The Right Culture for the Right Team

Admin Account
Aug 13
3 min read

Why One-Size-Fits-All Cultures Fail

Introduction

If you’ve ever worked across multiple teams, you’ll know this already: what works in one team can fall flat in another. Culture isn’t a universal template — it’s contextual. What helps one group thrive might completely derail another.

This second article in the series digs into that idea — that different teams need different cultures depending on their purpose, personality, and pressure. If culture is the operating system of a team, then choosing the right one is key to performance.

Fit, Not Fashion

Let’s be clear: we’re not judging cultures as good or bad. We’re talking about fit for purpose.

You can’t take a high-autonomy, creative culture and expect it to work in a heavily regulated compliance team. Nor can you drop a rigid, hierarchical culture into a team that needs to move fast and innovate.

The question isn’t “Is this a good culture?” — it’s “Is this the right culture for what we’re trying to do?”

“There is no ‘best’ culture — only the one that best fits your purpose.”

– Adapted from Cameron & Quinn’s Competing Values Framework

Bringing Back the Quasi-Teams

Let’s revisit the metaphors from Part 1 — sporting teams, families, and friendship groups — and explore where each culture works best.

🏉 The Sporting Team

Culture of grit, structure, and shared goals

Perfect for:

Sales teams
Customer support operations
Project delivery teams under pressure

These cultures thrive on discipline, role clarity, and doing the hard work. There’s often strong camaraderie and accountability, with a focus on performance and execution.

Watch out for: burnout, over-competitiveness, and underplaying reflection or flexibility.

🏡 The Family

Culture of loyalty, support, and safety

Perfect for:

Customer service
Community-focused teams
Longstanding, tight-knit teams

Family-like cultures give people a sense of belonging. They’re great for wellbeing and trust — especially through change or stress.

Watch out for: groupthink, passive conflict avoidance, and resistance to necessary change.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 The Friendship Group

Culture of trust, flexibility, and informal leadership

Perfect for:

Creative or design teams
Startups
Cross-functional innovation teams

These teams thrive on trust, energy, and shared curiosity. There’s room for different voices and rapid experimentation.

Watch out for: unclear boundaries, slow decision-making, or exclusive cliques forming.

When Culture Doesn’t Fit

You’ll feel it when it happens:

A highly structured leader steps into a casual, improvisational team and accidentally crushes morale.
A growing team hangs onto a “we’re all mates” culture too long and can’t hold people accountable.
A strategy shift calls for faster execution, but the culture still prizes consensus and perfection.

In every case, misaligned culture doesn’t just create frustration — it blocks outcomes.

“You can’t copy culture — you have to build the one that works for your team.”

– Unknown

How to Choose the Right Culture

Start by asking:

What are we here to do? (Execute? Innovate? Scale? Stabilise?)
What does success demand right now? (Speed? Accuracy? Empathy?)
What kind of environment will help our people thrive doing that work?

Then shape the culture to suit that reality, not to copy someone else’s vibe.

Wrapping Up

Culture isn’t a personality test. It’s a strategic tool. Get the culture wrong, and even good people will struggle. Get it right, and the team becomes more than the sum of its parts.

In Part 3, we’ll look at how to shape culture — from the front of the room or from your desk in the back corner — because everyone has a role to play in how a team feels and functions.

Next up: “Shaping Culture from the Inside — Whether You’re the Coach or Just Playing on the Field”