Culture has become a common part of how we describe work today, yet many companies wrestle with what it really is. Culture gets described in all-hands meetings and displayed on walls, but its true form is built through daily behavior.

Every high-performing organization I’ve seen—Bonusly included—creates culture at the ground level, rather than by HR or a leadership team. Said differently, culture is built every day, by everyone.

That’s the case for team-led culture: it’s the only kind that actually scales, and the only kind that reliably drives performance.

Over the past year, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on what actually makes a workplace culture strong. At Bonusly, we talk about connection, collaboration, and continuous growth—the “three Cs” we think help people to work better together. But underneath those pillars, there’s something even more foundational (and conveniently, also starts with “C”): a shared consciousness of our mission. 

If culture is “how we do things around here,” our mission is why we do them at all. And when people internalize that “why,” deeply and clearly, culture becomes a way of operating that directly shapes performance. This connection between purpose and behavior is where team-led culture begins.

Values set the direction; norms make them real

One helpful framework I’ve seen in recent organizational research splits culture into two dimensions: values and norms. Values are the big ideas—your principles and intentions. Norms are the daily behaviors—the habits—through which those values are actually expressed. 

Strong cultures align the two. 

You can have inspiring values, but if the daily experience of employees doesn’t match them, you won’t see meaningful performance outcomes. On the other hand, when everyday norms reinforce your values, culture becomes a strategic asset. 

That distinction is important, because culture’s impact on performance isn’t theoretical to me. I’ve seen firsthand how it shows up in the signals that matter most. The true leading indicators of an organization’s long-term success aren’t revenue or quarterly efficiency (those are lagging outcomes). The real signals are human ones: how often people recognize one another, how connected they feel, whether teams continuously improve together, whether feedback is encouraging and honest, and whether individuals understand how their work contributes to the mission. 

These day-to-day norms help you see if your culture is headed in a healthy direction or drifting from what you intended.

Empowering the doers is how culture scales

A big part of why Bonusly exists is that I have always believed culture shouldn’t be owned by a select few. Historically, recognition was a tool for managers or HR—a top-down mechanism that left most employees in the role of recipients rather than active participants. 

We challenged that model by treating recognition as a shared practice. We made it a daily habit available to everyone and witnessed how it strengthens the relational fabric that makes teams effective. That ground-up, peer-led approach is core to our philosophy. 

When organizations adopt this mindset, you can feel the shift immediately. The culture stops existing in a slide deck and starts living in the interactions between people. Genuine recognition from someone who truly knows your work is more meaningful—and more powerful—than any top-down statement. These moments compound, too: they build trust while strengthening alignment, ultimately unlocking the full potential of individuals. When people bring out the best in each other, strong performance becomes the natural outcome. ‍

This is why team-led cultures outperform top-down ones: the people closest to the work are the ones shaping how it gets done.

Leadership’s role in strengthening culture

Supporting a ground-up culture doesn’t mean leaders step back. If anything, it requires more attentiveness. Leaders need to reinforce the habits that help their teams connect, collaborate, and continuously grow, even when short-term pressures make that difficult. And in my experience, the harder things get, the more important it becomes to stay committed to these habits. It also means focusing on the indicators that actually predict performance.

I’ve learned that building culture is an ongoing practice. It requires consistency, curiosity, and willingness to keep learning alongside the team. A big part of the job is removing the barriers that get in the way of people doing their best work. When leaders create space for the right habits to take hold, culture becomes something employees can shape together. 

Culture is what makes great work possible

There are many definitions of a strong company culture, but here’s mine: good culture is the environment that makes great work possible. When daily norms reflect an organization’s values, people bring their best to the work and to one another, and performance naturally follows.

What encourages me most is how often those norms show up in small, everyday moments: recognition between teammates, honest conversations that build alignment, and small improvements that raise the bar over time. These behaviors, practiced by the people closest to the work, are what truly move the organization forward.

An idea from Fred Kofman, the author of Conscious Business, captures this well: everyone on the team fundamentally has the same job—to help the company win, and to help each other win. When people understand how their daily behaviors ladder up to the mission, they start moving as one team. That alignment is the outcome of team-led culture, and the reason it drives results.