“Company culture is what happens when no one’s watching, not what’s printed on the wall.”
We’ve all seen the annual “Culture Refresh.” It usually starts with a glossy email from the CEO, followed by branded lanyards and a set of new, alliterative values printed on office mugs. For a week or two, the energy is high. Then, inevitably, the posters fade into the background, the slogans become the punchline of water-cooler jokes, and everyone goes back to the way things have always been done.
The reality? Culture isn’t a campaign. It’s a consequence.
The Great Culture Illusion
Too often, organisations treat culture as an internal PR exercise. We define “core values” in a weekend workshop, package them into a beautiful PowerPoint, and launch them like a new product.
But culture doesn’t live in the deck; it lives in daily decisions. You can spend thousands on consultants and hashtags, but if the everyday reality doesn’t match the slogan, you aren’t building culture, perhaps you’re just managing a brand.
Why Buzzwords Fail
Let’s be honest: Integrity, Innovation, Collaboration, Excellence. These are beautiful words, but without context, they are invisible.
We see the irony everywhere: companies preaching “integrity” while cutting corners to hit quarterly targets, or “innovation” being used as code for “do more with less.” Culture isn’t the list of words you want to be known for; it’s the list of behaviours you actually tolerate.
Lessons from the “Blue Box”
I learned this early in my career at American Express. They had what were called the “Blue Box Values”, simple concepts like Respect for People and Integrity.
What made it work wasn’t the simplicity of the words, but the fact that they were the heartbeat of every activity. People were encouraged to measure their actions against those values daily. Because it was consistent and modelled from the top, those values became my own “values for life.” It wasn’t a project; it was just how we worked.
The Inconvenience Test
The easiest way to see your real culture is to watch what happens when it becomes inconvenient to live by your values:
- You say “we prioritise people,” until the revenue dips.
- You say “we encourage risk,” until a project actually fails.
- You say “we value diversity,” until hiring for a different perspective takes a little longer.
Values aren’t truly values until they cost you something. That’s when culture shows its true face and not in a workshop, but in the trade-offs.
How to Build Something That Sticks
If you want a culture that lasts longer than a coffee mug, forget the posters and start with principles:
- Define Behaviours, Not Buzzwords: Don’t just say “Integrity.” Define what that looks like on a Tuesday morning when a deadline is looming.
- Reward the Right Things: Whatever gets recognised gets repeated. If you celebrate results achieved by stepping on others, that is your culture, regardless of what the handbook says.
- Let Teams Translate: Give people the space to interpret values within their own specific roles. Make it local, not corporate.
- Accountability is Key: Culture without consequence is just decoration. Leaders must be measured by how they live the values, not just the numbers they deliver.
Final Thought: Culture is the Quiet Proof
The companies that get culture right aren’t usually the ones with the loudest campaigns. They’re the ones where the values are visible in every decision, every promotion, and every difficult conversation.
At Vani Malik Consulting, we believe culture isn’t a set of words to remember. It’s a set of choices to repeat.
The Clarity Cue: If you have to remind people of your values, they aren’t living them. they’re just memorising them.
Hi, I’m Vani Malik, a business consultant now based in Colchester. For over 20 years, I’ve worked with global background screening and HR service companies, supporting clients across Europe, Asia, and North America.
