Target Culture Design
Target culture design gives you your target culture: the critical few behaviours your people will actually live, the traits worth keeping, and the redesigned signals - reward, recognition, promotion, leader modelling - that produce them, mapped from where you are today to where you are heading. We design it with your people, so the culture is genuinely theirs.
Our target culture design gives you a defined target culture your organisation can live, and we design five things: the critical few behaviours people show on an ordinary day, the emotional traits already worth building on, the behaviours leaders will model and stop tolerating, the rituals and rhythms that carry meaning, and the reward, recognition and promotion signals that quietly produce the culture. You walk away with a current-to-target culture map, a playbook your managers own, and the measures that show whether the culture is being lived.
A target culture works when the people who live it helped shape it. So we design with your people, drawing on what they already know about how the place really behaves and combining it with our outside frameworks. The culture comes out both honest and owned, and your managers come away more able to keep it alive without us in the room.
67% of leaders and employees say organisational culture matters more to performance than strategy or the operating model, and among organisations that adapted well, around 70% called their culture a source of competitive advantage. The cultures that hold are the ones built from what people already value (PwC Strategy& Katzenbach Center, Global Culture Survey 2021).
When target culture design helps
Target culture design is the next step once you know the culture needs to shift - often straight after a diagnostic has shown where. These are the situations we are most often asked into. If one sounds like yours, this is a good place to start.
The situation | How it helps |
|---|---|
You know the culture needs to shift and need what comes next | Turns a clear read of the current culture into a defined target culture, so you move from naming the problem to holding the answer |
A new strategy needs a culture that can carry it | Designs the behaviours and signals the strategy depends on, so the culture pulls with the direction rather than against it |
Values are on the wall but the behaviour hasn't changed | Replaces a values list with a critical few observable behaviours and the reward and promotion signals that make them real |
Two cultures are merging and pulling different ways | Designs one target culture from the traits worth keeping in each, so people build a shared way of working rather than a truce |
Leaders say the right things but the old habits hold | Names the specific behaviours leaders will model and stop tolerating, so the loudest signal in the organisation changes first |
You want a culture your people will actually live | Builds it with the people who set the tone day to day, so it lands as theirs and shows up on an ordinary Wednesday |
What we design
We design eight parts of the target culture, and make each one concrete enough to live:
The critical few behaviours
A deliberately small set of concrete, observable behaviours - what people actually do on an ordinary Wednesday - chosen because they are visible, spread person to person and move the business, not a long values list.
The traits worth keeping
The two or three emotional strengths already in your culture that pull in the right direction, named and built on, so the target culture grows from what people are proud of rather than replacing it wholesale.
Leader behaviours and the shadow they cast
The specific things leaders will model, challenge and stop tolerating, since the behaviour of people seen as important is the loudest signal of what the culture really is.
Symbols, rituals and rhythms
The recurring meetings, stories, recognition moments and decision points redesigned so the everyday events people read as 'what we value here' carry the target culture through consistency, not one-off theatre.
Systems and signals - reward, promotion, tolerance
The formal mechanisms reworked so daily choices enact the intended culture: who gets promoted and recognised, what performance rewards, what gets tolerated - designed at the intent level, with your HR and reward leads who own the plumbing.
Authentic informal leaders
The credible, well-connected people, not always the senior ones, who help design the behaviours and carry them across the organisation peer to peer, so the culture spreads through trust rather than mandate.
The lived-culture playbook
A working reference your managers own that turns the target culture into daily practice - the behaviours, the signals that changed and how to keep applying them - so the design travels beyond the room it was built in.
Enactment measures
The honest markers you will watch to see whether the intended culture is actually being lived, tied to business results and ready to hand to the implementation stage.
Why these eight
These eight are the parts that have to line up for a culture to change in practice rather than on paper. New behaviours with the old reward signals underneath them fade back within a quarter; the right signals with no credible people to carry them stay a memo. The parts that get skipped most - the traits worth keeping, the reward and promotion signals, and the informal leaders who spread the behaviours - are the ones that decide whether the culture is lived or just announced. So we design them together, as a set.
The eight follow the established culture-design frameworks - the critical few behaviours and traits, the behaviours, symbols and systems that enact a culture, and the control signals that reward it - so the design covers what a full target culture should, not just a fresh set of values. We use them to make sure the design is complete and honest about where the current signals contradict the intended culture, rather than as a model to run at you.
How it works
The method produces one thing: a target culture your organisation can live. It works by designing the culture with your people rather than presenting one to them. Your people already hold most of the truth about how the place really behaves, so our job is to draw that out, combine it with the outside frameworks and pattern-recognition you bring us in for, and shape the two into a design that is both expert and genuinely owned. It works in four modes.
- We start from your existing culture, not a blank page - Before anything is designed, we name the traits already worth keeping and set the design principles - the rules the target culture has to follow, and the small number of critical few behaviours it comes down to. Designing from what people are proud of, rather than replacing it wholesale, is what keeps this from reading as another top-down values reset.
- We design with the people who set the tone - The people who shape the culture day to day know where the current signals reward the wrong thing in ways no values statement shows. We build with them, and with your authentic informal leaders, turning that knowledge into design choices - so the culture fits how the organisation really behaves, and is owned by the people who will carry it.
- We bring the outside insight and the frameworks - An inside view on its own tends to design around today's habits, so we bring the outside pattern - what makes a culture shift like yours hold - and frameworks that check the design is complete and the reward, recognition and promotion signals actually line up with the behaviours before you commit.
- We leave the capability behind - Throughout, we work so your managers learn to design and sustain the culture, not just watch us design it. By the end you have a target culture and a sharper sense of how the signals were reworked, so the next adjustment is one you can make yourselves.
The thinking behind the method
We design with your people rather than deliver to them because of a hard fact about culture: a culture is what thousands of small daily choices add up to, and people live a culture they helped shape. They understand why these few behaviours matter, they see that the signals underneath have genuinely changed, and they trust that it fits how the work really goes. A culture handed down from a workshop pack gets nodded at and quietly ignored.
So co-design gives you a culture that is both right and real. What your people know makes it honest; designing it together makes it owned; and the outside frameworks keep the two from simply blessing the culture you already had. Get all three and the culture is lived. Miss one and you get an expert design that gets rejected, an owned design that never leaves its own comfort zone, or a clever design that never shows up on an ordinary day.
What you get
By the end, you have four things:
- The target culture itself - the critical few behaviours, the traits kept, and the redesigned reward, recognition, promotion and leader-modelling signals that produce them, captured as a current-to-target culture map and a manager-owned lived-culture playbook.
- A current-to-target map with enactment measures - the honest markers of whether the culture is being lived, tied to business results, with the signal changes sequenced and ready to hand to implementation.
- A design that is genuinely yours - built with your people and your informal leaders, grounded in how you actually behave, so it is owned and lived rather than filed.
- The capability left behind - your managers come out more able to sustain and adjust the culture, so the next shift is one you can make yourselves.
The best target culture is both expert and owned, and those pull against each other: expertise wants to hand you the answer, ownership wants your people to reach it themselves. Holding both at once is the craft of the work.
How we hand it over - and what happens next
The point of the work is a target culture your organisation can live, so we take care with how it lands. Because your people helped design it, the handover confirms something they already understand rather than revealing it cold. We walk through the finished culture map and the playbook - the critical few behaviours, the signals that changed and why, the traits we chose to keep, and the first moves for the leaders and informal leaders who carry it.
From there, some organisations take the design and embed it themselves, now more able to. Others bring us alongside for the harder work of making it real, which is where implementation picks up. The design has done its job when your people can see the target culture clearly, believe in it because they built it, and know the first steps to start living it.
Where this sits
Target culture design is the second step in how we approach culture change. It follows the Organisational Culture Assessment, which reads the culture you have today, and leads into implementation, which turns the design into how people behave day to day. It also stands on its own - if you already know the culture needs to shift and want the target culture designed properly and owned, this is where to start.
Common questions
Is this just a set of workshops?
No - what you get is a defined target culture, captured as a current-to-target culture map, a manager-owned playbook and a set of enactment measures. We work with your people in the room, because that is how the design becomes both honest and owned, and the sessions are the means to that. You walk away with the worked-out culture itself, and a design your people helped shape and are ready to live.
What exactly is a target culture?
It is the defined 'to-be' culture: the critical few behaviours you want people to show on an ordinary day, the emotional traits already worth keeping, and the redesigned signals - reward, recognition, promotion, tolerance, leader modelling - that actually produce those behaviours. It is captured as a map from your current culture to the target one, so it names not just where you are heading but which of today's signals contradict it. Designing the behaviours and the signals together, rather than writing a values list, is what makes it stick.
How is this different from the Organisational Culture Assessment?
The assessment reads the culture you have now - the behaviours people actually show, the signals underneath them, and where they pull against your intent. Target culture design is the next step: it produces the target culture to move toward instead. The assessment answers 'what is our culture', and this answers 'what culture do we design'. Many clients do the assessment first, because designing on a clear read of the current culture sets the design up well, but if you already have that clarity, you can start here.
Does this cover changing our HR and reward systems?
At the level a culture needs. Where the design touches formal systems - performance criteria, promotion frameworks, pay and reward - we design the intent and the criteria with your HR and reward leads: what the system must reward and recognise, and what it should stop tolerating. We specify what the culture requires of those systems, alongside the specialists who own and rebuild them, rather than re-architecting your HR platform ourselves.
Why build it with our people rather than design it for us?
Because a culture only changes if it is lived. A culture handed down gets nodded at and ignored, while people live the behaviours they helped choose far more readily. Your people also hold knowledge about how the organisation really behaves, and which signals quietly reward the old habits, that no outside team can fully see. Co-design combines that inside knowledge with our outside frameworks, so the culture is both right and real - and your authentic informal leaders help carry it peer to peer.
What happens after the design is done?
You have a defined target culture, a current-to-target map and a set of enactment measures, ready to embed. Some organisations embed it themselves, now more able to. Others bring us alongside for the harder work of making the behaviours and signals real, which is what implementation covers. And because we leave the capability behind, your managers can keep the culture alive and adjust it as the organisation changes.
Culture change built on how services were delivered, not what was written on a wall
A community trust born from decades of activism, with brand values that felt bold on paper but hadn't yet changed how services were delivered or how teams worked day to day. Sports, housing and arts ran as different organisations to the person walking through the door.
Read case study →
Two cultures becoming one - built from three questions found in the evidence, not written in a workshop
Two of London's largest housing associations becoming one - 66,000 homes, two distinct cultures, and the question of how to build something genuinely shared rather than one organisation absorbing the other.
Read case study →Culture doesn't change when you talk about it. It shifts when you work with the patterns and practices that shape how your organisation actually functions.
A clear read of how your organisation actually works day to day - the climate your people live in, and the few changes that would make the most difference.
A Culture Change Programme is the governed set of workstreams that takes your Target Culture Design and makes it real across the organisation: the leadership signals, the everyday behaviours, the reward systems and the rituals that carry a culture, running day to day. We deliver it with your people, so the new culture is owned rather than imposed.
Keeping Culture Embedded keeps the culture you changed lived in everyday behaviour, and builds your own people's ability to tend it. Your leaders' attention, your champions network and your everyday routines carry the culture, so it stays the way things are done here. You run it, with an optional light rhythm from us as much or as little as you want.
The Competing Values Framework is a model for understanding organisational culture by mapping it across two dimensions - flexibility versus stability, and internal versus external focus. It reveals which of four culture types your organisation leans towards.
The Cultural Web is a model for understanding and mapping organisational culture across six interconnected elements. It helps you see how stories, rituals, symbols, power structures, controls, and organisational structures shape the way things are done.
Edgar Schein's Culture Model explores organisational culture at three levels - visible artefacts, stated values, and the deeper underlying assumptions that really drive behaviour. It helps organisations get beneath the surface of what their culture actually is.
The Iceberg Model is a systems thinking tool that helps you look beneath surface-level events to find the patterns, structures, and mental models driving them. It's a way of seeing the deeper causes behind what's happening in your organisation.
A practical guide to developing organisational culture. Cuts through the theory to explain what culture actually is, why most culture change programmes fail, and how to develop culture in a way that lasts - by working with your organisation as a living system, not a machine.
The strategy is clear. So why does the organisation keep doing something different? The answer usually isn't about communication or buy-in. It's about the conditions nobody designed for.
Most culture change efforts don't last. The pattern is remarkably consistent - and it points to something fundamental about how culture actually works.
Ready to design your target culture?
Tell us what's prompting the shift and we'll define it with your people, so it's one they'll actually live.