Culture that improves the work (not just the vibe)

There’s a myth that culture lives in after-work drinks. It doesn’t. I don’t care whether a team loves a Thursday pub or prefers to go home. What I care about is whether people feel safe to speak, know what good looks like, and get honest feedback in time to fix things. That is culture. The pub is a preference.

I’ve seen teams mistake socialising for culture. It looks lively from the outside, but the work inside is slow and unclear. People avoid giving feedback because it might make things awkward at the bar later. New starters think fitting in means saying yes to socials rather than learning how the work really gets done. The irony is that those teams often feel less connected, because no one trusts the work. Social time can be great, but it isn’t a substitute for standards.

The culture I want is simple. People should feel safe to ask questions and challenge decisions. Everyone should know what good looks like before they start a task, not after a painful review. Feedback should be timely, specific and useful. Meetings should do a job, not just exist. If you get those basics right, people can choose whether to go to the pub or go home and the work still improves.

If you want to test your culture, skip the posters and watch what happens when a deadline is under pressure. Do people raise blockers early or hide them. Do managers pitch in without taking over. Does the team review the process after delivery or move on and repeat the same mistakes. Culture shows up under load. That is when you see whether safety, standards and feedback are real.

Make feedback normal. You don’t need a workshop for this. Use simple language and give it while it can still change the outcome. What worked. What to tighten. What to try next time. That is it. Praise the behaviour you want repeated and be plain about gaps. People don’t need sugar coating, they need clarity and a chance to improve.

Protect thinking time. Teams that are always on calls are rarely doing their best work. Put one meeting in the diary each week that genuinely moves the work forward, and delete the rest unless they earn their place. A focused team session with clear outcomes beats four status calls with no decisions. If a meeting has no decision or output, it should be an email.

Leaders must lead by example. If you want people to speak up, ask questions yourself. If you want honest feedback, show how you handle it and don't be afraid to admit when you're wrong or when you don't know. If you want fewer emergencies, stop rewarding last minute heroics and start rewarding clean prep. Culture is taught in what leaders praise, what they ignore, and what they stop.

I don’t think culture needs to be loud to be strong. I think it needs to be consistent. A team that knows what matters, how decisions get made, and how to improve will usually feel better and produce better work. And it is more inclusive. Not everyone wants to go for drinks. Not everyone can. You shouldn’t have to perform sociability to build a career. Do the work well, treat people fairly, and make progress visible. That is the job.

If you want one simple ritual, try this for a month. Hold a 30 minute weekly session with a tight agenda. Start with one quick win from the past week so progress is visible. Review one piece of live work against whether or not it’s good, not personal taste. Close with one small change that will make next week’s work easier or clearer. That habit will tell you more about your culture than any social calendar.

If your culture genuinely improves the work, people can choose how and when they want to connect and still feel part of something strong. Your best people will stay, not because there’s a tab behind the bar, but because the work and the way you work together makes sense.

Question: what is one small change you’ll make this month that will improve how your team works together