Subcultures by Design: Unlocking Hidden Strengths in PE Portfolios

“Subcultures don’t signal misalignment, they reveal where strength and nuance already exist. Culture work should meet them there.”

In private equity, culture is being recognised as a value lever, a driver of performance, resilience, and growth. But there’s always a catch: most companies don’t have one culture, they have many subcultures.

Subcultures exist around teams, geographies, functions, leadership styles, even tenure. And this isn’t just anecdotal. Research like Dunbar’s Number tells us that humans naturally build close-knit groups of about 150 people or fewer – the upper limit for maintaining stable social relationships. It’s no surprise that in scaling or complex organisations, smaller cultural “pockets” naturally form.

The opportunity isn’t to flatten these out. It’s to design for them intentionally and in alignment with the broader ambition and vision of the business.

Culture Is Local and Lived, not Uniform and Espoused

Culture is not one-size-fits-all, especially in global and matrix organisations. Erin Meyer’s work in The Culture Map shows just how much variance there is in how people give feedback, make decisions, and build trust.

In some cultures, direct communication is the norm; in others, nuance and softeners are expected. In some, decisions are consensus-based; in others, they’re driven from the top. A leadership style that’s motivating in one market can be seen as disengaged or overbearing in another.

A successful culture strategy doesn’t fight this, it designs for it. It builds “freedom within the framework”: a shared vision and values brought to life through rituals and routines that might differ by team or subculture.

A common misstep is focusing solely on the values on the wall, not how they’re actually experienced. The values must be contextualised, not just translated linguistically, but interpreted through local realities and ways of working. What are the values-based habits that work for an engineering team that might differ for a legal or sales team?

Strengths-Led, Not Top-Down

Designing subcultures by starting with strengths flips the traditional model. Instead of cascading values top-down, we build culture from the bottom-up with a clear strategic north star and the freedom for teams to shape how they get there.

Every team has a unique mix of strengths, and culture strategy that ignores this risks imposing behaviours that don’t fit or, worse, dampening the very traits that make high-performing teams effective.

Words like “integrity,” “teamwork,” or “authenticity” may sound appealing, but if they’re interpreted differently across teams (or not reinforced at all), they lose power. They’re also often too generic to be real differentiators.

The real work is in closing the gap between espoused values and lived experience. That takes clarity, dialogue, and most of all, intentional design.

Future-Focused, Past-Informed

Cultural strategies need to deliver future performance, but that doesn’t mean ignoring the past. The strongest approaches do three things:

• Recognise the legacy – how people have worked, succeeded, and made decisions up until now
• Map the current state – surfacing both the formal and informal norms across subcultures
• Design forward – aligning with the evolving needs of the business and its people

And crucially, they acknowledge the scale and structure of the organisation. Dunbar’s Number reminds us that true cultural cohesion becomes exponentially harder as groups grow. That’s why clarity, localisation, and leadership alignment matter more than ever.

Subcultures as a Competitive Advantage

In a PE context, this matters deeply. A subculture aligned to customer success in one business unit may need to look different than one driving R&D in another. A change-ready sales culture in a high-growth market will differ from a steady-state operations team managing compliance.

When subcultures are designed, not just tolerated, they become an active source of differentiation.

They build trust faster. They make change stickier. They create performance environments that fit real people, doing real work.

Culture isn’t just “the way we do things around here.” It’s the system of shared meanings that shape decisions, behaviours, and outcomes.

Start With Your Playbook

Much like the thousands of iterations in a software provider, culture change also has thousands of different ways to go about it. This isn’t about the playbook, it’s about your playbook.

If you want culture to be your differentiator, then do get in touch with Tamsin Howells (tamsin.howells@mm-k.com) or Stuart James (stuart.james@mm-k.com).

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