Bottling Team Culture: Keeping Identity Alive Through Change

Every team has a culture. They are the way things get done, the unspoken rules, the rituals that make people feel part of something bigger. But too often culture lives only in people’s heads. It exists in stories, habits, and routines that aren’t captured anywhere.

This implicit culture of “if you know, you know”, works when the team is stable. But what happens when the group changes? When people leave, new members join, or pressure hits? Unwritten culture is fragile. It can erode, fragment, or disappear altogether. The is the challenge of culture in motion.

If culture isn’t bottled, it can’t be shared, reinforced, or sustained. Strong teams find ways to capture the essence of who they are so identity survives turnover, growth, and disruption.

The State of Play

Research and practice both underline the importance of making culture tangible and explicit:

• Cultural neglect is costly. 26% of corporate start-up failures are linked to cultural issues.
• Cultural disconnect is real. While 72% of senior leaders agreed that their culture leads to successful change initiatives, only 46% of frontline employees felt it is important.
• Ritualise to actualise: Writing about the All Blacks, James Kerr emphasises making culture real through daily rituals. The Māori concept of Whakapapa — honouring those who came before and inspiring those who come after — embodies this. It’s a powerful example of bottling identity so it endures.

The lesson is clear: culture can’t be left to memory or chance. It must be ritualised, shared, and reinforced.

The Mindflick

Culture is a living playbook. It is a set of rituals, language, and behaviours that teams can return to under pressure. Bottling it doesn’t mean reducing culture to slogans; it means making the intangible tangible so it can be shared, reinforced, and passed on.

Three practical steps:

1. Name it. Identify the behaviours and rituals that define your team at its best. What do you do when you’re performing well? How do you celebrate? How do you speak to one another?
2. Capture it. Write it down, ritualise it, and use stories to keep it alive. As Kerr reminds us, rituals aren’t decoration, but how culture becomes actual.
3. Live it. Bottle the culture not as a static artefact, but as a daily practice. Embed it in onboarding, meetings, and recognition moments so it breathes every day.

Culture survives when it’s bottled. By capturing and ritualising the language, stories, and behaviours that make the team who they are, you give people a compass to follow — one that keeps identity alive even when everything else is moving.