People like us (Part 2): the plan
Once you accept that culture is shaped by patterns, not slogans, the work changes.
You stop asking what should we say? And start asking what will we decide—again and again?
Culture needs a plan. Just not the kind most people write.
Not a rollout. Not a training calendar. Not a list of values.
A culture plan is a decision plan.
It’s a deliberate choice about which behaviors will win this year—and which ones will quietly stop winning, even if they’ve worked in the past.
That’s where leaders hesitate.
Because planning culture means committing in advance:
to specific tradeoffs
to real spending
to decisions that will feel uncomfortable before they feel right
If innovation matters, it shows up first in budgets and calendars. Time is protected. Experiments are funded. Learning is allowed to cost something.
If accountability matters, leaders take on the hard conversations early. Issues are addressed instead of postponed. Exceptions become rarer.
This is the counter-intuitive part.
When culture starts to change, performance often feels worse before it feels better. Old shortcuts stop working. People test the limits.
That’s not resistance. That’s feedback.
Culture doesn’t change because people finally understand it. It changes because the environment makes the old way harder to repeat.
So if you’re serious about culture, plan accordingly.
Plan for leadership time, not just programs. Plan to spend money where you want behavior to repeat. Plan for friction before alignment.
Because culture isn’t what you hope will happen.
It’s what you’re willing to decide, fund, and defend long enough that “people like us” don’t need to ask anymore.
