Culture: The Invisible Layer of Transformation (Read time:4 mins)

Why most transformations fail not in process or tech, but in the unseen layer of culture.

A Familiar Sequence

A new executive was tasked with scaling the organization rapidly to meet ambitious growth goals. Teams doubled in size within months, hiring soared, and dashboards looked promising.

But cracks soon appeared.

Veterans were too busy with existing work to mentor newcomers.
New hires learned informally, picking up fragmented cues about “how things really work.”
Technical debt piled up, deadlines slipped, fatigue rose and morale dipped.

What went wrong?
The transformation plan was solid — on paper. What it missed was the invisible layer that binds every successful change: culture.

The Missed Opportunity & Invisible Operating System of Culture

Transformation often fails not because of technology or processes, but due to neglecting the existing culture—the unseen rhythms of how people work, trust, and communicate. Executives may build new structures, but ignoring cultural patterns triggers resistance, making change disruptive rather than transformative.

Culture is often treated as invisible—something abstract or secondary. But it is, in fact, the operating system of an organization , that influences collaboration, decision-making, and conflict resolution. It is shaped by leadership style, shared purpose, communication habits, structure and the work environment.

Successful leaders recognize these cultural signals and gradually align processes to people, not the other way around. If replacing a culture entirely is the goal, it’s usually better to build a separate new team rather than forcibly changing an existing one.

Understanding the Invisible Layer

Culture isn’t written in policies—it’s embedded in everyday behavior. It defines how teams make decisions, handle conflict, and trust one another.And it shifts across teams depending on leadership, purpose, and environment.

In practice, I’ve seen three cultural archetypes that define how teams operate:

Control Culture – thrives on structure, stability, and accountability. Perfect for compliance-driven or risk-averse domains.
Collaboration Culture – values openness and teamwork. Common in high-growth environments that rely on innovation and trust.
Competence Culture – celebrates mastery and learning. Ideal for engineering and product teams that prize expertise and precision.

Leaders who understand which culture they’re working with can adapt their approach—accelerating transformation instead of fighting it.

No one culture is superior. The key lies in alignment—between what the business needs and how the team naturally operates.

A Lesson from the Field

At Splunk, I worked with three leaders managing 40 engineers across ten business-critical applications.
Despite their skill, the teams constantly firefought issues. Work was scattered across shared Jira boards, with unclear ownership and limited visibility to business stakeholders.

We started small.
A six-member pilot team adopted agile practices, defined clear ownership, and introduced basic ceremonies like standups and retrospectives. We established vision statements, quarterly OKRs, and linked technical execution to business priorities.

Within months, the team moved from firefighting to predictable delivery. Over two years, the model scaled across seven mission teams in four global locations.

What truly changed wasn’t just the process—the real Change was culture within the team: teams began to operate with agility and predictability

They began to see transformation not as disruption, but as progress they owned.

Leading Cultural Change

Culture doesn’t shift by command; it evolves through consistency. Leaders shape it through daily behaviors more than big announcements.

Here’s what works:

Build psychological safety before introducing new frameworks
Treat governance as guidance, not policing
Reward learning and experimentation, not just delivery speed
Celebrate small wins to create momentum and belief

And here’s what to avoid:

Ignoring existing cultural patterns
Rolling out top-down mandates without co-creation
Poor or inconsistent communication
Over-standardizing too quickly, killing innovation

The surest way to read a culture is to observe what people reward, tolerate, and celebrate, it involves observing actions, symbols, language, unspoken norms, and exploring specific cultural dimensions through stakeholder interviews to understand "what people do, not what they say they do". Transformation succeeds when leaders respect the culture they inherit while shaping the one they envision.

The Closing Reflection

Culture is slow to change because it’s deeply human. It lives in conversations, trust, and daily rituals—not in tools or templates.

Technology can rewire systems.

Culture rewires people.

Transformation only succeeds when both evolve together.

Before your next transformation kickoff, ask not what technology you need—ask what culture you’re nurturing.