6 questions to ask for culture change | Agile Change Leadership Institute

The CEO wants to “do culture change.”

They’ve started blogging, maybe even prompted ChatGPT to “write something inspiring about collaboration.” They want a culture of agility. Responsiveness. Dialogue. Inclusion. Transparency. Innovation.

Command-and-control? So last decade.

This one’s all about psychological safety, continuous feedback, purpose, and being customer-obsessed. Preferably with some AI thrown in.

Sound familiar?

It should — because this is playing out in workplaces everywhere. And while it sounds promising, here’s the kicker: most people tasked with “changing the culture” don’t actually know what culture is — let alone how to shift it.

Culture Isn’t Just Vibes and Values Posters

Let’s be clear. Culture isn’t the mission statement, the coffee van on Fridays, or even the digital tools we deploy.

Culture is the system of shared beliefs, norms, and assumptions that shape how work gets done when no one’s watching.

It’s why two teams in the same company can operate completely differently — and why culture work is often less about broadcasting new values and more about unearthing the old ones still operating in the background.

Organisational culture is complex, layered, and often invisible — which is exactly what makes it powerful.

Know Your Models Before You Make Your Move

If you’re serious about culture change, you need to understand its intellectual foundations. Some of the classics still offer the most clarity:

Edgar Schein’s Three Levels of Culture: Artefacts (what you see), espoused values (what you say), and basic assumptions (what you believe). True change happens when you shift assumptions — not just symbols.
Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions: Originally developed to understand national cultures, but increasingly relevant in global hybrid teams. Power distance and uncertainty avoidance, for example, shape how people respond to leadership and AI-generated decision-making.
The Competing Values Framework (Quinn & Rohrbaugh): Great for mapping culture types and tensions — like agility (Adhocracy) vs stability (Hierarchy), or collaboration (Clan) vs competition (Market).
Joanne Martin’s Three Perspectives: Culture isn’t always cohesive. Martin shows us integration (shared values), differentiation (subcultures), and fragmentation (ambiguity). In agile and cross-functional teams, these differences aren’t bugs — they’re features.

Culture ≠ Climate ≠ Identity

Three terms, often confused:

Culture is what drives how we behave.
Climate is how things feel right now.
Identity is who we think we are.

You can have a sunny climate and a deeply dysfunctional culture. Or a proud identity that’s no longer aligned with reality. Confusing them leads to shallow interventions that don’t stick.

Collaboration: Still the Culture Change Case Study

Let’s rewind to a familiar scenario:
A CEO wants more collaboration. They see the rise of platforms like MS Teams, Slack, Confluence, Miro, or even internal ChatGPT bots. They see opportunities to scale dialogue, share knowledge, and break down silos.

They imagine a seamlessly connected enterprise.
One with psychological safety and agile squads.
One where people speak up, take risks, and work out loud.

But intentions ≠ transformation.

Remember this: technology enables, but doesn’t change culture.
The collaborative movement has been around for decades — think Wheatley, Senge, Argyris — but the tech only works when beliefs and behaviours shift too.

And right now? AI is raising the stakes. It’s not just about collaboration — it’s about trust in algorithmic decision-making, transparency in who controls data, and inclusion in whose voices are heard (or replaced).

Six Hard Questions for Culture Change in 2025

If you want to lead culture change, especially toward agility and inclusion in the AI era, start here:

What’s your cultural gap?
Run a mini-diagnostic. Ask teams how other teams operate — look for shared understanding and tone. If mutual understanding is low, and cynicism is high, the culture gap is big.
How long has the legacy culture served you?
Long-standing behaviours often drive results — even if they’re misaligned with new ambitions. Challenge the mythology of success without undermining what worked.
How digitally fluent is your workforce?
Collaboration and agility rely on digital comfort. If teams are scared of clicking the wrong button in Teams, they’re unlikely to embrace AI-supported workflows.
Do your incentives support the new culture?
If agility is punished, risk-taking is penalised, and collaboration means losing individual credit — no platform or workshop will change that.
What’s your communication plan?
Ironically, you’ll need traditional comms to introduce new, digital-first, participatory cultures. And “collaboration” still means wildly different things to different people.
Who’s your culture carrier or e-change agent?
These are the quiet heroes of cultural evolution. They model new behaviours, amplify underheard voices, and connect the dots between tools, teams, and truths. Invest in them.

Culture Change Is Belief Work

In the end, culture change means shifting what people believe to be true about how things work around here.

What assumptions are keeping the current culture in place?
What beliefs must be true for a new one to emerge?
What stories, rituals, and systems reinforce the new culture — or contradict it?

It’s slow work. It’s identity work. And it doesn’t always show up on a dashboard.

So next time someone says,
“We just need to change the culture…”

You might say:
“Sure. But first, let’s understand the one we already have — and what’s driving it.”

Only then can we design a culture that’s truly agile, inclusive, and ready for the future — algorithms, ambiguity, and all.