Culture as a Performance System

Culture Is Not What It Is. It Is What It Does. 

Following our recent partnership with Cultiv8tiv, we are deliberately shifting the conversation. Less about what culture is. More about what culture does.

One of the privileges of our work is spending time inside client organisations. Now that more businesses are back in the office, many meetings take place on-site. That often means I find myself sitting in reception, waiting.

I have come to value that time. Reception areas always tell a story. They reveal who is welcomed warmly and who is processed efficiently. Who acknowledges the front-of-house team and who walks past. Who appears confident in the space and who looks slightly uncertain.

There should be an annual award for front-of-office excellence. I could nominate several exceptional individuals who shape the first and lasting impression of an organisation.

None of this is accidental. Reception spaces are carefully curated. Awards displayed with intention. Certificates framed to signal credibility. Furniture selected to communicate modernity, heritage, or innovation. Coffee described as “the best in the building,” quietly validated by employees slipping in for an unofficial cup.

These artefacts are visible expressions of culture. They show how the organisation wishes to be perceived.

Then you walk through the door into the main office. It can feel like stepping through an invisible cloud.

On the other side, the lived culture becomes clearer. How decisions are really made. How disagreement is handled. How power flows. How quickly issues move. How much ownership people take. How work actually gets done.

The same cloud exists when a leader launches a new initiative. The strategy may be sound. The ambition compelling. The communication clear.

Yet between intention and outcome sits culture.

Culture shapes how messages are interpreted. Which priorities win. How accountability is experienced. Whether energy builds or drains. Whether performance accelerates or stalls.

That cloud is my metaphor for culture. At the edges it is visible. In the centre it is powerful and largely unseen.

It can amplify performance. It can distort clarity. It can accelerate change. It can quietly obstruct progress.

This is why culture is not a soft topic. It is a performance system. A system that produces results, whether by design or by default.

The difficulty is that most organisations attempt to improve outcomes without understanding the system that produces them.

That is why Co-Lab People and Cultiv8tiv have formed this partnership. To make the performance system visible. To help leadership teams engage with it deliberately. To shape performance, wellbeing, and customer outcomes intentionally rather than leaving them to chance.

In the next article, we will unpack what we mean by Culture as a Performance System, and how we break it down into elements that can be examined, measured, and influenced.

If you would like a copy of our white paper, Culture is a Performance System, please email hello@co-labpeople.com.