twice as high in organisations where the four enablers are present.” These enablers – empowered visible leaders who can tell a strong strategic narrative, line managers who coach and stretch their people and treat them as individuals, employee voice and organisational integrity – need more than warm words. They need data.

Speakers urged organisations to move beyond generic engagement surveys and instead focus on what really matters: what people say, what they don’t say and what the business needs them to do.

Vickers described using survey data not just to validate concerns but to identify whether a story had critical mass. “Sometimes you hear something from one person and think, is this a lone voice? So you don’t want to start changing things within the culture or taking action if it is only one person.”

Smith encouraged leaders to pay attention to the gaps. “I’ve had leaders in the past very proud of the fact that 60% of people had completed our engagement survey. And I am like, what are 40% saying? Data is very important but I like to work on the bits the data doesn’t tell you.”

CAE Technology Services people services director Natalie Hailey echoed this. “Data only tells part of the story,” she said. “But it also shows where you’ve been and where you’re going. Without it you can’t measure whether what you are doing is having an impact and making an impact.

Measurement should prompt conversation, not serve as a false finish line. Cultural diagnostics isn’t just about dashboards. Data needs to be contextualised. It should never be used as a blunt instrument but as a cue for more informed listening, better decisions and smarter prioritisation.

Tips:
• Use data to challenge assumptions, not to confirm them.
• Look beyond sentiment to track behaviour (eg, mobility, safety, retention).
• Combine ‘hard’ metrics with informal listening to spot unseen dynamics.
• Focus on actionability: ask what each insight enables you to do next.

5. Culture change takes time – leadership must stay the course

One of the most honest admissions of the day came from Noble’s Hogarty. “I thought this would take 5 years,” she said, reflecting on Noble’s culture journey. “Now I’m saying we’ve got another five because we’re not there yet.”

That’s the reality of cultural transformation. It’s slow, messy and recursive. There are setbacks, stumbles and battles you can’t win on day one. “When you’ve got people who’ve been there for 50-plus years you can’t have all the fights on day one,” said Hogarty. “You’ve got to choose your battles, you’ve got to ease into it, and you’ve got to go slowly. It requires a lot of patience.”

At Dole the talent programme has run consistently since 2018. “We’ve had 150 participants so far,” said Frost. “It’s now absolutely part of what we do. We track participants through their careers once they’ve been on the programme and the chairman wants to know who they are and how they’re progressing.”

What unites these examples is persistence. Cultural change that lasts isn’t achieved through campaigns but through commitment. It lives in routines, rhythms, repeated choices and visible leadership. And while it may not move fast it does move deep.

Tips:
• Set your cultural time horizon in years, not months.
• Maintain momentum through storytelling, visibility and small wins.
• Build cultural resilience by embedding values into how decisions get made.

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