Culture is built in small interactions

Culture is not set by a values poster or a single big result. It is built, or eroded, in the small moments. How you treat a colleague who is struggling. Whether you encourage someone having a bad week. Whether you build real two-way relationships or just transact. The culture is the sum of those moments, not the slogan on the wall.

I believed this before I led a team, and then I got to test it building one.

Culture is a daily act, not a declaration

Back in 2019 I wrote that culture changes day by day, not only through the results you achieve but through your interactions with others. Encouraging a neighbor when they are down. Collaborating with a stakeholder who is struggling. Building meaningful two-way relationships. Those small acts, repeated, are what actually move a culture.

The mistake organizations make is treating culture as a thing you announce. You write the values, you put them on a slide, and you assume they are now true. They are not. The values on the wall are a hypothesis. The culture is whatever your people actually experience in their hundred small interactions each week. If those two things disagree, the interactions win every time.

Where I learned this: McKesson’s iCARE and iLEAD

This belief did not come from nowhere. It came from my years at McKesson, where culture was not a poster, it was a daily practice with a name.

McKesson had two value frameworks that ran through everything. iCARE, which stood for Integrity, Customer-First, Accountability, Respect, and Excellence, was the answer to who we are. iLEAD was the answer to how we lead. What struck me was not that these existed, plenty of companies have a values acronym. It was that people actually lived them, in the small moments, every day. Respect was not a word on a wall. It showed up in how a senior person treated a brand-new analyst. Customer-First was not a slogan. It changed which problem you picked up first.

That is where I learned that values only become culture when they are practiced, not posted. When I wrote that 2019 post about culture being built day by day, I was really writing down what iCARE and iLEAD had taught me by example. The frameworks gave me the words. Living them at McKesson gave me the lesson.

What this looked like on a real team

When I helped build a remote company, I could not rely on hallway culture, so I had to make these small moments on purpose. We ran sessions where people taught the group about something they loved, so we knew each other as humans, not just roles. We rotated who ran meetings, so more people felt ownership. When someone was stuck, my standing message was to tell me right away so I could clear it for them, because removing what is in someone’s way is one of those small acts that says “you matter here.”

None of those were grand gestures. They were small, deliberate, repeated. That is the only way culture actually gets built, especially when your team is spread across time zones and there is no office to absorb it for you.

Why the small stuff outweighs the big stuff

It is tempting to think culture is forged in the big moments, the crisis, the launch, the all-hands. Those matter, but they are rare. People spend almost all their time in the small moments, and that is where they learn what it actually feels like to work with you.

A leader who nails the big speech but is dismissive in daily interactions has a bad culture, no matter what the speech said. A leader who is consistently decent in the small moments builds a good one, even without a single memorable speech. People believe what they experience repeatedly, not what they are told occasionally.

If you want a better culture, do not start with a new values document. Start with your next ten interactions. Encourage the person who is down. Help the one who is stuck. Build the relationship instead of just running the transaction.

Culture is not your values page. It is how you treat the person having a hard week. So what is the actual culture your team is experiencing, in the small moments, regardless of what the wall says?

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The original post, written on LinkedIn in 2019:

“Organizational culture can be changed day by day, not only by the results you achieve but also through your interactions with others. Encouraging a neighbor when they’re down, collaborating with a stakeholder who is struggling, and building meaningful two-way relationships with those around you all go a long way to building a stronger culture that will only push your organization further.”

Source: Mike’s LinkedIn post, 2019 (#organizationalculture #winning #networking).