The Culture Stack
What pancakes can teach us about building cultures that work
Culture isn’t just what you see at the top of the stack.
It’s easy to mistake the perks, posters or all-hands speeches for culture. They’re visible, they’re sweet, and they’re often the first thing people notice. Just like you notice the berries or maple syrup poured on top of a pancake stack.
Ask anyone who's led cultural work from the inside, and we know: real shifts require us to go deeper.
When I talk about the Culture Stack, I’m inviting leaders to look below the surface. Not just at the top layer, but through the layers that sit underneath.
Culture is cumulative. Built up over time. Made up of practices, mindsets, rituals, and legacy layers that don’t always stack neatly. Some are thick and overcooked. Others are too thin, fragile or underdone. And, just like my homemade pancakes, some need replacing altogether.
I’ve used the culture pancake analogy for years - in rooms with CEOs and executive teams, or on stage with frontline leaders. It always lands. Why? because it’s so real, they can almost taste it.
They’ve seen the new program poured on top of a culture that wasn’t ready to absorb it.
They’ve felt the stickiness of legacy systems sitting under aspirational messaging.
They’ve noticed when the berries got refreshed but the base stack remained the same.
In tech, we talk about the stack: a mix of backend systems, legacy code, APIs, and shiny new interfaces that sit on top. You can’t just add something sleek and expect the whole system to function differently.
Culture works the same way.
The Culture Stack includes:
Legacy layers - patterns, behaviours, assumptions, and beliefs that may no longer serve your work or direction
Active ingredients - rituals, rhythms, decisions, and stories that shape the lived experience of culture, everyday
Symbolic toppings - the visible signs, benefits, perks and messages that communicate what matters (or don’t)
Emerging signals - experiments, shifts, and new habits forming in small teams that hint at what’s possible
When we treat culture as a surface-level experience, we’re forever topping up the maple syrup. The problem is, it doesn’t soak through. You end up needing more of it every year just to create the same feeling.
You have to cut to the heart of the culture stack - the full stack.
Effective culture work pays attention to the full stack. We shift culture when we honour our heritage (as we hang it in the historical archives), we redesign or remove what hinders, and deliberately layer in what helps.
Some leaders discover they’re working with a short stack - perhaps an homogeneous or early-stage culture, not yet embedded.
Others realise they’ve inherited a dry stack - where trust, connection or purpose haven’t soaked through.
Some see they’re leading on burnt layers - remnants of past restructures, missed promises, or outdated leadership styles. More than crumbs, this is like corporate scar tissue.
What matters is knowing your stack.
Then choosing how you work with it. Everyday.
I sometimes gift Cultureshift clients a small bottle of maple syrup as a gentle reminder not to be tempted to give in to the urge to add more toppings. A symbol that culture work starts deeper than what we pour on top. We laugh about it at the time, but months later, I see it still sitting on a desk. A nudge to focus on what matters most.
The Bottom Line
In culture work, the magic is not in more maple syrup.
It’s in building a culture stack that feeds your strategy. A culture that works for you, not against you.
That’s how you create a culture that doesn’t just look good, but holds its shape.
Because culture is the base.
Not the topping.
Your Shift
What shape is your culture stack? What are the dry or burnt layers that need to be tackled? What is your maple syrup? Where might you be adding toppings instead of cutting to the heart of the stack? I’d love to hear about your culture stack.