How to stop losing the culture you worked so hard to build

You felt it once. That electric buzz in the room. The spontaneous laughs, the proud sighs, the way your team finished each other’s sentences, not out of politeness, but because they were in it together. You didn’t install the culture. You grew it. Fed it. Protected it. 

And then quietly, gradually, it began to fade. Maybe it was a reorg, maybe hybrid work  through Covid and afterwards has diluted the connection. Maybe you got distracted chasing delivery over everything else. Either way, your culture, the soul of your business, started slipping through your fingers.

So how do you stop the rot? Not with a values poster. Not with a culture taskforce either. And definitely not with another all hands where the exec team insists everything is fine. 

To protect your culture, and I mean, really protect it, you have to get honest. You have to do the unglamorous, deeply human work of noticing what’s shifted, choosing what to keep, and being brave enough to let go of the rest. Here’s a starter for ten to help you get back on track: 

1. Stop confusing perks with culture

We’ve all seen it. A company boasts about ‘great culture’ with a carousel of ping pong tables, prosecco Fridays, and a corporate wellbeing app. But when the pressure’s on the real culture shows up. Are people protected or blamed? Do they cover their backs or have each other’s?

Perks can support a healthy culture, but they’re not the root system. Culture is about shared values in action. It’s what happens in the grey areas of the rulebook. If someone’s being treated unfairly, does anyone speak up? If a decision conflicts with your stated purpose, who pushes back? 

If your culture crumbles when the snacks run out or the budget tightens, then what you had wasn’t culture. It was convenience dressed up as care. 

2. Be brave enough to name what’s slipping

Most culture loss happens in silence. People feel something is off, but no one wants to be the first to say it. They worry it’ll make them sound disloyal, cynical, or worse, difficult. So the energy dips. The trust thins. And suddenly you’re a team of people smiling through gritted teeth on Teams. 

But you can’t fix what you won’t face. If you sense your culture is drifting – towards burnout, cynicism, control-freakery, whatever it is – say so! Name it carefully, but clearly. Not as a crisis, but as a checkpoint. This honesty opens the door to challenge. It gives people the permission to be part of the solution, instead of quietly checking out.

3. Rebuild around the truth, not nostalgia

It’s tempting to try and get things ‘back’ to how they were. Back when the office was buzzing, when decisions were faster, when everyone still believed. But nostalgia is a trap. The world has changed. Your team has changed. You’ve changed. 

Rather than trying to rewind, rebuild from where you now are. Talk to people. Ask them, “what feels like ‘us’? What doesn’t? What are the unspoken rules here? Are they helping or hurting?”

Culture isn’t static. It’s living, evolving and collective. The best cultures aren’t preserved. They’re redefined in the open – and constantly. 

4. Culture leaks from the top. Fix the plumbing.

Your leaders are your culture’s amplifiers. Whether they like it or not, their tone, pace, values, and blind spots ripple outwards. If they’d unclear, inconsistent, or all talk and no follow through, your culture becomes fragile and confused. Hollow, even. 

Look at your leadership team. Are they aligned on what culture actually means? Do they know the behaviours they need to model? Are they willing to be vulnerable, to change, to show up not just as bosses, but as culture holders?

If not, that’s where your work begins. You don’t need perfect leaders. But you do need self-aware ones. Otherwise, your culture will always be undermined by the very people meant to protect it. 

5. Make rituals sacred again.

Culture isn’t built in away days. It’s built in moments – weekly check-ins, onboarding chats, birthday cards, wash ups, coffee queues. These rituals are your culture’s nervous system. They carry the signals: “You belong here.” “We see you.” “This is how we do things.” 

But rituals are fragile. Under pressure. They’re the first thing to go. People cancel the 1:1s, skip the Friday shout outs, stop sharing the real stuff. And slowly the culture that once felt so personal and proud becomes flat and transactional. 

So hold your rituals close. Reinvent them if they’ve gone stale. But don’t abandon them. Because in a fast, messy, distracted world, rituals are how we remember who we are.

Culture doesn’t vanish overnight. It frays. Softens. Mutates. And by the time you realise it’s gone, you’re not just facing disengagement, you’re facing an identity crisis. 

The good news? Culture is resilient. It can come back stronger, if you treat it like the living, breathing emotional system it is. Not a campaign. Not a KPI. But a shared agreement on who we are when no one is watching. 

So if you’ve noticed something is off – say something. If you’ve let the small stuff slip, start showing up differently. 

If your people are still with you, still trying, still hoping, then the culture you worked so hard to build isn’t lost. It’s just waiting for you to lead it home. 

If you need some help to assess and strengthen your culture, get in touch for a chat about how we could help.