Making Culture Real
Helping a growing organisation align leadership and behaviours with its core values
The Challenge
A fast-growing, privately owned business in the services sector had spent years evolving its strategy — but its culture hadn’t kept pace.
As the company scaled, leadership realised that the “family feel” and informal cohesion that had helped them grow was no longer enough to support performance, accountability, and clarity. New leaders were joining the business, internal expectations were inconsistent, and behaviour varied from team to team.
The executive team had agreed on a set of values — but they hadn’t yet been translated into consistent leadership behaviours or embedded across the organisation.
As one leader put it:
“We have a great business — but we’re not always leading in a great way.”
The Amicus Approach
Amicus began by working with the senior team to understand the business’s history, ambition, and cultural identity. Rather than impose a generic model, we focused on making their values real, practical, and lived.
The work included:
- A leadership alignment session to clarify expectations and behaviours at the top
- A series of working groups across departments to explore how values showed up (or didn’t) in real scenarios
- A set of behaviour principles written in the language of the business — practical, specific, and memorable
- Structured manager training and team workshops to role model and embed the shift
- Optional coaching support for key leaders to help navigate moments of challenge or resistance
We worked closely with internal champions to ensure momentum carried beyond the workshops and into everyday operations.
The Outcome
In the following months, the organisation began to see tangible shifts:
- Greater consistency in how managers led and gave feedback
- Increased alignment across departments around what “good” looked like
- A noticeable reduction in friction and second-guessing around expectations
- More confident leadership at all levels — particularly among new or first-time managers
“This gave us a shared language and framework — but it still sounds and feels like us. That’s what made it work.”
— Chief Operating Officer
The values are now referenced in hiring, onboarding, performance discussions, and leadership development — and most importantly, in how day-to-day decisions are made.
The Takeaway
Culture isn’t what’s written on the wall — it’s how things get done when no one’s looking.
At Amicus, we help organisations translate values into action, so that culture becomes a source of alignment, energy, and performance.