Culture is no longer a backdrop but is now a core driver of performance, resilience and talent retention, say HR thinkers. The argument will be front and centre at the Culture Pioneers Leadership Forum in London on 16 October, where senior HR leaders and executives will debate how leadership must evolve in an age of disruption.
The forum, organised in partnership with The TCM Group and London HR Connection, arrives at a time when organisations face competing pressures: economic constraints, rapid adoption of AI and workforce demands for authenticity, meaning and flexibility. The event’s stated aim is to help leaders rethink culture as inseparable from strategy, not an afterthought or communications exercise.
Speakers include CEOs, executive HR directors and culture specialists such as Sanjay Lobo (OnHand), David Liddle (The TCM Group), Isabelle Perrett (AQA), Veronica Anthony (Avante Care) and others. A roundtable led by London HR Connection will also bring in voices from Dentsu International, Quintessential Brands and Pearson to share how they steer culture in real time.
When culture and strategy must align
For years, many organisations treated culture as a “soft” dimension — values posters on walls, vision statements, mission pledges. That’s changing. Businesses are increasingly recognising that misaligned culture can drag performance, erode morale and drive turnover. Research backs that: a strong organisational culture is correlated with better individual performance, innovation and alignment around mission.
Professional services firm Aon, for example, finds that companies whose cultures align tightly with their business objectives tend to outperform their peers.
Harvard and other management scholars have long argued that culture acts as “normative glue”, shaping behaviour beyond what rules or incentives alone can achieve.
Still, the trick isn’t just touting values but also embedding them into daily systems, structures and decision making. As Harvard Business Review recently observed: many leaders launch values campaigns, wellbeing programmes or mission statements, yet culture often falters because underlying systems (processes, incentives, governance) are not aligned.
The conference’s emphasis on culture and leadership reflects that trend: leadership cannot delegate culture to HR or comms; it must live it.
The leadership challenge: behaviour, voice and hybrid settings
One key challenge for leaders is modelling behaviour. As organisations grow, the visible conduct of senior leaders — how they behave in ambiguity, during failure, in decisions — becomes a powerful signal of culture. Studies show that leadership behaviour and organizational culture correlate strongly with job satisfaction and commitment.
In hybrid and remote models, that challenge intensifies. Deloitte notes that 61% of US HR leaders say culture is more important in hybrid than in fully in-office settings; at the same time, over a third report that remote work weakens their culture.
This means culture must be engineered, not assumed, through rituals, connection practices, microcultures and shared norms that transcend location.
Culture also interacts with identity, diversity and inclusion. As one speaker at the forum, Ritika Wadhwa, is likely to emphasise, cultural intelligence becomes a competitive edge in multi-national or diverse organisations. Leaders who understand and adapt to cultural differences can better engage teams, foster psychological safety and avoid “one-size-fits-all” approaches.
What HR leaders should watch
The forum will explore:
Diagnostics over slogans: Organisations must move beyond surveys and values walls to diagnostic tools — culture assessments, feedback systems that detect misalignment, analytics to flag cultural stress spots.
Systems, not just signals: To make culture stick, HR must ensure that processes (hiring, reward, promotion, performance management) do not contradict espoused values.
Line manager investment: Middle management is where culture is lived daily. Training, coaching and accountability for managers is critical, as the best strategy fails if frontline leaders don’t embody it.
Sustained leadership commitment: Culture change is not a campaign but a continuous effort. Organisations that try bursts of pulses around “culture week” often slip back.
Peer exchange & co-creation: Forums like Culture Pioneers offer HR leaders a chance to learn from peers facing the same tension points. The value comes not just from speakers but from shared practice.
The forum also hosts the 2025 Culture Pioneers Awards, recognising organisations where culture is not just a slogan but a measurable advantage. For more information and tickets, visit Culture Pioneers.
