What Sits at the Centre of Every Culture Model? Behaviour.

Have you ever absorbed content for days or even weeks, and then one small comment, barely emphasised, hits you so precisely that it shifts your entire perspective? Almost like it finds the one open space in your mind and settles there.

That happened for me this month in Simon Bowen’s 20 Minute Teaching.

We are working with Simon at the moment to visualise the “magic and the genius” of PCM, and these monthly open sessions have become something I genuinely look forward to. They are brief, and there is always something in them that stays with me long after the session ends. This one definitely did.

Simon was introducing his Culture Model he has been using with organisations for years. He explained the structure, the layers, the way behaviour expands outward from the centre. And then, right in the middle of it, he made a comment that almost slipped by. It did not sound like the main point. It sounded more like the kind of observation that is so familiar to him that he hardly thinks about it anymore.

He said organisations should not list values like integrity, trust or respect in their value statements. Not because these things are unimportant, but because they are not really values.

They are baseline expectations. Basic human rights.

I nodded at first. It made complete sense. Of course these things should be a given. Of course every person has the right to be treated with honesty and goodwill. But then something about it caught. It was as if the simplicity of the statement opened a door to a bigger realisation.

In PCM terms, what he said translates into something I had never heard phrased so clearly.

OK-OK behaviour is not some enlightened destination. It is the minimum standard. The starting point. The ground from which we build everything else.

OK-OK behaviour means I am grounded in myself and I can see you clearly too.

It is the moment where I am not fighting myself and I am not fighting you.

I am able to stay steady, respectful and curious, and I can give you the same dignity I expect for myself.

And that realisation made me pause. We often talk about OK OK as if it represents psychological sophistication, emotional maturity or a particularly developed leadership mindset. But if it is a basic human right, then treating it as advanced behaviour is backwards. It means many organisations are struggling with the fundamentals before they even reach the things they claim to value.

Which leads to a difficult question. How many leaders can genuinely sustain OK-OK behaviour across different personalities, pressures and situations? How many people can hold it consistently, regardless of whether the environment is easy or challenging?

Holding that equilibrium is demanding. It asks for deep self-awareness and strong self-regulation. Leaders need to know their own triggers, what pulls them off centre, what restores them and what drains them. They need to recognise early signs that they are about to slide into distress. They need ways to intervene with themselves before they derail the conversation or the environment.

And there is another layer. We need to understand others with the same level of nuance. We need to read the signals they send, interpret their behaviour accurately, and understand what sits underneath it. We need to meet people where they are, not where we wish they were. That, for me, is the mastery that PCM develops. It gives people the ability to navigate both their inner world and the relational world around them.

All of this sits in the centre of Simon’s model. These are the foundations. We are still in the calm part of the sea.

Because it is easy to look balanced when everything is smooth. Most of us can find a version of OK-OK when the environment is stable. But life does not stay stable for long. Something always shifts. A leader leaves. A project fails. A conflict emerges. Pressure accumulates. That is when you see who actually knows how to steer. We have watched teams move through these moments. Sometimes they pull together, but more often the opposite happens. People drift or retreat or protect their space. Small cracks in behaviour widen quickly.

This is the moment Simon describes as the test of character. It is hard to argue with it.

And the same is true in the green zone. Harmony and opportunity sound positive, but they can be their own form of test. When things are going well, do people stay generous and collaborative, or do hidden agendas quietly emerge? Do leaders stay attentive to the subtle dynamics of the team, or do they assume that smooth sailing requires no effort?

Which brings me back to the thought I could not shake. How should leaders know how to influence collective behaviour when we rarely teach them how humans actually work?

A value statement will not get you there. A presentation will not get you there. A motivational slogan will not get you there. Company culture does not shift because we describe what it should be. It shifts because people understand themselves, understand others, and pay attention to the signals that matter.

Behaviour changes when people understand their human operating system. What motivates them. How their mind and body react under stress. What their early warning signs look like. How to interpret the behaviour of others. How to stay grounded while connecting with someone who is wired very differently.

This is why PCM sits so naturally at the heart of the model for me.

PCM is the only tool I have worked with that brings all of this together in a way that is coherent, practical and immediately usable. Personality tools give you a snapshot. Emotional intelligence adds something useful but cannot explain psychological needs or distress sequences. PCM provides a complete system. It teaches us how we are wired and how others are wired. It shows us how to connect with people in a way that works for them. It helps us navigate conflict within ourselves and with others. And it gives us a path back to OK-OK, which is where all meaningful communication begins.

If your baseline behaviours are not intentional, then your values stay theoretical. And if leaders do not understand themselves and others at a human systems level, the collective behaviour of the organisation is left to chance. Calm seas will give the illusion of strength. Rough seas will reveal what was never built strongly enough.

That is why Simon’s throwaway comment stayed with me. It was simple, but it so fundamental. It shone a light on a gap we rarely name out loud. And it pointed directly to the missing bridge leaders are expected to cross without any real guidance.

PCM is that bridge.

It turns the culture model from an idea into something you can put into practice every day.

To build this bridge inside your organisation and equip your leaders with the capability PCM provides, reach out to us today.