At the 2025 HR Minds Summit, Farleigh’s own Juliet Daye opened up a conversation that struck a chord: how to rethink company culture.

The world of work isn’t what it used to be. AI is reshaping roles, hybrid work is the new normal, and employees expect more from their workplaces; more meaning, more flexibility, more trust. Yet, many organisations are still holding on to outdated ways of thinking about workplace culture, treating it like something that can be controlled through policies, engagement surveys, or leadership programs.

But here’s the truth: culture isn’t something you design – it’s something that emerges. It lives in the everyday interactions between people, the decisions leaders make, and the invisible assumptions that shape how teams work together. Trying to force it into a neat strategy or spreadsheet will only get you so far.

So how do you rethink company culture in a way that actually works?
– By letting go of rigid plans and embracing cultural evolution.
– By unlearning the idea that culture is fixed and controllable.
– By experimenting, reflecting, and involving people at every level.

In this article, we’ll challenge the way we’ve been taught to think about organisational culture. We’ll also run you through the DEEP approach; a method that helps businesses build cultures that are not just strong, but adaptable, human, and real.

At Farleigh Performance, we’ve worked with organisations across industries as a culture consultancy, helping leaders navigate the complexities of workplace culture. From breaking down silos to fostering accountability, we’ve seen first-hand that culture isn’t something you can enforce – it’s something you nurture. Let’s explore how to make it stronger.

Understanding Company Culture – Why Traditional Approaches Fail

Many organisations treat workplace culture as if it’s something they can construct piece by piece, like a jumbo jet. If you had all the instructions, you could carefully take it apart, fix what’s broken, and put it back together – ready to fly. That’s because a jet, while complicated, is predictable. If you follow the steps, you’ll get the same outcome every time.

This is how many leaders think about culture: that if they just design the right strategy, set clear values, and track performance, everything will run smoothly. But culture isn’t complicated – it’s complex.

A better analogy? Culture is like mayonnaise. A few simple ingredients; mindsets, behaviours, and structures come together, and something entirely new emerges. But here’s the catch: you can’t take mayonnaise apart. You can’t isolate one ingredient and change just that one thing. Culture works the same way – every change creates ripple effects, sometimes in ways you never expected.

Why This Matters

Culture can’t be controlled. No matter how many policies you put in place, people experience culture in their own way through daily interactions.
Spreadsheets don’t create belonging. You can measure engagement, but you can’t engineer genuine trust or connection.
Culture emerges, it isn’t designed. It’s not about enforcing a set of rules; it’s about fostering the right conditions for a strong culture to take shape naturally.

So, if traditional approaches to culture don’t work, what does? The answer isn’t about making bigger plans – it’s about learning how to adapt, experiment, and involve people in shaping culture together.

Unlearning Culture: Why Letting Go Is the First Step

Most businesses don’t realise they’re approaching company culture with the wrong mindset until they hit a wall. Despite rolling out new values, refining leadership strategies, and conducting engagement surveys, nothing truly shifts. Employees still feel disconnected, teams operate in their silos, and the same challenges keep resurfacing.

The more we try to control it, the more we risk unintended consequences and interfere with the natural emergence of culture – the very thing that makes it meaningful.

Why Unlearning Culture Is Hard (But Necessary)

The idea that culture can’t be controlled is uncomfortable. It challenges the way businesses operate because:

We like certainty. Leaders want to know that their actions will produce predictable outcomes, but culture doesn’t work like that.
We crave control. Traditional workplace culture strategies promise that with the right values, surveys, and KPIs, you can shape culture the way you want – but this is an illusion.
We resist change. Unlearning old ways of thinking requires embracing discomfort, uncertainty, and a willingness to step into the unknown.

A New Mindset: Culture as an Emergent Property

Instead of treating organisational culture as something to be managed, we need to see it for what it really is: an emergent property of a living system.

Culture isn’t created by leadership alone; it emerges from the daily habits, behaviours, and mindsets of everyone in the organisation. It’s influenced by unseen forces like shared values and beliefs, and visible actions like strategies, structures, and policies.

If one part of that system shifts – if leaders start holding different kinds of meetings, if remote work policies change, if new priorities emerge, then everything else shifts with it. That’s why organisations can’t just tweak one element of culture and expect everything else to stay the same. So, instead of trying to control, the real challenge is unlearning our approach to culture, by doing something different. . That’s where the DEEP approach comes in.

The DEEP Approach – A New Way to Shape Culture

If we accept that company culture isn’t something we can control, how do we approach it differently? How do we shift from managing culture to understanding and enabling it to evolve?

At Farleigh Performance, we use the DEEP approach – a framework designed to help organisations navigate cultural complexity by focusing on four key principles: Direction, Experimentation, Evolution, and Participation. Rather than prescribing a rigid culture strategy, DEEP creates the conditions for culture to emerge in a way that is meaningful, adaptable, and human.

D – Direction: Start with Inquiry, Not Answers

Instead of declaring a specific goal or pre-determined outcome, like, “We need a culture like this,” create a high level guiding question, such as:

What does a high-performing culture mean for us?
How do we create a truly inclusive culture where everyone thrives?
How can we create a culture of continuous learning?

Culture isn’t something you define once and implement – it’s something you explore together. This means the act of leadership shifts from telling to listening, inviting employees into a collective inquiry rather than handing them a pre-written culture definition.

Real-World Example:

At Aston Manor, instead of forcing a new cultural initiative from the top down, leadership engaged employees in open discussions about collaboration. By exploring what teamwork meant within their organisation, they co-created a culture shift that felt natural and lasting.

E – Experiment: Small, Safe Steps Instead of Big Overhauls

Because culture is complex, there’s no single, perfect solution. That’s why experimentation is key. Instead of grand strategies that take years to implement, organisations should test small, low-risk cultural shifts and observe what happens.

Try a new approach to team meetings and see how engagement changes.
Adjust a hybrid work structure and measure its impact on collaboration.
Test different ways to gather feedback and see what sparks the most honest conversations.

When culture is treated as an ongoing learning process, it allows for flexibility. If something works, build on it. If it doesn’t, adjust and try again.

E – Evolve: Learn as You Go

Culture isn’t static, and neither should your approach to it be. Reflection is essential.

What’s changing?
What’s improving?
What challenges are emerging that weren’t there before?

Most companies hold strategy reviews but rarely pause to reflect on culture. A key part of the DEEP approach is creating deliberate opportunities for people to talk about culture, not as a problem to fix, but as an experience to understand.

Why This Matters:

Many organisations struggle because they don’t take time to talk about themselves. They focus on customers, products, and markets – but rarely reflect on the experience of being part of the organisation itself. When leaders and teams step back and ask, What are we learning about how we work together?, that’s when meaningful change happens.

P – Participation: Culture Belongs to Everyone

No single leader, HR professional, or consultant can dictate company culture, it’s something that is co-created through participation. The more people you involve in shaping culture, the stronger, more transparent, and more sustainable it becomes.

Culture is not a linear process – it’s interconnected. One change in how teams communicate might improve collaboration but unintentionally slow decision-making. A new hybrid working policy might boost employee retention in one department but create challenges in another. The more perspectives you include, the better you understand how these shifts interact across your organisation.

Instead of culture being driven by a select few, ask:

How can every employee contribute to understanding our culture?
Where can we make space for collective intelligence?
What opportunities do we have to involve different voices in decision-making?
How do small shifts in one area impact the rest of the organisation?

The more voices included in shaping culture, the richer and more authentic it becomes. By creating open discussions and involving more people in decisions, organisations gain a clearer picture of what’s working, what’s not, and how different elements of culture interact in unexpected ways.

How to Rethink Company Culture: A Mindset Shift

Understanding company culture isn’t about finding the perfect framework or writing the right set of values – it’s about embracing complexity. Culture isn’t something to be controlled; it’s something to be understood, lived, and shaped over time.

Instead of forcing culture into a fixed model, we need to start asking better questions:

What does AI mean for our culture?
How do we create an environment where people feel valued, connected, and able to do their best work?
What does it truly mean to be human in our organisation?

These aren’t questions with easy answers. But they are the questions that matter.

The DEEP approach reminds us that culture isn’t about having all the answers – it’s about staying open to learning, experimenting, and evolving together. When organisations let go of the belief that culture is something they can design in a boardroom, they create space for something far more powerful: a living, breathing culture shaped by the people within it.

We can’t change our organisations without changing ourselves. Embracing the complexity of culture isn’t just a leadership challenge – it’s a personal one. It requires us to expand our capacity to navigate change, to let go of control, and to engage with culture as something we experience, not dictate.

And that shift doesn’t happen overnight. But it starts with one question, one conversation, and one step toward a more human way of working.

Let’s Rethink Culture Together

At Farleigh Performance, we work alongside leaders, HR professionals, and teams to create meaningful, lasting culture change. We don’t offer one-size-fits-all solutions – we help you navigate the real complexities of organisational culture, shaping environments where people and performance thrive.

👉 Let’s start a conversation. Book a free two-hour consultancy session, and let’s explore what culture means for your organisation—and how to rethink it in a way that truly works.

👉 Learn more about our services:
– Cultural Consultants
– Team Development
– Leadership Development