Are Your Culture Solutions at the Right Altitude?

The other day, I was with a client who had just completed a staff survey. Before my own session, I listened in as they worked through possible solutions to some long-standing engagement and culture challenges.

The conversation was familiar. Well-meaning, thoughtful… and yet, as I listened, something struck me. The solutions were pitched at a very particular “altitude”: everything was at the business unit level.

That’s not wrong. But it’s incomplete.

Culture change isn’t only about systems, structures, or high-level commitments. Change is an emotional game. If people don’t feel connected to the solution — if they don’t have some skin in the game — then nothing sticks.

This idea of “altitudes of leadership” is one I first encountered through Professor Ian Woodward at INSEAD, and it has proven a powerful lens for helping me think about many issues.  I’ve adapted it a little (as you do) but here’s how it might apply to change.

Each altitude represents a different vantage point, with distinct levers for influence. The higher the altitude, the broader and more strategic the view. The lower the altitude, the more immediate, actionable and personal the change.

• 5 feet — Individual Focus: Personal choices, behaviours, and daily interactions. Descriptors: Concrete, visible, owned by me. The space of habits, micro-behaviours, and accountability. Examples: How I give feedback, whether I acknowledge others, how I respond under pressure, how I go about doing my role.
• 50 feet — Team Focus: Immediate team rituals, norms, and ways of working. Descriptors: Relational, social, shaping belonging. Where culture is most tangibly experienced. Examples: How we run our meetings, the tone we set for collaboration, how we handle conflict, how we learn and adapt and decide.
• 500 feet — Department Focus: Shared practices across a function or business unit. Descriptors: Structural, process-oriented, enabling or constraining teams. Examples: Departmental communication rhythms, cross-team workflow design, leadership cascades, policy implementation.
• 5,000 feet — Organisation Focus: Enterprise-wide systems, structures, and strategy. Descriptors: Strategic, symbolic, defining the identity of the whole. Examples: Company-wide decisions, frameworks, operating models, policy design.
• 50,000 feet — Environment Focus: The external context — industry, market, community, society. Descriptors: Contextual, reputational, shaping how the organisation shows up in the world. Examples: Environmental, Social and Governance commitments (ESG), regulatory positioning, community impact, customer and consumer focused decision making.

If all your solutions live at 5,000 feet, they may be important, but they risk feeling abstract and distant. Staff nod politely and wait to see what it means for them. They do this even at 500 feet.

If all your solutions live at 5 feet, they may be tangible, but without higher-altitude reinforcement they fizzle out or lack alignment.

The key is layering. For every solution, leaders should ask:

• At what altitude is this pitched?
• What would it look like one or even two levels down — closer to the lived experience?
• What air cover is needed one or two levels up — to sustain momentum?

That’s how people become ready, willing, and able to engage with change.

Let’s take a familiar scenario: an organisation decides to embrace flexible working. Here’s how the same change can be expressed at each altitude.

• 50,000 feet — Environment “We are responding to global shifts in work patterns and aligning with our ESG commitments to wellbeing and sustainable ways of working. To attract certain talent we need to stay an attractive work environment, while also ensuring we give consumers confidence we’re there for them.”
• 5,000 feet — Organisation “We have created a flexible working policy that formalises hybrid and remote options, but gives operational control to leaders.”
• 500 feet — Department “Our department will redesign workflows to ensure business coverage while supporting flexibility — shared calendars, role rotation, and clarity of responsibilities.”
• 50 feet — Team “Our team will agree on anchor days in the office (different teams may have different needs at different times), establish new ground rules for achieving our purpose, and design rituals to maintain connection.”
• 5 feet — Individual “I will keep my calendar transparent, proactively check in with colleagues, and take personal responsibility for communication and output.”

Notice how altitude shapes both the language and the ownership. At 50,000 feet the emphasis is external and reputational; at 5 feet it’s personal and behavioural. Without the translation down the chain, the organisational policy remains a concept rather than a commitment.

Next time you’re in a room designing solutions to engagement or culture issues, try this simple test:

• At what altitude are we working?
• What would this look like one or two levels down?
• What’s the air cover we need one or two levels up?

Because in the end, change is won and lost not in the sky, but on the ground.