Blind spots: are you building the culture you think you are?
The co-founders of a purpose-driven consultancy in Bristol were aiming to build a genuinely egalitarian, non-hierarchical culture. They had good intentions for their growing, eight-person team and wanted to ensure that their efforts were moving them in the right direction.
Their backgrounds were in highly structured environments, like military, aerospace and defence. Their team was mostly Gen Z and new to the professional world. The founders wanted to make sure that the culture they were trying to establish was actually embedding, and that their team weren’t just telling them things were fine.
The two founders knew they might have blind spots, but they didn’t have a way to hunt for them. They needed an evidence-based reality check, not a fuzzy, anecdotal ‘culture survey’.
What we did: the culture audit and action lab
We’ve developed an auditing tool that treats culture as an actionable, measurable system, not something fluffy and impossible to grasp.
We began with an evidence-based full culture audit. We moved beyond generic surveys, synthesising academic literature to break culture down into measurable components, like wellbeing, psychological safety, reward and recognition, and performance. This allowed us to apply tried-and-tested metrics to the things the founders valued.
After the audit had found the blind spots, we held a deep dive & action lab workshop. Held with the staff only (to ensure candid feedback), we jumped straight into the most challenging sections highlighted by the audit.The surprises
Two key insights emerged:
Unfounded worries - many of the founders’ biggest concerns (like "Is the flat hierarchy confusing?") were either fine or manageable with minor adjustments.
A blind spot - the single largest surprise was a small but important gap in psychological safety. Sometimes, the team found it difficult to disagree with the founders - something that they had completely missed. Their communication style was unintentionally resulting in a barrier to dissent, and accidentally undermining their efforts to ensure the whole team felt listened to.
The outcome: clarity on what to change, and what not to
The two founders now know what their blind spots were, and what they need to do to address them. They have:
Clarity - they know how the team really feels about the culture they’re building, with evidence to back it up.
Support – they have confirmation that the team wants to be part of an organisation that’s doing things differently, despite the challenges, and they have actionable suggestions for improvement.
Immediate action – crucially, they now know what they didn’t know, and can actively work to change their communication patterns to ensure their hard work isn’t being undone by the silent signals they weren’t spotting.
You can only fix what you can measure, and the founders are now able to keep building their culture on a solid foundation.
