culture series #2: strategies for effective workplace culture transformation

Culture transformation. It’s a phrase thrown around in leadership meetings, company handbooks, and inspirational LinkedIn posts. But how often does it really stick?

A CEO announces a bold new cultural vision, posters go up around the office, and a few well-intended workshops take place. Then... three months later? Nothing has changed. Employees are still disengaged, communication is clunky, and “culture” is just another word in a PowerPoint deck.

Culture is what happens when there aren't any leaders in the room

Workplace culture isn’t just what’s written in a mission statement, it’s what happens when leadership isn’t in the room. It’s the unspoken rules, the behaviours people repeat (or avoid), and the feeling employees get when they log in or step into the office.

So, how do you actually transform workplace culture in a way that sticks? Before diving into solutions, there’s something critical to understand: most culture problems aren’t visible at first glance.

culture is more than what you see

Culture is often compared to an iceberg, what’s visible above the surface is only a small fraction of what truly drives it. While company values, mission statements, and official policies are easy to point to, they aren’t the full story.

It’s the hidden culture beneath the surface, the unspoken norms, ingrained habits, and informal power dynamics that determine whether a transformation will succeed or fail.

A company might say it values collaboration, but if meetings are dominated by the same few voices, that hidden culture tells a different story. A leadership team might push for innovation, but if employees are subtly punished for taking risks, change will never take hold.

Without addressing both the visible and hidden layers of culture, any transformation effort will be surface level at best, and doomed to fail at worst.

This brings us to the biggest reason culture change efforts fall apart: common pitfalls that aren’t recognised until it’s too late.

where culture transformations go wrong (and how to fix them)

Transformation efforts often start with energy and optimism, but somewhere along the way, things stall. Employees lose interest, leaders get distracted, and before long, the company drifts back to old habits.

So, what’s going wrong? Often, it’s not just one issue, it’s a mix of common pitfalls that slowly erode progress. These can range from leaders failing to model the change, to culture being treated as a one-off initiative rather than a daily practice. A lack of clear direction, accountability, and employee involvement also plays a huge role in why many companies fail to embed real cultural shifts.

Another major issue? Companies often focus on surface-level change. Updating the mission statement or launching a few new policies might look like transformation, but unless behaviours, attitudes, and underlying systems change, it’s just cosmetic. True transformation happens not just in what’s visible, but in the deep-seated, hidden aspects of culture - the stuff beneath the iceberg.

The Culture Pitfalls/Fix infographic highlights eight common pitfalls that cause culture transformation to fail, along with practical fixes to overcome them. While every organisation faces its own unique challenges, understanding these patterns is the first step in making change stick.

Real culture change isn’t about grand gestures, it’s about consistent, daily reinforcement. Without clear leadership, measurable accountability, and deep employee involvement, even the most well-intended transformation efforts will fade over time.

how to make culture change stick

If there’s some key takeaways from all this, it’s these:

✅ Culture isn’t what you say - it’s what you do, every single day.

✅ Transformation must go beyond the surface, fix the hidden culture, not just the visible stuff.

✅ Leaders must be culture champions, not just culture cheerleaders.

✅ Measure, track, and embed culture into daily operations - otherwise, it won’t stick.

Culture change isn’t easy, but when done right, it’s one of the most powerful levers for business success.

🚀 What’s next? Take a look at your workplace: What’s visible? What’s hidden? And most importantly, what needs to change?