Position · Diagnose

The cultural web

Reads the stories, rituals and power structures that actually kill strategies — the layer neither an organisation chart nor a change plan reaches.

Stage

01 Diagnose

Works at

Corporate, Business

Maturity

Established SME → Large organisation

Time

Half a day, run as a live workshop

What it is

Gerry Johnson's framework for reading an organisation's culture through six interlocking elements that together produce the paradigm — the assumptions nobody states because nobody has ever had to. Run as a live workshop, because a culture read on paper by an outsider misses what a room says about itself when asked the right six questions.

Stories: What people tell newcomers about the organisation's past — its heroes, its villains, its defining moments. What gets told, and what gets left out, both say something.
Rituals and routines: What is done that nobody could actually justify from first principles, and what would cause genuine discomfort if stopped. The routine defended most fiercely is usually revealing.
Symbols: Logos, offices, titles, cars, who sits where — the visible signals of what and who the organisation actually values, as opposed to what its values statement says.
Power structures: Who really has influence, as distinct from who holds formal authority on the organisation chart. The two frequently diverge and the divergence is where change gets quietly blocked.
Organisational structure: Formal and informal reporting lines, and how much either actually determines what happens day to day.
Control systems: What gets measured, rewarded and punished — often the single strongest determinant of behaviour, and frequently misaligned with what leadership says it wants.
The paradigm: The set of taken-for-granted assumptions the other six elements together produce — what this organisation believes about itself and its world without ever having to say so.
Testing a change against it: Once the paradigm is stated, a proposed strategic change can be tested against it directly: what would this culture resist, and why, before the resistance shows up as delay.

The mistake people makeRunning the exercise with only senior leadership in the room, which produces the culture leadership believes exists rather than the one the organisation actually operates inside.

What it’s forA strategy keeps failing to land despite the logic being sound, and the cause is suspected to be cultural rather than structural.

What it’s not forThe organisation is small enough, or new enough, that culture has not yet calcified into anything the exercise would find — the questions land better once there is real organisational history to read.

How you run it

Convene a genuine cross-section, not just leadershipThe culture leadership believes exists and the one the organisation actually runs on are frequently different rooms.
Work through the six elements in turnStories, rituals and routines, symbols, power structures, organisational structure, control systems. Push for specific, real examples over generalities.
Name what each element reveals rather than what it should sayThe routine nobody could justify, the symbol that contradicts the stated values, the person with power the org chart does not show.
Draw the paradigm out in the room's own wordsThe assumptions the six elements together produce. Written by the room, not handed to it — a paradigm the room did not generate is one it will not recognise.
Test the proposed change against the paradigm directlyWhat would this culture resist, and why. Naming it before the resistance appears is the entire value of running this before, not after, a change lands.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

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🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

A cross-section of the organisation in the room, not just senior leadership
Willingness to hear things about the culture leadership would rather not
A specific strategic change to test the culture against

You’ll end up with

The six elements of the cultural web, populated with real, specific examples from this organisation
The paradigm — the taken-for-granted assumptions — stated in the room's own words
A named list of what the culture would resist about the proposed change, and why

Runs well with

AI risk classification and governance Analysis plan Business Model Canvas Comparable company benchmark