Nudge-Letter August 2026
You’ve seen this before
- People aren’t collaborating.
- Decisions keep getting escalated.
- Managers avoid difficult conversations.
- Teams protect their turf.
Someone says: “We have a culture problem.”
And soon, HR is summoned to fix it.
A survey, a workshop, new values, a few outbounds follow.
The organisation buzzes with energy. Everyone is told what the new culture should look like.
But soon, things look exactly as they did when this all started.
What’s really happening
But people don’t create culture in isolation.
They work within conditions created by the organisation:
- How work is structured.
- How decisions are made.
- What gets rewarded.
- What gets tolerated.
- What leaders and colleagues do every day.
These conditions shape how people behave.
The culture deck preaches one thing.
The system teaches another.
A Case In Point
Look at these examples,
-
Wells Fargo
-Said doing the right thing mattered.
– Rewarded aggressive sales performance.
The system won. “Doing the right thing” remained in the deck. - Buurtzorg
– Wanted autonomy and professional responsibility.
– Removed management layers and built around self-managing teams. - Microsoft
– Wanted collaboration.
– Removed its forced-ranking performance system that encouraged internal competition.
- Netflix
– Said it believed in freedom and responsibility.
– Changed policies and decision rights to make that freedom real.None of these were pure HR initiatives. Business leaders — starting with the CEO — played a pivotal role in shaping the systems that either reinforced or contradicted the culture they wanted.
More from our “Nudge” series
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From our “Impact Stories” section
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Recommeded Read
Compelling evidence of how culture shapes business outcomes when it is on the CEO’s agenda, not just an HR initiative.
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Coming up…
“Democracy At The Workplace” Conference in Bengaluru
Join us on 5th Sept as to explore how companies can run democratically — where freedom, ownership and dialogue replace control.
Explore with leaders and teams who are building workplaces rooted in trust, not titles.
Try This
Don’t start by asking: “What culture do we want?”
Pick one behaviour you want more of.
Let’s say: Collaboration.
Now ask four questions:
- What do we reward when someone demonstrates collaboration?
- What do we tolerate that encourages people to avoid collaboration?
- What do we keep repeating that makes collaboration harder?
Then try the same exercise with another behaviour:
You may find that the behaviour you are asking people for is competing with the conditions you have created for them.
Don’t fix the behaviour yet. First fix the contradiction.
What Shifts
Leaders stop asking:
“Why aren’t our people behaving the way we want?”
And start asking:
“What are we doing that makes the behaviour we want easier—or harder?”
HR can still help diagnose culture, build capability and facilitate change.
But HR cannot compensate indefinitely for contradictions built into the organisation.
Structure, processes, policies, leadership, governance and behaviour start being looked at as parts of the same system.
Instead of trying to teach people the culture, leaders begin creating conditions where the desired culture can actually emerge.
Curious about this nudge and want to know more about how you can implement this?
Write to us, and we will connect
Interested in more nudges from us?
More from our “Nudge” series
From our “Impact Stories” section
Recommeded Read
Compelling evidence of how culture shapes business outcomes when it is on the CEO’s agenda, not just an HR initiative.
Coming up…
“Demcracy At The Workplace” Conference in Bengaluru
Join us on 5th Sept as to explore how companies can run democratically — where freedom, ownership and dialogue replace control.
Explore with leaders and teams who are building workplaces rooted in trust, not titles.