Culture is "the way we do things around here"

Culture is often defined as “the way we do things around here.” It emerges, whether deliberately shaped or not, when people interact in groups. It happens at different scales: national, local, a company, a family.

Culture evolves from what people believe and value, how they work together, and how they behave. Multiple factors shape it: the stories and symbols an organisation tells and uses, the routines and rituals that structure daily life, the organisational structures that determine how work flows, the power and control systems that govern decisions.

An organisation’s culture is a key driver of its Brand. For a coherent brand story to come to life everyone needs to be aligned around values and common goals. Brands come alive through the way people enact the values they share, the way they do business, how they behave every day. This is why organisational culture is a vital component of the brand, not something separate from it.

Yuval Harari noted in Sapiens that telling stories is the easy part. The difficult part is making people believe them and change behavior. This is where culture comes in. Culture is the mechanism through which belief translates into action, where strategic intent becomes lived reality.

Successful brand management attends to alignment, culture, and coherent actions before communication. You can’t communicate your way out of a culture problem. The external messages will ring hollow if the internal reality doesn’t support them.

Hence anyone working with brands must also work with culture: understanding how to enable the environment for people to make decisions; how to influence the systems and structures that guide behaviour; and how to nurture the values and beliefs that determine what people actually do when no one is watching¹.