Stop babysitting your business: How Culture Design will set you free

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” goes the famous saying – whether Peter Drucker actually said it or not. It’s not that strategy is irrelevant – far from it – but more that without the right culture, your strategy has zero chance of being implemented properly. Culture is the operating system of your business, yet most companies I encounter have neither a clear strategy nor a deliberate culture. They wing it on both fronts and wonder why growth stalls.

In my experience scaling Rackspace and Peer 1, nothing influenced our success more than culture. The cultural changes we made enabled those companies to grow from zero to £30m in five years (through two recessions, no less).

If you’re a founder-CEO aiming to become a “Two-Day-a-Week CEO,” culture design is not some fluffy HR exercise – it’s a strategic accelerator. Get culture right, and you build a company that executes your vision while you free up your time to concentrate on your next challenge. Get it wrong (or ignore it), and you’ll be forever babysitting the business.

Start with who you serve (not “why”)

You’ve probably heard Simon Sinek’s mantra “Start with Why.” As I’ve said before, it’s bollocks – at least, not in the way he means it. In my coaching blueprint, culture design starts with “Who”. Who are the customers you serve? Who is your tribe, the core customer that your business exists to help? People won’t buy from you until they realise they are the reason you do what you do. In other words, start with who, not why.

Once you know your WHO (the specific customers and their problem), then figure out WHAT you will do for them. Next, define WHY you’re doing it. Only then can you design HOW you will operate – and that “how” is your culture. Culture is the enabler that delivers your solution to your who, consistently and profitably.

It’s about how everyone acts when you’re not looking

Let’s demystify culture. My favourite definition: Culture is the set of behavioural norms that guide what people do when the CEO isn’t in the room. It’s how your team behaves on instinct – the default behaviours and decisions that play out without micromanagement.

Crucially, those behavioural norms don’t emerge from thin air. They have to be set and modelled by the founders and leadership. If you as founder don’t define “how we do things here,” your managers and employees will each make up their own versions. The result? A fragmented mess. There’s no vacuum – if you don’t plant the cultural seeds, the weeds grow by themselves.

Culture doesn’t happen by accident

Many CEOs hope culture will just “happen” organically. Nope. Culture by default = chaos. You need culture by design. As the founder, you are the chief architect of culture. That means creating a culture blueprint and then leading by example every single day.

One of the first things I do with executive teams is get them to agree on a behavioural charter for themselves. You can’t impose values on the company if the leadership team isn’t living them. I often advise CEOs to ensure new cultural behaviours have been adopted at the leadership team before rolling them out company-wide. Why? Because if the execs can’t walk the talk, the whole company will smell the hypocrisy and any culture effort will breed cynicism.

Don’t confuse artefacts or perks with culture. Free beer Fridays and beanbags are nice, but they’re not culture. Culture is how decisions are made, how people treat each other, what gets rewarded or punished. A clear culture blueprint removes uncertainty – your people know “this is how we do things here,” which creates trust and alignment.

Defining core values that aren’t total bollocks

Too many companies have values that are bland, toothless platitudes (“Passion”, “Integrity”, “Excellence” …blah blah). These mean nothing if you can’t observe and enforce them. A value should represent specific behaviours you expect always, and would fire someone for violating. If you’re not willing to hire, promote, or sack based on a value, it’s not a core value – it’s just a slogan on the wall.

I use two exercises with clients:

The Stan Slap Personal Values Exercise: You list and narrow down your personal values to a top 3. By doing this for each founder/executive, then looking for overlap, you can surface the authentic core values for your business. At Monkhouse & Company, for example, we landed on Learning, Adventure, and Loyalty – because those were the common denominators between my values and my co-founder’s.

Jim Collins’s Mission to Mars: If you had to send 5-7 people from your company on a mission to Mars to represent your culture, who would you pick? More importantly, why them? By articulating the common behaviours of your all-stars, you can distill those into your core values. This exercise focuses on actual observed behaviour in your team (not wishful thinking).

After defining values, pressure-test them: Are these truly core to our identity? Would we fire a high-performer who flagrantly violated this value? The goal is a small set (3–5) of core values that you will hire, reward, and fire by.

No more “passion” please (Meaningless values alert)

One value I strongly advise clients to avoid is “Passion.” Why? Because it’s meaningless in practice. At Rackspace, years ago, we listed “passion for what you do” as a core value. In hindsight, that was a crap value. No one ever got fired at Rackspace for “lacking passion,” because it wasn’t observable or measurable. We would have been better off with a behaviour like “Fanatical Support” (which actually became our purpose at Rackspace) – something you can see in action and hold people to.

The lesson: Don’t pick values that sound good but you can’t enforce. Your values should be so clear that an employee could use them to decide what to do in a tough situation without calling you.

Rules and rituals that bring culture to life

Culture design is about weaving those values into daily behaviours and company habits. You need to translate values into specific rules, rituals, and norms that people follow. Here are two transformative rules I’ve implemented:

No triangulation: This was a game-changer when I ran Peer 1. “No triangulation” means no talking about someone in a conversation unless that person is present. In practice, if Alice complains to Bob about Charlie’s performance (and Charlie isn’t there), Bob’s response is: “Hold on, this is a conversation you need to have with Charlie. How can I help you do that?” Then Bob gives Alice 72 hours to discuss it with Charlie directly.

We as a leadership team quietly agreed to this rule amongst ourselves first – we didn’t even announce it company-wide initially, we just started doing it. The effect was electric. Suddenly all the petty whining and gossip stopped. Issues got addressed at the source. Accountability skyrocketed, because people couldn’t offload blame or vent to a third party – they had to confront issues head-on.

Bad news first, no surprises: This was a core behavioural mantra at Rackspace that had huge impact externally. The rule: Always deliver bad news as soon as you can – don’t let the boss or the customer be surprised later. If we messed up for a client, we proactively called them immediately to own the mistake. “We screwed up, here’s what happened, we’re sorry. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it and to prevent it happening again. We’ve already credited your account.”

You can imagine how shocked customers were to receive a call like this – most had never experienced a supplier voluntarily confessing a mistake! But it built massive trust. Many told us they’d never go back to a competitor because of this level of honesty.

The 5-W Framework: Embedding accountability

One specific tool I coach leadership teams on is my 5-W Accountability Framework: Who, What, When, Way, Why Not. It’s a simple checklist I’ve developed to ensure absolute clarity on every commitment – and it has a huge cultural impact. When your team habitually defines the 5 W’s for every task or project, stuff actually gets done.

Who? – One owner for the task. Not two owners, not a committee. One name.

What? – Define the deliverable or outcome specifically. What does “done” look like? Is it a 10-page report or a 3-slide summary?

When? – Set a due date or frequency. “ASAP” is not a deadline. Be explicit: e.g. Friday 5pm, no later.

Way? – Clarify the approach or guidelines. If there’s a preferred process or “right way,” note it. Ask them: “You got what you need? You know how to tackle this?”

Why Not? – Proactively ask: What could prevent this from being done as promised? By discussing potential obstacles up front, you create a norm where people can surface concerns or risks without feeling like they’re making excuses. What’s more, it means plans can be made to stop those obstacles becoming excuses in the first place.

For you as a founder, a 5-W culture is a dream – it means you’re not the one chasing up or worrying if things slipped through cracks. The team holds each other accountable. When that’s in place, you can confidently take time away from the day-to-day because you trust that commitments are clear and being met without your intervention.

The Culture Design Canvas: Mapping your culture on one page

“Alright Dom, this is a lot – values, rules, rituals, behaviours… How do I capture and communicate all this?” Enter the Culture Design Canvas. This is a visual one-page tool (developed by Gustavo Razzetti) that I now use with all my clients to map out their culture. Think of it as a canvas where you fill in all the key elements of your culture so you can see the whole picture at a glance.

The Culture Design Canvas typically includes blocks for: Purpose, Values, Behaviours (at the centre), Priority Trade-offs (what really matters “even over” what), Rituals and Stories, Feedback and Psychological Safety, Decision-making norms, Meeting rhythms, and any unique “oddities” of your culture that outsiders should know.

By mapping everything out, you accomplish:

• Clarity: You get crystal clear on what your culture actually is
• Communication: It’s much easier to communicate your culture to staff when it’s in a digestible one-page format
• Alignment: The process gets everyone aligned and talking about culture in concrete terms
• Action Plans: The Canvas drives action by linking values to behaviors to actual practices

I now incorporate the Culture Design Canvas as a standard part of my Two-Day-a-Week CEO Blueprint. Use frameworks to design culture just as rigorously as you’d use a business model canvas to design your business.

Culture Design fuels everything else

Culture Design isn’t an isolated silo – it underpins all the other accelerators – for example: 

Leadership Development: A deliberate culture sets the standard for your leaders. A strong culture of trust and accountability allows you to delegate confidently because your leaders make decisions aligned with the culture.

Vision and Purpose: Culture and vision are two sides of the same coin. Vision is where you’re going; culture is how you get there. Say your vision is to be an industry innovator – does your culture reward risk-taking and candid debate?

Process Optimisation: A culture that values continuous improvement will empower employees to challenge and refine processes. One client embraced a cultural habit of “Stupid Rules” – any employee could call out a process that was stupid and we’d fix it.

Finally, a strong culture is the best antidote to common growth ailments – things like “founder’s bottleneck syndrome,” low employee engagement, high turnover, silo mentalities. Fix the culture, and you fix these at the root.

Be deliberate or be doomed

In the end, culture design is about being deliberate. It’s about deciding what kind of company you want to be and methodically making it so. Yes, it’s hard work. Yes, it requires tough choices. But great cultures often have an element of positive eccentricity. Embrace it.

Remember, if you don’t design your culture, it will design itself – and you might not like the result. On the flip side, a well-designed culture becomes your competitive advantage. Your strategy can be mimicked, your products, even your people poached – but a truly cohesive, vibrant culture? That’s yours alone.

For the two-day-a-week CEO-in-training reading this: Culture is your ticket to freedom. When you intentionally build a culture where the behaviours, decisions and norms are exactly what they should be – even when you’re not around – you can confidently let go. You can focus on strategic growth, new ventures, or take that holiday you haven’t taken in 5 years. Your business won’t crumble; it’ll probably flourish.

So, take a look at your company as it is today. Is there clarity or confusion? Are values lived or laminated? Are people executing or making excuses? Whatever you see, know that you have the power to reshape it. Get deliberate. Design the culture that delivers your strategy and embodies your purpose. Lead it, live it, enforce it. In time, you’ll find you’ve created a company that not only scales faster, but almost runs itself. And that, my friend, is the path to becoming a true Two-Day-a-Week CEO.

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Written by business coach and leadership coaching expert Dominic Monkhouse. You can order your free copy of his book, Mind Your F**king Business here.