Turning Corporate Culture into a Competitive Advantage:

5 Examples

3. Culture Amp: Giving Employees an Active Role in Decision-Making‍

Culture Amp, an Australian company founded in 2009, specializes in tools for analyzing employee engagement and corporate culture. Its positioning is clear: help organizations listen to their employees to make better decisions. But this mission starts internally, Culture Amp first applies its own principles to itself.

A Continuous Participatory Process

At Culture Amp, decision-making follows a methodological framework that combines data, inclusion, and transparency. This includes:

• Regular and targeted surveys with a high response rate
• Cross-analysis of quantitative data and qualitative feedback
• Mixed working groups to formulate recommendations
• Collective validation of decisions and public reporting of choices
  

The Transformed Role of Managers

At Culture Amp, the manager is not a controller but a facilitator of dialogue. They guide discussions, lead feedback workshops, bring ideas forward, and ensure that implementation stays true to the jointly made decisions.

Specific training, a library of collaborative tools, and HR team support help managers fulfill this demanding but powerful role.

Strategic Impacts

• A very high level of belonging
• A sustainably maintained reduction in turnover
• Rapid responsiveness, even during crises (e.g., Covid)
• An employer brand image aligned with employees' lived experience

Culture Amp proves that a participative culture is not synonymous with slowness or complexity. On the contrary, by making decisions collectively, it makes them more accepted, more robust, and more sustainable. The key lies in the method, transparency, and consistency in execution.

4. Zappos: Happiness as a Business Strategy

Zappos is known for two things: its shoes and its culture. 

Tony Hsieh, visionary CEO, decided early on to place happiness at the heart of performance. His belief was simple yet ambitious: a happy company is a profitable company. And to achieve that, every employee must be able to evolve in an environment that respects their personality, values their voice, and nurtures joy at work.

What This Means in Practice

At Zappos, everything starts with values. The company has defined 10 core values, including: “Create fun and a little weirdness,” “Do more with less,” and “Build a family spirit.” These values are not only widely known, but actively used in recruitment, evaluation, promotion, and career management.

The recruitment process is emblematic: after two weeks of onboarding, new hires receive a $2,000 offer to leave the company if they feel the culture isn’t right for them. This approach ensures voluntary alignment with the culture. Those who stay do so with conviction.

Management at Zappos encourages freedom: employees are invited to take initiative, personalize their interactions with customers, and participate in internal projects. The customer service team, widely praised, works without scripts or time limits: the goal is to create real human connections, not to maximize artificial KPIs.

What Are the Results for Zappos’ Culture?

Zappos has become a textbook case. Its culture attracts thousands of unsolicited applications each year. Its retention rate is exceptional for the retail sector. And its customer satisfaction ranks among the highest in the market.

The company also experimented with innovative governance models such as holacracy, featuring roles instead of job titles, maximum autonomy, and self-organizing teams. This model showed its limits, but it reinforced Zappos’ pioneering identity in terms of culture.

Key Takeaways: The Zappos Culture

Zappos shows that culture is not optional, it’s a strategic choice. Creating a unique employee experience allows for an unforgettable customer experience. But this requires consistency, authenticity, and a constant effort to maintain that momentum over time.

5. W.L. Gore & Associates: Driving Innovation Through a Boss-Free Organization

The “Lattice” Model: An Alternative to Hierarchy

W.L. Gore & Associates, an American company founded in 1958 and globally known for its innovative materials such as Gore-Tex, questioned traditional hierarchical principles from the very beginning. Its founder, Bill Gore, believed that pyramid structures stifled creativity and suppressed individual potential. So he devised a radically different model: the lattice (or network) structure.

In this structure, there are no traditional managers. Employees, referred to as “associates,” work without rigid titles or formal chains of command. Decision-making power is distributed, and leadership naturally emerges based on competence, legitimacy, and the ability to inspire others.

The Founding Principles of Their Culture

The lattice structure is built on several fundamental pillars:

• Direct communication: any associate can talk to anyone in the organization, without intermediaries.
• Personal commitment: individuals voluntarily engage in projects that motivate them.
• Natural leadership: leaders are not appointed; they are spontaneously followed by others based on the value they bring.
• Horizontal collaboration: teams form organically around opportunities and dissolve once the mission is accomplished.
  

How Does This Work in Practice?

At W.L. Gore, there are no fixed job descriptions. An associate may work on several projects in parallel, join multidisciplinary groups, or propose an idea that becomes a flagship product. Decision-making is decentralized but structured around the concept of “commitment”: a clear, explicit promise made in front of peers.

New hires are supported to understand the system’s implicit rules. A sponsor helps them navigate this culture of autonomy, identify the right contacts, and make their first commitments.

Impacts on Innovation and Agility

• Continuous innovation: thanks to this structural freedom, many ground-breaking ideas have emerged from the field, such as medical cables, breathable waterproof fabrics, and aerospace components.
• High empowerment: each employee is the driver of their own journey and career choices.
• Organizational agility: W.L. Gore can quickly reconfigure itself based on market priorities without being bogged down by bureaucratic inertia.
  

What Are the Model’s Limitations?

This model is not without constraints. It requires strong professional maturity, excellent self-organization skills, and strong cohesion around shared values. Without these, it can lead to confusion, slow decision-making, or disengagement. W.L. Gore therefore invests heavily in maintaining cultural unity through communication, training, and the exemplary behavior of informal leaders.

A Source of Inspiration for Others

The lattice structure has inspired other contemporary organizational models, such as holacracy (Zappos), Spotify’s squads and tribes, and “liberated companies.”

All aim to replicate, in their own way, Gore’s promise: to unleash collective intelligence on a large scale without sacrificing individual creativity. W.L. Gore reminds us that innovation doesn’t rely solely on technology, but on how people collaborate and make decisions together.

Conclusion: What These Corporate Culture Models Teach Us

These companies show that culture is not just a veneer. It is a living architecture that shapes behaviors, decisions, and engagement.

Each one chose its own model: continuous feedback, respectful communication, collective involvement, happiness at work, or extreme autonomy. But all have invested time, energy, and leadership to align culture and strategy.

You don’t need to copy these models. But you can (and should) draw inspiration from them to create your own strong, embodied, and engaging culture.