Operationalise culture
Workplace culture is built through what leaders do, not just what they say
Culture doesn’t live in what we say only. It lives in the everyday moments of what we do.
Recent research by Benjamin Laker, Professor of Leadership at Henley Business School and University of Reading, looks at how leaders define, express and operationalise culture. Operationalise is the keyword here. The study ran for 18 months and engaged 164 leaders across North America, Europe and Asia.
The conclusion was simple. Culture is formed in everyday decisions, meetings and behaviours. How leaders show up consistently matters just as much as what they say.
One finding stood out. Across companies that launched formal culture initiatives since 2022, 72% saw no meaningful improvement in trust, engagement or retention a year later.
But in organisations where senior leaders changed how they led day to day, how they ran meetings, gave feedback, made decisions and responded to challenges, trust scores rose by an average of 26%.
Leaders started with how they wanted to behave. Strong cultural signals came from changing how things worked and how people behaved consistently. Operating norms mattered.
For us, this really reinforces something we have always believed in when communicating creatively. It's the know, feel, do. And it's the ‘do’ where culture really kicks in and creates a ripple effect.
Leadership is about setting direction, communicating the plan, getting everyone involved, being clear about milestones and progress along the way and the signals you send every day in how you behave and act during normal operations.
Anyone can be a leader, title or not, and that influence starts with every day behaviour.
If you’re interested in the study, you can read more here.
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