Culture change doesn't happen to teams. It happens through them.
What Welsh Ambulance Services can teach us about putting culture shaping into the hands of the people who experience it every day.
“We need to change the culture.”
It's a phrase most HR and business leaders will have heard (or said) at some point.
And usually, what follows feels pretty familiar. A new set of values. A refreshed behaviour framework. A culture survey. Perhaps some workshops and communications to help everyone understand what needs to change.
All with good intentions.
But here's the challenge.
Culture isn't something we can simply design at the top and roll out to everyone else.
It's shaped through the experiences people have every day. The decisions they make. The pressures they face. The behaviours they see around them.
So how do we move beyond telling people what the culture should look like to actually helping them to shape it?
That was the question at the heart of a fascinating conversation with Angie Lewis, Director of Culture Change at Welsh Ambulance Services, who recently joined us for Coffee & Culture.
And the story offers some brilliant lessons for anyone trying to make culture change happen on the ground.
From culture being done to people, to something they own
Imagine trying to shape culture across an organisation of around 4,500 people, spread across more than 100 locations.
Paramedics working in remote parts of Wales. Busy emergency contact centres handling 999 and NHS 111 calls. Corporate colleagues working remotely.
Very different environments, pressures and everyday experiences.
When Angie joined Welsh Ambulance Services, there were organisational values and behaviours in place. But culture still felt less visible. Something that just happened rather than being proactively shaped collectively.
And managers were asking a very reasonable question:
“Where do we actually start?”
Telling managers they're responsible for creating a positive team culture is one thing. Helping them understand what's influencing that culture, and what they can realistically do about it, is quite another.
So, Angie and her colleagues developed a practical tool called CEWS: Cultural Early Warning Score.
Inspired by the National Early Warning Score used to assess patients, CEWS helps teams understand how they're doing by exploring indicators across three areas: culture, capacity and capability.
Things like sickness absence, flexible working, training completion and changes in management.
But the real power wasn't in the scores it helped surface.
It was in the conversations they prompted.
Why are people struggling to complete training? What's driving absence? How are changes in the team affecting people? What's helping us work well together, and what's getting in the way?
Suddenly, culture became something tangible. Something people recognised from their everyday experiences. And importantly, something they could influence.
“This is not about blame. It's not performance management. This is about early detection and proactive improvement.”
When good intentions nearly got in the way
One of the most valuable parts of Angie's story was her honesty about what didn't initially go to plan.
When she presented CEWS to the executive team, there was huge enthusiasm. Everyone could see the potential.
"Let's roll it out!"
But soon, conversations turned to monthly assessments, comparisons and league tables.
And Angie realised that a tool designed to empower teams was at risk of becoming another way to scrutinise them.
Rather than encouraging honest conversations, it could create fear, defensiveness and competition.
So, she pressed pause. Instead of rolling CEWS out across the organisation, she focused on just four teams, testing and refining the approach over more than 18 months.
This really resonated with with those in the session.
We're often so keen to demonstrate progress that we rush to scale something before we've understood how people will experience it.
What happened when teams took ownership?
“The motivation and the engagement was like nothing I'd ever seen. And it was primarily because they owned it.”
The pilot teams brought together managers, colleagues, trade union representatives and culture champions to explore what was happening and agree what they could improve.
One team, for example, identified low completion of mandatory training.
The traditional response might have been to tell people to get their training done.
But the conversations uncovered something more complicated. Turnover, competing priorities and traumatic incidents were making it harder for colleagues to find the time.
So instead of asking, “Why aren't people doing what they're supposed to?”, the conversation became:
“What do we need to change to make it easier for people to do what matters?”
That's a very different starting point.
Teams chose a few priorities, agreed actions and reviewed their progress every six months.
Across the four pilot teams, Angie reported improvements in engagement, turnover, disciplinary cases and how teams worked together.
But what stood out most was the sense of ownership.
People weren't simply responding to a culture initiative. They were actively shaping their working environment.
Key Takeaways
Angie's story reinforces something fundamental about creating Growth Cultures.
We can't expect people to behave differently if we don't help them change the conditions they're working in.
And we can't expect managers to shape culture if we don't give them practical ways to understand and influence it.
That doesn't necessarily mean another sophisticated diagnostic or big programme.
You could start with three simple questions in your next team meeting:
Culture: What's helping us work well together, and what's making it harder?
Capacity: Where are the biggest pressures on our time, energy or resources?
Capability: Where do we need more clarity, confidence, skills or support?
Then ask people to identify one thing they could realistically improve together.
Not ten priorities. Not another lengthy action plan.
One meaningful change, with shared ownership and a commitment to follow through.
Culture doesn't change through one-off conversations. It changes when those conversations lead to different everyday actions and habits.
Following the pilot, Welsh Ambulance Services has been developing a broader approach called Working Well Together. The name captures exactly what this is all about. It's simple, accessible and makes culture something everyone can contribute to.
And perhaps that's the biggest takeaway.
Our job as culture shapers isn't to own every aspect of culture change. It's to create the conditions where more people can.
So, here's a question worth reflecting on:
Are we asking managers and teams to deliver our culture change plans, or are we genuinely helping them shape a better culture for themselves?
A huge thank you to Angie Lewis from Welsh Ambulance Services for joining our Coffee & Culture community and sharing such an honest, practical example of culture shaping in action.
If you'd like to explore more real-world stories, tools and conversations like this, come and join us in the Make It Human Growth Cultures Community.
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