For Sarah Findlater, culture isn’t a side project or an HR initiative.
Our interviewee is:
Sarah Findlater
Culture as the ‘how’ behind the ‘what’
Cultural initiatives must be authentic, bespoke, and specific to the business’s context and strategy.
Culture is the ‘how’ that enables the strategic ‘what’. The best strategy in the world won’t land without the right people and culture behind it.
This is central to how M&S operates, mobilising a culture that aligns behaviours and leadership expectations around a shared understanding of how things get done, and importantly, how colleagues feel while doing them.
Culture is what enables a team to adapt to change, to innovate without fear, to hold each other accountable, and to keep raising the bar even when performance is strong. It’s not an abstract concept, it’s the operating system that underpins everything.
The right culture doesn’t just allow people to be their best. It makes them want to be.
This insight is echoed in our latest research with 82% of professionals agreeing that embedding cultural values into business strategy is essential to overall organisational success.
Leadership as culture’s loudest signal
At M&S, this has led to a deliberate focus on role modelling, with senior leaders held accountable for how they show up and how they lead. Whether it’s running a store to stay closer to customers and closer to colleagues or reinforcing the importance of clear, purposeful meetings; leadership has become a lever for cultural consistency and trust.
It also means leadership can’t be passive. Culture doesn’t thrive in silence, it needs reinforcement, storytelling, and conviction from the top. When leaders get it right, culture scales. When they don’t, it stalls.
Every leader is a culture carrier. That accountability is shared.
If culture is how things get done, then leadership is how that culture gets amplified, or eroded. Every decision, every interaction, every visible (and invisible) behaviour sends a signal about what matters.
Leaders cast big shadows. They are the most powerful force in either building belief or undermining it.
This means leadership isn’t just about setting direction or delivering results, it’s about modelling the values and behaviours that define a high-performance environment.
From words on a page to routines and rituals
You have to over-index. It’s not enough to say it, you have to be it. And you can’t compromise, because the moment you do, you lose credibility, and you accept that this isn’t really what you stand for.
There is the risk that such routines could be seen as compliance tools. But by making them meaningful and showing how they drive performance, businesses can achieve stronger buy-in.
The result is often more confident product innovation, better cross-functional collaboration, improved talent retention, and a visible link between cultural engagement and commercial performance.
We’ve retained our top talent. We’ve become bolder. And we’re seeing the impact on results.
Many companies claim to prioritise culture, but too often, they struggle to move beyond posters and PowerPoints. True culture is about action. It comes to life through repetition, and the daily, deliberate acts that shape how people work, connect, and make decisions.
Sarah refers to what they call the “routines and rituals” of a high-performance culture. These aren’t fluffy add-ons. They’re tangible, often non-negotiable practices like “meetings that matter” designed to anchor culture in action. For M&S, this includes the expectation that every employee spends seven days working in-store a year. These behaviours are built into onboarding, embedded in training, and reinforced at every level of the business. And they are specific to M&S.
Don’t build a generic culture. Build one that’s true to your business, your people, and your future.
When culture is authentic, consistent, and deeply embedded, it drives alignment and unlocks energy, focus, and belief across the organisation.
According to our survey, 63% of respondents where culture is a leadership priority report a significant positive impact on employee performance, compared to just 9% where culture is not prioritised.
Listening, learning, and leading change
Culture can’t be driven from behind a desk. It demands curiosity, humility, and action. Sarah demonstrates this through a commitment to listening, acting as the “mirror-holder” who reflects back the truth, not just the positive news.
This kind of listening goes far beyond engagement surveys or town halls. It involves creating genuine proximity to colleagues’ lived experiences and staying connected to the realities of the business.
For Sarah, this means stepping out of her CPO role and immersing herself in the business. For three months, she ran a store, working every role from customer assistant to store manager. It’s a bold move that sends a clear message: effective leadership is about staying in touch, staying open, and staying real.
But listening is only the start. What makes it count is what happens next, learning from what you hear and translating that into action. Whether it’s simplifying processes that slow colleagues down, refining cultural rituals, or addressing performance gaps, Sarah sees cultural leadership as a continuous feedback loop.
Leaders must be in touch with current workforce expectations to evolve culture meaningfully.
Leaders who listen well, lead well. They understand the system they’re shaping, and they use their influence to improve it.
This is where diversity and inclusion become non-negotiable. If we want to be close to customers and close to colleagues, we have to be representative, empathetic, and open to different perspectives.
Turn culture into impact
To move from intention to lasting impact, leaders need to treat culture as both a mindset and a mechanism.
Here are five practical considerations to help embed culture more deeply into your organisation:
01
Start with your leadership team
Challenge your leaders to role model the culture you want to see, not just in principle, but in practice. How they behave sets the tone for everyone else.
02
Move beyond values to rituals
Translate your values into tangible routines, the meetings you hold, how decisions are made, how people are recognised. Culture lives in these day-to-day moments.
03
Listen and act
Use surveys, feedback loops, and frontline conversations to understand how culture really feels. Then take action, visibly and consistently, based on what you hear.
04
Embed culture in performance conversations
Make cultural contribution part of how you assess and reward performance. What gets measured gets protected.
05
Treat culture as a strategic enabler
Stop seeing it as the ‘soft stuff’. Culture drives agility, retention, innovation, and performance. Give it the same rigour and priority as your commercial goals.
Culture is long-term, but not passive
Sarah is quick to acknowledge the work still to do. Culture change isn’t linear, or fast. But it can be made real through commitment, consistency, and clarity.
You’ve got to be uncompromising. Better to have fewer cultural expectations and live them wholeheartedly. The first time you compromise, you signal that they’re optional.
It’s a reminder that the best cultures aren’t adopted, they’re created. Not by consultants or campaigns, but by leaders who are willing to model what they expect, invest in what matters, and hold the mirror up, even when it’s hard.
