When people talk about “company culture,” it often feels soft — like a vague vibe you can’t quite define but everyone likes to say is important. In reality, culture isn’t a perk or a poster on the breakroom wall. It’s the invisible architecture that shapes how your business runs when no one’s watching.
In that way, I think of culture as a company’s operating system.
Just like macOS or Linux dictates how software runs on a computer, your company’s culture dictates how your people make decisions, how they communicate, and how they respond to pressure. It’s the code behind the behavior.
And just like an operating system, you can choose to shape it — but if you don’t, it will shape itself.
Culture Is How Work Gets Done (Not What You Say About It)
We’ve all seen the companies that put “Integrity” or “Teamwork” on the wall but run on politics and fear. That’s a broken OS. Culture isn’t what you say — it’s what you do repeatedly, especially in moments of tension.
At our company, we started noticing culture through little things:
- The way the team handled a challenging or stressful situation.
- How a team handled a mistake without pointing fingers.
- Whether people spoke up in meetings or stayed quiet.
- If managers and team members took responsibility for outcomes or passed blame.
These are signs of what the operating system actually is. And once you start noticing, you can debug it.
You Already Have a Culture — Is It Working for You?
Early on at the company I currently work for, we faced a significant challenge with our data center; and that challenge crippled the business. Rather than point fingers or place blame about how we got into that situation, the team rallied to resolved the issue. This particular issue was not a quick fix; that meant we need our cross-functional partners to rally alongside us – and they did. Marketing, logistics, operations, customer service … all jumped in to help. It was a very painful and challenging time but the culture of the organization was shining so bright! While it was a stressful moment, it was a proud moment.
What Kind of OS Do You Actually Want?
That experience led me to start asking myself a few questions:
- When someone new joins, what do they learn in the first week — not from onboarding, but from observation and cultural standpoint?
- When stress hits, what behaviors emerge? How do we show the organization the preferred method of dealing with stress?
- Who gets promoted, and what message does that send?
Culture isn’t about having the right words. It’s about reinforcing the behaviors that support the kind of work environment you believe in. It’s the unspoken logic that governs the system.
Build It On Purpose
If you’re in a leadership role, you have more influence over the culture than you think — but not in the way people often imagine. You don’t build culture by writing a manifesto. You build it by:
- Modeling the behavior you expect (even when it’s inconvenient).
- Naming and rewarding what’s working.
- Addressing what’s not — directly and without drama.
You don’t have to create a “perfect” culture. You just have to make sure the one you’re running isn’t working against your goals.
Final Thought
If your business feels like it’s running slowly, crashing often, or producing inconsistent results, don’t just look at your strategy or tools — look at your OS.
Culture is how things actually get done. Make sure it’s one you’d install again.
If you want to better understand how I think about culture, check out this blog post of mine.
