“If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.”

– TONY HSIEH

Team building: Define your team’s culture with Culture Canvas

This workshop is based on the Culture Design Canvas framework developed by Fearless Culture and Gustavo Razzetti, a globally recognized tool for visualizing, understanding, and shaping organizational culture. This workshop guides teams through a structured exploration of their culture—clarifying shared purpose, values, behaviors, and enablers while identifying cultural blockers that hold teams back.

The Culture Canvas serves as both a diagnostic and a design tool, allowing teams to map their current culture and co-create the culture they aspire to, aligning it with organizational goals and strategic priorities.

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Benefits & measurable improvements

• Clarify Team Culture: Gain a shared understanding of the team’s current cultural strengths, norms, and challenges.
• Define and Align on Values and Behaviors: Collaboratively establish the values and behaviors that drive success within your team.
• Improve Engagement and Cohesion: A clear cultural framework fosters a stronger sense of belonging and purpose.
• Identify Cultural Blockers: Surface and address unspoken issues or habits that hinder performance.
• Measurable Outcomes:
  • Increased alignment between individual and team values, as evidenced in post-session feedback.
  • Clear documentation of agreed-upon behaviors, norms, and rituals for accountability.
  • Improved team satisfaction and collaboration as tracked through engagement surveys.

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Science and Foundations

The Culture Design Canvas, created by Gustavo Razzetti and Fearless Culture, is grounded in well-established research in organizational culture, behavioral science, and systems thinking. It provides a structured, visual framework to help teams analyze, design, and align their culture with business goals.

• Rooted in organizational culture research: Builds on foundational work by Edgar Schein on culture as a system of shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that drive performance.
• Behavioral science principles: Incorporates evidence on how rituals, norms, and behaviors influence team engagement and psychological safety (Amy Edmondson).
• Systems thinking approach: Emphasizes how interconnected elements of culture—values, enablers, blockers, and rituals—work together to shape how teams function.
• Applied globally: The Culture Design Canvas has been used by organizations across industries to create alignment between leadership, teams, and strategy, fostering measurable improvements in engagement and performance.
• Practical and evidence-informed: Its emphasis on co-creation aligns with research on participatory change management, which shows higher adoption and sustainability of cultural shifts when teams are directly involved.

This combination of research-backed principles and practical application makes the Culture Canvas a powerful tool for leaders and teams to intentionally shape culture as a driver of organizational success.

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Who it’s for

• Leadership teams seeking to redefine or strengthen their team culture.
• Cross-functional teams undergoing change, restructuring, or growth.
• Departments or team leads who want to clarify or define their internal culture or align it with the organization’s values.
• Organizations aiming to intentionally align culture with strategic business goals.

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Format

• Preparation: Half-day of preparation to gather insights and tailor the session to your team’s context.
• Workshop Duration: 2–3 hours, including (as an example):
  • Introduction to Culture Canvas (20 min): Overview of the framework and its relevance.
  • Culture Mapping (60 min): Mapping current cultural elements and identifying gaps.
  • Designing Desired Culture (60 min): Co-creating cultural norms, rituals, and behaviors to align with team and organizational goals.
  • Action Planning (30 min): Building a roadmap to embed and sustain cultural shifts.
• Delivery: Available in-person or online (interactive virtual whiteboards used for remote teams).
• Language: English or French.

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