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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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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
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
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
Start the Flywheel: The Make It Human Approach to Sustainable Growth
The data-backed approach to turning culture into competitive advantage A few years ago, I worked with a fast-scaling company that...
Make It Human
Jul 4, 20253 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
We don’t need a management bypass. Get the heart beating with human managers
Source: Wix Images Managers often make the headlines and generally not for good reasons. The frozen core, bloated middle, conjure an image of managers sitting on mountains of paperwork, using their status to block and control, in it for the badge, not the enjoyment. It’s perhaps, therefore, no wonder in our digital and agile world that many organisations are opting to go ‘bossless’. To see if managers are now surplus to requirement as technology and AI enables automation an
Sarah McLellan
May 4, 20254 min read
What is a Growth Culture? (And do you have one? Find out below...)
The five Elements in Growth Culture by Make It Human. Sketch by Kacy Maxwell In today’s rapidly evolving workplace, fostering a growth culture is no longer a “nice-to-have”, it’s essential. Leaders, HR professionals, and managers are realising that the future of high-performing, healthy teams lies not just in strategy or tools, but in cultivating the right mindset and environment. But what does a growth culture really mean, and how can we intentionally create one? From Grow
Make It Human
Apr 30, 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
The Culture Triangle: A simple framework for demystifying culture
Culture is often seen as intangible and difficult to influence. But it’s also the driving force behind every decision, behaviour, and feeling within an organisation. When understood and shaped intentionally, culture can become a powerful engine for growth. Culture isn’t a buzzword—It’s the force that shapes everything Culture isn’t just about values on a wall or an abstract idea. It’s the environment, behaviours, and habits that influence how people think, feel, and act. Lead
Make It Human
Apr 28, 20253 min read
Culture is cracking
Having identified 10 culture cracks (read more here ) often experienced across organisations, I developed a diagnostic to help identify where issues might be simmering and enable targeted action before serious failures occur. 305 people completed the diagnostic, across multiple countries, job roles and organisations. This enabled exploration of the trends in experiences of culture and to understand the extent to which company culture is cracking. 88% are likely to be exp
Sarah McLellan
Apr 23, 20255 min read
Is your culture cracking?
10 Signs of Culture Cracks by Make It Human. Sketch by Kacy Maxwell Fatigue failure is an engineer’s nightmare. The tiniest of cracks, often invisible to the human eye, silently expanding resulting in catastrophic failure of a structure, a ship or plane. The design, calculations, load-analysis rigorously tested are theoretically sound, but there’s no accounting for the unseen crack, damaging the structure beneath the surface. The forces impacting organisational culture are
Sarah McLellan
Apr 23, 20256 min read
Start with the end in mind
If we start with the end in mind, what would we design? For our lives, our families, our organisations? Even for our planet? The wisdom those who have lived long lives always impart focuses on spending more time with others, continuously learning and growing, and being kind and curious. Regrets are for opportunities and risks not taken, and decisions taking us away from building meaningful relationships. The very essence of being human. And yet, when we roll this up to groups
Sarah McLellan
Apr 23, 20255 min read
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