How to ‘actually’ cultivate culture: Lessons from high-performing sport cultures

LinkedIn is flooded with posts about organisational culture. You can’t escape it. Companies pride themselves on having a positive, [insert buzzword here] culture. And there’s no shortage of tropes that come with trying to “improve” it.

Think: the dreaded pizza “party,” table-tennis tournaments, mandatory team-building days, vague company-values campaigns, or anonymous surveys that never lead to action.

These gestures do little to change a culture, and employees can smell the BS from a mile away.

So, how do we make a real difference? Where do organisations get it wrong? And what do we actually mean by culture? Research into high-performing sport environments may hold some answers, writes Sports News Blitz’s Ted Purcell.