When Culture Drifts: How Leaders Recognise It and Respond

In my experience, organisations can have a strong strategy and still struggle when their culture hasn't kept pace with the business.

I wanted to explore this when I hosted Pinnacle HR's recent roundtable discussion with Barry McCabe, Chief People Officer at Hostelworld Group, and Noelle Burke, HR Director at Vodafone Ireland.

What struck me was how much culture drift shows up in everyday work: how decisions are made, and whether people still take accountability by owning things and raising issues early. 

Understanding why it's happening is what reels culture back in.

The signs to watch for

"What I'm always looking for is: where's the brave person to call it in the room?"

That’s the question Noelle asks herself when she’s checking whether culture has started to drift. She looks for both obvious and subtle signs. Trust is the big one: once it drops, buy-in gets harder, and the confidence behind the business’ strategy falls away. She also listens for how people talk about the customer. When conversations shift towards silos and what each function needs, it can be a sign that the customer is no longer at the centre of the discussion.

I think that's a useful question for any leadership team. Are people still willing to say what they really think? Are teams looking beyond their own part of the organisation? Are decisions getting stalled or not being made at all?

Barry saw a different kind of signal during his time at Amazon, where the company grew from 2,000 people to more than 7,000. The first sign of people drifting from the culture showed up in how decisions were made: people no longer shared an understanding of how things got done.

That’s why he believes you need to write your culture down; that way everyone can spot when things start to slip. 

Be honest about what’s happening

Organisational change gives us a chance to look honestly at our culture and question what still works and what no longer serves us. 

Vodafone Ireland’s move from the suburban office it had been based in for 25 years into Dublin city centre provided just that opportunity. It could have been treated as a simple building move. But instead, Noelle and her team went back to what mattered in their strategy and asked how their culture would support it. 

It wasn’t easy. Many long-standing employees had built their lives around the old location, and Noelle had to be open to what that history meant to them. The question at the centre of the move was what did they want to protect and bring with them, and what could be left behind. It’s such a brave question for any leadership team, because it asks you to honour what has worked without defending everything that has always been done. It’s about respecting a company’s history while still building for the future.

What made it work for Vodafone was constant listening. Noelle’s team kept asking what everyone's concerns were, and leaned into the sceptics as well as the enthusiasts. 

One small moment particularly stayed with me. Six minutes before an all-hands meeting, they received confirmation of the new office location. They could have waited until they had a polished announcement ready. Instead, they shared what they knew with the team.

The message was simple: this isn’t the entire picture and plan, but here’s what we have to share today.

Barry saw the same principle play out during the integration of Cadbury and Kraft. With so much press attention on a historic company being taken over, there was a lot of emotion about what the new culture would be. He remembers a day in a hotel near Birmingham when the managers from each company stood on opposite sides of the room and looked at each other first. What came out was honesty: what people were worried about losing, and the assumptions they had about what they were moving to.

As Barry put it:

"To have a new beginning, you need a good ending."

I think that captures something important about honesty during change. You don’t always have to have all the answers. Sometimes it’s about being clear about what you know, what you don’t know and what is still being worked through.

Culture sticks when it shows up in the work

The real test of culture is what happens day to day.

For Barry, particularly in a remote-first organisation, that means creating ways to observe, role model and teach the culture.

As he put it:

"Good intentions don't always work. You need to put in place mechanisms to catch that."

Operations reviews are one example: a chance to see how people interact, how issues are handled, and whether the focus is on learning rather than blame.

And that's perhaps the biggest lesson I took away from the chat. Culture isn't something you can simply define and then leave alone. It shows up in the decisions people make, the conversations they have, and the behaviours leaders accept or challenge. Culture is really tested when the organisation is under pressure, or when something changes.

Keep noticing what's changing

Culture will continue to evolve as the organisation does. The challenge for leaders isn’t to stop that happening, but to notice what’s changing and think about what might need attention.

Are the behaviours that helped the organisation in the past still helping it now? Are people still speaking up? Is the customer still part of the conversation? And are leaders modelling the culture they want others to experience?

The earlier you notice these shifts, the easier it is to do something about it. Culture drift doesn’t usually happen overnight. It shows up in small changes like people become less willing to speak up, teams become more focused on their own priorities, or accountability starts to slip. The real work is understanding why.

Watch the full webinar below.