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Blogs & insights
You can now find our library of culture tools & session playbacks inside the
Explore our latest blogs and articles using the categories below:
Simplifying Culture
Move culture from fuzzy to focused with tools to simplify.
Hear how people feel (HABIT step 1)
Learn how to evaluate your culture & win stakeholder support.
Integrate it daily (HABIT step 4)
Pinpoint moments & skills to ensure leaders & managers bring culture to life.
Culture Stories
Insights & inspiration from workplaces around the world.
Align on the future (HABIT step 2)
Pick the best direction to fuel sustainable growth for your culture & business.
Trust & evolve
(HABIT step 5)
Culture is never done! Tools to help measure & improve your culture.
Culture Habits
Small practices with BIG impact. Pick-up & use habits to nudge towards growth.
Build the behaviours (HABIT step 3)
Clearly define and turn desired behaviours into everyday reality.
Culture Skills
Resources and practices to keep your culture skills sharp!
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Culture is a team sport: how HR, Leaders and Managers create a system for growth
Image by Roddy Corona, via Canva Watch a high-performing rowing crew and, from the riverbank, it can look almost effortless. Eight people move as one. Every stroke is timed. The boat gathers speed. No single rower appears to be working independently, yet each person is making a distinct contribution. Look more closely, however, and you see the system behind the performance. There is a coach building capability and creating the conditions for success. A cox helps the crew navi
Sarah McLellan
Aug 314 min read
From Fuzzy to Fuel: Launching the HABIT System for shaping culture
Culture has become one of the most talked-about topics in business. And yet, for many leaders, managers and HR teams, it still feels frustratingly hard to actually shape. They know culture matters. They care deeply about creating better workplaces. But when it comes to turning good intentions into everyday reality, many get stuck. That’s exactly why we created the HABIT System. Through conversations with leaders — and analysis of 4,000+ employee experiences across som
Make It Human
May 24 min read
When Success Becomes the Ceiling: Understanding the Optimised Culture
Image of a team working by Yan Krukau from Pexels Some cultures don’t struggle. They succeed. Performance is steady. Teams collaborate smoothly. There’s capability, pride and a clear identity. People can articulate what the organisation stands for and success stories are regularly shared. If you walked in or joined a call, you’d instantly get a sense of, “we know what we’re doing here.” And yet, there’s something missing… The confidence in how we work and sharing of
Sarah McLellan
Mar 235 min read
From fuzzy to focused: a simple way to start shaping your culture
Image created with AI by Make It Human Most leaders know culture matters. They can feel it in how meetings run, how decisions get made, and how people show up. When culture works, energy flows. When it doesn’t, progress slows — even when the strategy is sound. And yet, culture often feels too big, too fuzzy, and too hard to influence deliberately. So it stays in the “important but unclear” category. Culture doesn’t need fixing — it needs focusing One of the biggest
Make It Human
Jan 12 min read
See the Real Impact of Your Culture — with the Culture Cost Calculator (Premium Content)
Image of Make It Human Culture Cost Calculator + Guide Every leader knows culture matters. But when budgets are tight and priorities compete, it’s hard to prove its impact, illustrate the need for change, or win support for investment. That’s why we created the Make It Human Culture Cost Calculator — a simple, research-backed tool that quantifies how your culture is influencing performance today, and the value you could unlock by improving it. What is it? A practical to
Make It Human
Nov 26, 20252 min read
How Leaders Shape Growth Cultures (One Small Habit at a Time)
Image from Make It Human Webinar Nov 2025: From Fuzzy to Fuel: A Practical Formula for Culture-Driven Growth If you ask most leaders what they want, the answer is simple: better culture, clearer alignment, stronger performance. But ask what they’re doing to get there… and the answers get vague. It was a pleasure to host our recent “From Fuzzy to Fuel” webinar, where participants shared the same sentiment, no matter their role or industry: Culture matters deeply — yet it
Sarah McLellan
Nov 13, 20253 min read
Capture Your Culture on a Page: Download Guide to Completing the Growth Culture Canvas
Image: Extracts from MIH Capture Your Culture on a Page Guide & Growth Culture Canvas Turn your culture from something you feel into something you can see, shape, and strengthen. Culture can often feel fuzzy — invisible, complex, and hard to get a grip on. But when you make it visible, you can start to lead it. That’s exactly what the Growth Culture Canvas helps you do. Grounded in the proven Make It Human Growth Culture model, this simple, practical framework helps you
Make It Human
Nov 6, 20252 min read
Fuzzy to Fuel: Make Culture Your Growth Engine 🚀
Image created by Make It Human Emma’s start to the week follows a similar pattern. Every Monday morning, she opens her laptop determined to “do something about culture.” As the CPO of a fast-scaling tech company, she can feel the invisible drag setting in. The organisation is growing fast — but something beneath the surface is starting to fray. The team is talented. The product is strong. But conversations feel heavier. Decisions take longer. That early buzz of energy and
Sarah McLellan
Nov 3, 20254 min read
The Culture Skills that could Change the World
Image created with AI It was another Monday morning at a fast-growing tech company. On the surface, everything looked fine: revenue was climbing, new products were shipping, offices were hives of activity. But under the surface, something else was happening: Teams were working in silos. Talented people were exhausted. Decisions were made in corners, not openly. Ideas were left unsaid because people weren’t sure if it was safe to speak up. And the leadership team k
Sarah McLellan
Oct 26, 20253 min read
Download Growth Culture Starter Kit (Premium Members)
Shaping a thriving culture isn’t about grand gestures — it’s about building the everyday conditions where people and performance can grow, together. This Starter Kit gives you the core Make It Human models and practical tools to: Understand what a Growth Culture looks like in action Spot cracks and opportunities early Spark meaningful conversations about culture Take simple, targeted actions that make a real difference Think of it as your launchpad — small steps that le
Make It Human
Oct 15, 20251 min read
What Leaders Really Want to Know About Culture
For the final Coffee & Culture session before the summer break, we did things a little differently. No slides, no set agenda — just a space to surface the real questions leaders are grappling with around culture. In the session, we asked our community to vote on the top topics they wanted to explore. Here’s how they ranked: How can we get the balance right between flexibility and connection? How do I turn vague values into real behaviours people live every day? How can we
Sarah McLellan
Jul 17, 20253 min read
Introducing the Make It Human HABIT Model: A Practical Way to Build a Growth Culture
Let’s be honest: most culture work doesn’t stick. It lives in slide decks, posters, or one-off workshops. Meanwhile, the real culture – how people behave, make decisions, and collaborate every day – keeps ticking along, unchanged. At Make It Human, we do things differently. We treat culture as a habit – something shaped daily, deliberately, and with impact. Our five-step HABIT model is built on behavioural science and years of hands-on experience helping organisations tur
Make It Human
Jul 8, 20254 min read
Why every business needs a Chief Culture Officer
We’re entering a new era of work — faster, more complex, and increasingly powered by AI. But as machines take over the command-and-control tasks — standardised, repetitive, and rule-bound — the real value in organisations is shifting to what only humans can do: Build trust Solve problems creatively Lead through ambiguity Learn and adapt Inspire, empathise, and collaborate This is the human side of performance. And yet, most organisations are still structured for a world t
Sarah McLellan
Jul 1, 20254 min read
Resetting Your Operating System for Growth
The Four Shifts Every Business Leader Needs to Make In today’s volatile business landscape, culture is no longer a ‘nice to have’. It’s the operating system that determines whether your people — and your performance — can adapt, sustain and grow. Yet many organisations are still running outdated systems. We rely on inherited behaviours, fragmented tools, and episodic efforts to drive culture. It’s time for an upgrade — one that enables people and business to grow together
Make It Human
Jun 20, 20255 min read
Are you cultivating a climate for human growth?
A climate for human growth by Make It Human I worked with a client recently who genuinely has human growth front and centre of everything. They’re a small company, growing quickly. Founder-led, they’ve reached a transition-point where they know new models and ways of working will need to be introduced to enable a successful next phase. However, the leaders are open and transparent about this need and are laser-focused on building a culture where people can thrive, as the prim
Sarah McLellan
May 9, 20253 min read
Shaping a human workplace isn't rocket science... it's people science!
At school, I loved science experiments. Whether it was growing crystals in salty water or testing how plants react to light, I learned one thing fast: the right conditions are everything. In psychology, the same principle holds true—studies show that behaviour isn’t entirely random but a response to the environment and cues around. In short, if you want people to thrive and grow, you can’t just hope for the best. You need to purposefully design the conditions for healthy an
Sarah McLellan
Apr 30, 20254 min read
Are you culture fit?
Image by Gustavo Fring from Pexels At the start of the year, I enlisted the help of a personal trainer to try and improve my physical fitness. Being the other side of 40 I have reached the age where looking after my body suddenly feels both more important and challenging at the same time. Previous methods to keep fit and healthy have lost impact and so it was time for a new strategy. It’s early days, but learning new exercises, even venturing into the weights room (an area i
Sarah McLellan
Apr 28, 20253 min read
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