by Neil McGregor, Lead Consultant,
Human Synergistics New Zealand
(as featured in LinkedIn)
Most organisations care deeply about culture.
They spend time defining values, setting expectations, and talking about how they want people to work together. That intent matters — and it’s usually genuine.
And yet, when work becomes demanding or uncertain, something familiar tends to happen.
The way people actually behave can drift away from what’s written down.
Not dramatically. Not deliberately. Just quietly, over time.
Culture shows up most clearly under pressure
Culture isn’t just what we talk about when things are going well.
It shows up when:
- priorities compete
- decisions need to be made quickly
- people feel stretched or unsure
- there isn’t a clear right answer
In those moments, people rely less on formal statements and more on what they’ve learned really works in their environment.
They pay attention to questions like:
- Is it safe to raise concerns here?
- What tends to get recognised?
- What happens if I make a mistake?
The answers to those questions shape everyday behaviour — often without anyone consciously deciding them.
Most cultures aren’t chosen — they evolve
Very few organisations set out to create unhelpful cultural patterns.
More often, culture evolves through:
- sensible decisions made under pressure
- ways of working that once helped
- habits formed in response to past challenges
Over time, these patterns become “how things are done around here”.
People learn:
- when to speak up and when to hold back
- how much collaboration is genuinely expected
- whether learning is encouraged or caution is safer
None of this is written down — but most people feel it.
Why culture can be hard to talk about
One reason culture drifts is that it’s surprisingly hard to talk about.
The language can feel:
- abstract
- personal
- close to judgement
So conversations often stay indirect. We talk about engagement, workload, or communication — all important — without quite naming the underlying behaviours and assumptions driving them.
This is exactly the gap we’ve been exploring in the development of Culture Science Cards: how to talk about culture without putting people on the defensive.
Pressure doesn’t change people — it reveals patterns
A useful reframe is this:
Pressure doesn’t create behaviour out of nowhere. It reveals the habits the system has already shaped.
When things get challenging, people tend to fall back on what feels safest or most familiar:
- focusing on delivery rather than dialogue
- prioritising certainty over exploration
- avoiding risk rather than learning from it
Not because they don’t care — but because those responses have made sense before.
The challenge is that these patterns are often easier to feel than to name.
A more useful question
When working with teams, one simple question often opens things up:
“When there’s tension here, what usually takes priority?”
- Getting the work done, or checking in with people?
- Speed, or quality?
- Harmony, or honest challenge?
- Control, or shared ownership?
There’s no universal right answer. But the pattern of answers tells you a lot about the culture people are actually experiencing.
One of the reasons we’ve taken a visual, card-based approach is that people often find it easier to point to a behaviour than to explain a feeling.
Making culture easier to see
Culture becomes difficult when it stays unspoken.
When people have a shared way to surface behaviours — without blame, labels, or long explanations — conversations change. They become more practical. More grounded. More human.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll explore some of the common cultural tensions that show up in teams and organisations — the ones many people recognise but don’t always have language for.
We’ll use Culture Science Cards as a lens for those conversations, not to judge, but to make patterns visible and discussable.
Because culture doesn’t change through slogans. It changes when people can finally see — and talk about — what environment gets the best out of them.
I’m sharing these reflections as part of the lead-up to the release of Culture Science Cards 2026 version later this year — a practical way of supporting more open, productive conversations about culture.