Where do you even start with culture?

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If we’re honest, this is where most people get stuck.

You know culture matters. You can see the impact it has on performance, energy, and retention. You’ve likely invested time and effort into trying to improve it. And yet, when it comes to shaping it in a deliberate way, it can feel too big, too abstract, and too complex to really get your arms around.

So, despite the best intentions, very little actually shifts.

Start smaller than you think

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One of the biggest misconceptions about culture is that it requires large-scale transformation programmes to move it forward. In reality, culture is not built in big moments. It is shaped, quietly and consistently, through the conditions people experience every single day at work.

A helpful lens to simplify those conditions is through understanding the core components we need to fuel human growth:

Autonomy – Do people have the space, clarity, and trust to do their work well?

Meaning – Do they understand why their work matters and feel connected to others?

Growth – Are they learning, improving, and making progress over time?

When these three elements are present, people feel energised, engaged, and able to perform at their best. When they are blocked, even subtly, you start to see friction build — decisions slow down, motivation dips, and progress becomes harder than it should be.

A simple way to get started: the Human Growth Audit

Rather than trying to tackle culture as a whole, start with a simple exercise.

Take a blank page and divide it into three sections:

Autonomy | Meaning | Growth

Under each heading, ask yourself two questions:

What is currently fuelling this?

What is blocking it?

Keep your answers grounded in everyday experiences rather than abstract ideas. For example, you might notice that autonomy is supported by having time for focused work, but blocked by constant meetings and interruptions. Meaning might be strengthened by clear priorities, but diluted when goals keep shifting. Growth might be happening through informal feedback, but limited by a lack of time to reflect or learn.

This simple audit often reveals more than you expect, because it helps you see the patterns that are usually hidden in plain sight.

Then, resist the urge to fix everything.

This is the point where many people overcomplicate things. Once you can see what’s happening, it’s tempting to try to address everything at once.

But culture doesn’t change through overwhelm. It changes through focus.

Instead, choose just one or two small shifts to experiment with.

For example, you might decide to protect two hours a week for focused work to improve autonomy, or to start meetings by clarifying why the discussion matters to strengthen meaning, or to introduce a short reflection at the end of projects to support growth.

The key is to treat these as experiments rather than solutions. You are not trying to get it right first time — you are simply testing what makes a difference.

Why small shifts work

If you look at organisations that have successfully evolved their cultures, the changes rarely started as large, sweeping initiatives.

At Google, relatively small changes such as structured team check-ins helped to build psychological safety and improve performance. At Microsoft, a shift in mindset from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all” created the conditions for greater curiosity, learning, and innovation.

These were not overnight transformations, but deliberate adjustments to the everyday ways people worked and interacted.

Man working on phone and laptop. Image from Wix

A more manageable way forward

The real shift is this: culture doesn’t move when you try to fix everything at once. It moves when you begin to see what is actually happening, focus on what matters most, and make small, intentional changes that you can learn from over time.

That is how momentum builds, and how culture becomes something you can actively shape rather than something that simply happens around you.

If you’d like to go further, you can join the Make It Human Club and access the free 5-Day Simplifying Culture Skills Sprint, where we break this down into practical daily actions. You can also use our tool to Capture Your Culture on a Page for a more in-depth view, or join Culture Coaching Live on 15th April to step back, see your culture clearly, and leave with focused next steps.

Culture doesn’t need to feel overwhelming. It just needs a place to start.