Charlene Li has spent two decades helping organizations work through digital transformation, leadership, and the future of work. She is the founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter (acquired by Prophet in 2015) and the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Open Leadership and the more recent The Disruption Mindset. Named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, Charlene is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.
This Reimagining Company Culture conversation focused on intentionality. Charlene’s frame is that companies do not stumble into positive culture; they build it on purpose, through specific decisions made consistently over multiple years. Most companies confuse the existence of values statements with the existence of culture work.
The synthesis below pulls in research and field practice from People teams running similar work today.
Why Positive Culture Is Built, Not Inherited
Companies sometimes treat their early culture as something that emerged from the founders’ personalities and will continue on its own. The framing is convenient and rarely accurate. Without active maintenance, early-stage culture drifts as new layers of management arrive, and the original culture gets diluted in ways that are hard to reverse.
McKinsey research on high-performing cultures reports that 70 percent of transformations fail and that culture is the leading cause. The companies that beat that statistic build culture intentionally and treat the work with the same rigor they apply to any other strategic priority. The companies that lose to the statistic typically had culture work that was symbolic rather than operational.
Charlene’s framing pulls intentionality into the operating model. Building positive culture requires explicit decisions about which behaviors get rewarded, which behaviors get coached, and which behaviors trigger consequences regardless of who exhibits them.
What Intentional Culture Architecture Looks Like
What does open leadership mean in practice?
Open leadership treats information as a tool for agency rather than a source of control. Leaders share context, share reasoning, and share decision-making across more of the organization. Transformational leadership practices often overlap with open leadership, especially in companies in the middle of meaningful change.
How do you keep culture intentional during disruption?
Disruption is when culture work either compounds or unravels. The teams that hold onto intentional culture during disruption are the ones that wrote down what mattered before the pressure arrived. Skipping that step produces reactive culture work that satisfies no one.
What Actually Works in Building Positive Culture
Treat culture as a leadership accountability
Organizational culture becomes real when leaders are accountable for it through compensation, performance reviews, and promotion decisions. Companies that treat culture as a separate program tend to under-invest; companies that bake culture into the leadership performance review system get faster, more durable change.
Build employer brand through actual experience
Employer branding stays credible only when it matches the daily experience. Companies that market what they are not produce a hire-and-quit cycle that damages the broader brand. Companies that market the actual experience attract people who fit and stay.
Use engagement data as a leading indicator
Employee engagement is one of the most reliable leading indicators for culture health. only 20 percent of employees worldwide were engaged in 2025 according to recent global data, which means companies running healthy engagement scores are operating well above the global baseline. The signal is meaningful and worth instrumenting carefully.
Where Employee Relations Fits in Intentional Culture
The fastest test of intentional culture is what happens when something goes wrong. Companies that handle ER cases consistently with their stated values build trust; companies that handle them inconsistently lose the cultural commitment overnight. Companies running modern company culture programs treat ER infrastructure as core culture work.
How AI changes intentional culture work
AI-powered employee relations workflows produce the consistency that intentional culture requires. Cases get routed the same way regardless of who is involved, trends get surfaced earlier, and leaders have access to the data they need to make culture decisions with confidence.
Frequently Asked Questions About Intentional Culture
What is intentional company culture?
Intentional culture is culture built on purpose through explicit decisions about behavior, accountability, and operating practice. It contrasts with inherited or default culture, which emerges without conscious design.
How does positive culture connect to performance?
Positive culture produces better retention, faster decision quality, and stronger collaboration. The performance benefit is real and measurable across multiple years.
Can negative culture be turned around?
Yes, but it takes longer than most leaders expect. Cultural turnaround typically takes 24 to 36 months of consistent leadership commitment. Programs that promise faster turnaround usually overstate progress.
How do you handle a senior leader who damages culture?
Coach first, then act. The senior leader has to either change behavior or change roles. Tolerating cultural damage at the senior level signals that the cultural commitment is negotiable, which kills credibility quickly.
How do you measure positive culture?
Engagement scores, regrettable attrition, internal mobility, glassdoor and similar review patterns, and qualitative ER signal. No single metric captures it; the combination produces a defensible view.
One operational discipline that consistently distinguishes intentional culture work is the practice of running cultural retros at major organizational milestones. After a launch, a reorg, or a difficult quarter, the leadership team takes time to evaluate what the period did to the culture and what corrective work is needed. Most companies skip this step and absorb the cultural cost silently.
How does intentional culture survive an acquisition?
Acquisitions are the hardest moments for intentional culture. The acquiring company often imposes its operating model, and the acquired company often loses what made it distinctive. Companies that protect cultural integrity during acquisitions document the practices that matter, sign explicit cultural integration plans, and assign senior leaders to own the work. Companies that skip these steps lose the acquired culture within 18 months.
What role does AI play in intentional culture work?
AI tooling produces consistency at scale that intentional culture requires. Cases get handled the same way regardless of who is involved; trends get surfaced earlier; leaders have access to the data they need to make culture decisions with confidence. Companies that pair intentional culture commitments with AI-supported operations get faster signal than companies relying on manual processes.
The other operating discipline is to write down the cultural commitments in language specific enough to be falsifiable. Vague commitments cannot be evaluated; specific commitments can. Companies that document the difference between aspirational language and operating commitment build cultures that survive turnover and pressure, because the operating commitments produce real accountability.
The companies that ship intentional culture work most effectively also share a discipline around onboarding refreshes. Onboarding programs that get audited annually and updated when culture commitments change produce new hires who actually understand the cultural expectations.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Charlene’s argument is structural: positive culture is built through intentional decisions made consistently over multiple years. The teams that ship this well treat culture as a leadership accountability, instrument the system through engagement and ER signal, and protect the practice during disruption.
For People teams building this capability, the practical move is to document the cultural commitments, tie leadership accountability to cultural outcomes, and connect engagement and ER intelligence into a single decision-making view. The combination produces durable culture that survives leadership change and economic pressure.
See how AllVoices helps People teams turn workplace signals into action.
.avif)
.avif)
.avif)