Support Your Desired Culture: Top 6 Research-Backed Ways

Do You Truly Know How to Support Your Desired Culture at Work?
Recent high-profile cultural failures at organizations such as VW, Wells Fargo, Uber, and the Veterans Administration underscore a critical truth: leaders must not only define their desired culture but actively reinforce it. Without deliberate action, even well-intentioned values can be undermined, leaving organizations vulnerable to ethical lapses, reputational damage, and systemic breakdowns..

Two Recent Examples of Culture Gone Wrong
These high-profile missteps inflicted long-lasting damage on two major organizations, leaving reputations tarnished and recovery uncertain.

• Volkswagen’s Cultural Collapse
  Volkswagen was celebrated for producing low-emission, fuel-efficient vehicles — a “green” innovation embraced by loyal customers. Yet the company destroyed that goodwill by deliberately falsifying emissions data. The vehicles, far from environmentally friendly, emitted pollutants at levels comparable to or worse than competitors.

  Efforts to reform the culture through greater transparency and decentralized decision-making are underway under CEO Matthias Mueller, but changing entrenched behaviors has proven far more difficult than anticipated.

• Wells Fargo’s Toxic Sales Culture
  Similarly, Wells Fargo saw employees open more than two million unauthorized accounts to meet aggressive sales targets and earn bonuses. The fallout revealed a cutthroat corporate culture prioritizing results over ethics. While the company works to address systemic issues, the scandal remains a cautionary tale of how too much sales performance pressure can incentivize misconduct on a massive scale.

What Went Wrong Culturally?
In simple terms, their cultures turned toxic. Greed overtook ethics. Instead of upholding team norms like “comply with regulations” or “put customers first,” both organizations systematically cut corners. The result: damaged brands, lost customers, significant fines, and potential criminal liability.

While these are extreme cases, corporate culture assessment data tells us that cultural erosion is far more common — and often less visible. Even in your own organization, you may notice team members gradually drifting from the behaviors and values your company claims to uphold. Small deviations can quietly undermine the culture before anyone realizes the consequences.

6 Research-Backed Ways to Support Your Desired Culture

If you notice your organization drifting toward a culture that undermines employee well-being, inhibits strategy execution, or threatens your company’s reputation, it’s time to act deliberately. These six strategies can help you strengthen the culture you want — preventing the erosion of trust, engagement, and overall organizational health that often precedes serious cultural failures:

1. Ruthlessly Align Culture with Strategy
   Culture and strategy are inseparable — each shapes and reinforces the other. Strategy defines what you aim to achieve, but it only succeeds when your culture — the how — supports its execution. Conversely, culture without strategic alignment can create friction, inefficiency, or missed opportunities.

   Consider this: a strategy focused on rapid growth through transaction-based services for Tier 2 and 3 clients will falter if your culture prioritizes deep, relationship-driven customer experiences. Likewise, you cannot claim to foster an intimate, customer-centric culture while pushing standardized, off-the-shelf solutions at scale.

   The key is deliberate strategy-culture alignment. Strategy should be crafted with cultural realities in mind, and culture should evolve to maximize the likelihood of strategic success. Without this rigor, even the best-laid plans are destined to stumble.

2. Prioritize and Reward Leadership Modeling
   In any organization, culture starts at the top. The CEO and senior leadership team set the tone—what they model and value quickly becomes the standard for the entire workforce. To reinforce your desired culture, ensure that leaders, top performers, and key influencers consistently exemplify the behaviors and performance you expect from others. When leadership walks the talk, culture isn’t just communicated — it’s lived.
3. Strive for Deep Understanding and Genuine Commitment
   Supporting your desired culture requires clarity and alignment at every level. How work gets done should be clearly understood, consistently communicated, and embraced from the top down. Day-to-day expectations should be articulated frequently, leaving no ambiguity about acceptable behaviors or processes.

   Every employee must be genuinely committed to operating in a way that reflects the organization’s core values and business practices— not just because it’s expected, but because they understand and believe in it..

4. Embrace Diversity
   An open, thriving culture depends on actively embracing diverse perspectives and backgrounds. Organizations that genuinely listen to differing opinions and consider varied experiences are stronger, more innovative, and better equipped to solve complex challenges.

   Research from McKinsey shows that companies in the top quartile for diversity are more likely to achieve higher financial returns. In shaping your desired culture, ensure that constructive debate and alternative viewpoints are welcomed — not suppressed. Diversity can fuel engagement, creativity, and long-term success.

5. Monitor Culture Metrics
   A healthy, high performing culture requires visibility and ongoing measurement. Track both the behaviors that reinforce your desired culture and those that undermine it, ensuring progress stays on course. During periods of cultural change, establish clear metrics across financial, customer, operational, and people domains — as well as the pace of change itself — so you always know where your organization stands and can course-correct proactively.
6. Provide Consistent, Proportionate, and Visible Recognition and Consequences
   Never underestimate the impact of well-designed rewards and consequences. When employees demonstrate behaviors that reinforce your desired culture, acknowledge and celebrate them visibly. The same goes true for misaligned behaviors.  Behaviors and outcomes that are not align with your strategic and cultural expectations need to be thoughtfully addressed.

   Consistent, proportional performance management signals what matters most and sets a clear example for others. You know your culture is gaining traction when employees understand that delivering results the right way — aligned with your values — will be noticed, appreciated, and rewarded.

The Bottom Line
Supporting your desired culture and keeping your behavioral norms aligned with your strategy requires commitment and vigilance.  Set clear expectations for the results and behaviors that you seek.  Then hold all employees  accountable for measuring up to them.

To learn more about how to protect and support your desired culture, download How to Create a Purposeful and Aligned Culture to Accelerate Your Strategy

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.