Activity Commitments: Where Culture Actually Lives

By Joe Newsum

Here is a truth most culture work misses: culture does not live in a values statement or a poster. It lives in the activities you do together, every single day. How you run a meeting. How you write an email. How you give feedback. How you make a decision. Get those right and you have a great culture. Leave them to chance and no statement on the wall will save you. Activity commitments are how you get them right, and they are the most direct, do-it-now way to change a culture I know.

The Core Idea

An activity commitment is a shared commitment for how a team runs a specific recurring activity: how we run meetings, how we write email, how we give feedback, how we decide. Culture lives in these activities, so this is where culture is actually built.

First, a quick orientation. Activity commitments are the fourth and most concrete level of the commitment architecture: below your True North, the core commitments everyone shares, and the operating commitments of each function. They are where all of it becomes real, in the recurring activities where culture actually lives.

True NorthMission and vision, driving every decision

Core CommitmentsThe shared behaviors everyone commits to

Operating CommitmentsWhat each team, department, and function does and what good looks like

Activity CommitmentsCommitments built into meetings, feedback, and daily work THIS PAGE

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Why This Matters: The Hidden Cost of Leaving It to Chance

Think about how your organization runs its meetings, its email, its decisions right now. In most companies, the honest answer is that there is no shared way. Every person does it however they see fit. That sounds like freedom, but it is actually chaos, and it is quietly one of the most expensive things in the building. When there is no agreed way to run an activity, everyone burns enormous mental energy just interpreting each other. What does this email actually want me to do? When is it due? Who is making this decision? What is this meeting even for? That interpretation tax is invisible on any budget, but it is real, and it is everywhere.

Activity commitments remove the tax. When a team agrees on how it runs an activity, the standard, the language, the behaviors, people stop decoding each other and start doing the work. And the payoff is not just smoother days. It is measurable.

A double-digit efficiency gain hides in two activities. In my experience, when a team resets how it runs meetings and email, it recovers a meaningful share of the time sunk in them, often a fifth to a quarter. Given how much of the workweek those two activities consume, that can translate into a double-digit improvement in overall efficiency, before you have touched a single other thing.

That is the case for activity commitments in a nutshell. They are not soft culture work. They are the most concrete, highest-leverage way to change both how a culture feels and how efficiently it runs, because they operate exactly where the work happens.

Why They Work: Best Practices, Compressed Into a Few Cues

Here is what an activity commitment actually does, and why it is so elegant. Take everything that is known about how to run a great meeting, or give great feedback. There are whole books on each. An activity commitment takes all of that hard-won best practice and compresses it into a few words simple enough to remember and meaningful enough to matter. The skill is not adding complexity. It is distillation: weaving the best of how to do something into language so clear and so sticky that people can actually hold it and live it. The simplicity is the sophistication.

And the reason that simple language changes behavior comes down to something almost humble. All you are really doing is getting people to think about a few right cues at the moment they act. You are not rewiring anyone. You are installing a short mental checklist that fires exactly when it is needed, before and during the activity. This is the whole engine of culture in miniature: language shapes thinking, and thinking shapes behavior. Change the thought that shows up in the moment, and you change the behavior that follows.

Feedback is the perfect example. Without commitments, feedback is an afterthought people avoid. With them, a few cues fire in sequence. First the cue to act at all: I should be giving feedback continuously, not saving it for a review. Then the cue before you open your mouth: be curious first, understand my person and what actually went wrong before I judge it. Then the cue in the moment itself: speak the truth, but with respect. Three small thoughts, surfaced at the right time, and the entire quality of the interaction changes. That is all a commitment is: the right thought, made top of mind, at the moment of action. Get the language right, and the behavior takes care of itself.

Think about an activity your team struggles with. If the right two or three thoughts fired in people’s heads every time they did it, how different would the outcome be? That is what an activity commitment installs.

Where Activity Commitments Live: The Landscape

Almost any recurring activity that shapes how people work together can carry commitments. The art is knowing which ones matter most and where to start, which is exactly where a thoughtful approach earns its keep. Here is the landscape, grouped into the places work actually happens. The highest-impact activities sit near the top of each group, because the activities that are most frequent and most visible shape the culture fastest.

Interactions How we engage with each other

Meetings. How we set goals, run the room, and close with decisions, so every meeting is worth the time.

Feedback. How we give and receive truth with respect, in the moment, so people actually get better.

Communication. How we say what we mean, directly and clearly, so the message lands the first time.

Email. How we write the ask, the date, and the bottom line up front, so the reader can act in seconds.

Messaging and chat. How we use chat well: when to message, when to call, and how to keep it from becoming noise.

Conflict. How we disagree in the room, debate the real issue, and leave aligned rather than resentful.

Handoffs. How work passes across teams and seams, so nothing gets dropped between the cracks.

The Work How we get things done and decide

Decision making. How we name the decision, who owns it, and when, so choices get made and stick.

Problem solving. How we frame the problem, get to root cause, and structure the thinking before we solve.

Accountability. How we own outcomes, close the loop, and follow through on what we said we would do.

Prioritization. How we decide what matters most and what to say no to, so effort goes to the right things.

Planning. How we turn goals into a real plan with owners, dates, and a way to track progress.

Goal setting. How we set goals and metrics that are clear, ambitious, and shared, so everyone aims together.

Projects. How we run initiatives end to end, so execution is tight and nothing stalls in the middle.

Escalations. How and when we raise issues up, so problems surface early instead of festering.

Retrospectives. How we look back honestly on what worked and what did not, so the team keeps learning.

The Operating Rhythm How we run and steer the organization

Strategy development. How we set direction together, so strategy is shared and owned rather than handed down.

Planning cadences. How we run the annual and quarterly planning cycle, so planning drives action instead of paperwork.

Goal and OKR cadence. How we set, cascade, and review goals on a rhythm, so everyone stays aimed at the same targets.

Business reviews. How we run QBRs and reviews, so they drive honest insight and action, not theater.

Operating reviews. How we run the recurring metrics and progress reviews, so problems surface early and get owned.

Management cadences. How the leadership team meets, syncs, and steers on a rhythm, so the org is led, not just managed.

Budgeting. How we run the budget cycle, so the money follows the strategy and the tradeoffs are honest.

Governance. How we make and steward the decisions that set the rules everyone else operates within.

Reporting. How we share status and numbers, so people get the signal without drowning in noise.

Resource allocation. How we put money and people against priorities, so resources follow strategy.

People Leadership How we lead, grow, and get the best from people

Setting expectations. How we make clear what good looks like and what we are counting on, so no one has to guess.

Delegating. How we hand off real ownership, not just tasks, so people stretch and the leader scales.

Empowering. How we push decisions down and trust people to make the call, so the team moves without us.

Coaching and development. How we invest in people’s growth as a rhythm, so everyone is getting better, not just busy.

Holding accountable. How we follow up on commitments with care and clarity, so standards are real, not optional.

One-on-ones. How managers and reports use their recurring time to coach, align, and unblock, not just status.

Recognition. How we celebrate the right behaviors and wins, so the culture reinforces what we value.

Hiring. How we interview and select, so we bring in people who raise the bar and fit the culture.

Onboarding. How we welcome and ramp new people, so they feel it and contribute fast.

Performance reviews. How we assess and develop people fairly, so the process builds trust instead of dread.

Promotion. How we decide who advances and why, so growth feels earned, clear, and fair.

Almost any recurring activity can carry commitments. These are the most fertile.

Not sure which activities to start with, or how to design the commitments for them? That is exactly the kind of thing I help teams figure out. See how Joe works with clients or email him directly at joe@stratechi.com.

You Can Start Today, With or Without Core Commitments

Here is the most freeing thing about activity commitments, and the thing that separates them from almost every other culture idea: you do not need permission, a budget, or a company-wide initiative to start. Any team, any leader, can adopt activity commitments on their own, this week. A team of five can sit down, agree on how they will run their meetings and write their email, and start living it tomorrow. No core commitments above them, no launch, no consultant required.

That makes activity commitments the most accessible entry point into building culture deliberately. And the power scales with the level you adopt them at. One team running great meetings is a real win. A whole department running meetings the same way is more powerful. A function, more powerful still. An enterprise where everyone runs meetings, writes email, and gives feedback from the same shared standard is a culture that visibly works, because the shared way compounds the more people share it.

When an organization does have launched core commitments, activity commitments become how those higher commitments get made real. A core commitment like we speak truth with respect is an idea until it shows up concretely in how feedback is given and how meetings surface dissent. That is recontextualization: one commitment, lived specifically in each activity. But you do not have to start at the top. You can start with one activity, on one team, today.

Lite or Full: Start Where the Friction Is

Activity commitments scale in depth as well as scope. A lite version is a few commitments for a single activity, the kind a team can adopt in an afternoon. A complete version is a fuller, deeper set across the key activities, the way a large organization rolls it out as part of a broader culture build. Both are legitimate. The discipline that matters most is concentration: do not try to fix every activity at once. Pick the one or two where you feel the most friction, reset them well, let the new way take hold, and then move to the next. One activity truly changed beats ten activities half-changed every time.

What Good Looks Like: Real Examples

The fastest way to feel the power of activity commitments is to see real ones. Here are sets I have designed and rolled out, at two very different organizations, in two very different ways. The first is a lite set a mid-size company launched on its own as a quick win. The second is a deeper set a Fortune 500 built after launching company-wide core commitments, where activity commitments became the concentrated focus that turned the culture. Both work. They are just two points on the same spectrum. Read the setup before each one, it tells you what you are looking at and why.

The Lite Path: A Mid-Size Distributor Starts With Two Activities

A mid-size distributor wanted a fast, concrete win, no enterprise program, no core commitments above it. So we built lite activity commitments for the two activities that eat the most time and create the most friction: meetings and email. They launched them on their own, and people felt the difference in weeks. This is the entry point in action: any organization can do exactly this.

Meeting Commitments

A lite set, launched on its own

Great meetings are bookended by two simple questions. Get these two right and most of what makes meetings painful disappears. That is the whole design: not a long list of rules, just two questions that, asked every time, change everything.

Before the meeting: what is the goal?

Every meeting starts with a goal, and the best goals are framed as a question to answer. Put it right in the meeting invite, so people show up prepared to contribute, not just to listen. The discipline of having to write the goal is itself the filter: if you cannot state it, you are not ready to meet, and maybe you do not need the meeting at all.

Why it works: the goal focuses energy like nothing else, and asking for it up front quietly kills the meetings that should never have existed. One healthcare client I worked with took it a step further: their executive assistants were empowered to push back on any meeting put on a leader’s calendar by simply asking, “what is the goal of this meeting?” That one question, asked by the people who guard the calendar, drove more meeting discipline than any policy could.

Before the meeting ends: what did we decide?

Five minutes before the end, stop and ask it. Name each decision, its owner, and its date. Then whoever called the meeting sends a short note led by the decisions: what we decided, who owns it, by when.

Why it works: that one question forces the room to synthesize everything into something real before people scatter. It is the difference between a meeting and a conversation. And the decisions-led recap means the meeting lives beyond the room, everyone leaves with the same answer, and the work has momentum instead of ambiguity.

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Email Commitments

A lite set, launched alongside the meeting commitments

The same distributor paired the meeting commitments with a lite set for email, because email is where more time is quietly lost than almost anywhere else. Not writing it. Decoding it. Why am I on this thread? What is the actual point? What, if anything, do I need to do, and by when? Every unclear email taxes every person who opens it, and across an organization that tax is enormous. These commitments erase it. The governing idea: your inbox is a to-do list, not a filing cabinet.

Tag the subject line with the ask and the date

Lead with what you need: [Decision], [Action], or [FYI], plus the ask and the date it is needed. The reader knows exactly what to do before they even open it.

Why it works: the subject line becomes the email. The reader triages in a glance, who needs to act, who can ignore it, what is due. Three tags is the lite version; the military, where this discipline comes from, uses more, and you can expand to four or five as you mature (a Decision tag, an Action tag, an FYI tag, a Sign or approval tag, a Coordinate tag). The point is the same: say what you need, up front, every time.

BLUF: bottom line up front

State the ask or the conclusion in the first two sentences, the what, the who, and the when. Context comes after. Even if they read only the subject and the first line, they can act.

Why it works: BLUF forces the writer to do the synthesis instead of pushing it onto every reader. The hard work of figuring out the actual ask happens once, at the keyboard, rather than being repeated in the head of everyone who opens the email. That single shift saves more collective time than almost anything else in the system.

Honor the ask date

If a message has an action and a date, do it by then, or say when you will. One topic per email, so nothing gets buried.

Why it works: the ask date drives accountability like almost nothing else. Once a request carries an explicit owner and date, you either deliver by then or proactively renegotiate the when, and silence stops being an option. That one habit turns a fuzzy request into a real commitment.

Close the loop and keep the inbox clean

When something is done, say so. File what is decided, done, or waiting on someone else, so the inbox holds only what you still owe.

Why it works: put it all together and email stops being a fog of interpretation and missed accountability and becomes an execution machine. Everyone knows what they owe, to whom, and by when, and the inbox itself becomes an honest to-do list. That is the whole game: replace interpretation and chaos with clarity and follow-through.

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That is the lite path, and the payoff is real. These two simple sets drive directness, accountability, and focus, and they recover a serious share of the time wasted in meetings and email. A team can adopt something like this in an afternoon and feel it almost immediately. You do not need anything above them to start.

The Full Path: A Fortune 500 Uses Activity Commitments to Turn Its Culture

The second example is a different animal. This Fortune 500 had already launched company-wide core commitments, roughly five behavioral promises everyone in the organization shares, to its entire workforce. The question was how to make those commitments real rather than just announced. The answer was concentration: rather than try to change everything everywhere, focus the full weight of the effort on one activity at a time, starting with meetings, going deep enough that the commitments become how people actually operate. Activity commitments were the vehicle, the place where the abstract core commitments became concrete, practiced behavior. Here the sets are fuller and the language is deeper, because they are carrying an entire culture.

And here is the craft that makes the full path work: each activity set is built from the core commitments, recontextualized for that specific activity. You do not invent new commitments from scratch for every activity. You take the handful of core commitments everyone already shares, ask how each one should show up in this particular activity, adapt the language to fit, and add an activity-native commitment only where the activity genuinely demands one. So the same core commitment shows up again and again across activities, each time tuned to the room it is in. That is what turns a set of core commitments into a lived culture: one commitment, recontextualized everywhere.

Meeting Commitments

The full version, the first domain in a Fortune 500 culture transformation

Meetings went first, and for a reason. Every employee spends thirty to fifty percent of their work life in meetings. It is where we make decisions, solve problems, debate ideas, and build relationships. It is where people learn from each other the most. It is where junior people watch senior people think. It is where new employees learn what actually matters here. It is where trust gets built or broken. Meetings are where culture lives, so change how meetings feel and you change how the whole company feels. Four commitments, every meeting, every time.

1. Start with the goal

Focus the room and the results follow.

2. Everyone speaks their truth with respect

Every voice matters. But only if it is heard.

3. Stay curious

The quality of our questions determines the quality of our solutions.

4. Decide and own it

What did we decide? Who owns it? By when?

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You can see the recontextualization in this set. Everyone speaks their truth with respect, stay curious, and decide and own it are core commitments adapted for the room, the same promises everyone makes, tuned to how a meeting should run. Start with the goal is the one activity-native commitment we added, because meetings specifically demand it. Three core commitments recontextualized, one built for the activity. Each of those four headlines opens into its own full page of depth, and to show what that looks like, here is the first commitment unfolded all the way.

Deep Dive: Start With the Goal

One commitment, fully unfolded

The most powerful management question is, what is the goal? Get good at defining it and it will focus energy and debate like nothing else can. Every meeting starts here. When possible, state the goal before the meeting so people come prepared to contribute, not just to listen. When that is not possible, open by asking the room, what is the goal of the next hour, and spend five minutes aligning on it before the conversation begins.

The best goals are framed as questions

A question creates a tension that demands resolution. “Discuss Q3 marketing” becomes “What are the right marketing investments to hit our Q3 growth targets?” “Project update” becomes “What are the top risks to our launch, and what is the mitigation plan?” The question aims every mind in the room at the same target.

A clear goal eliminates the drift

When every meeting starts with a real goal, you cut the tangents and the thousands of hours wasted in meetings where no one knows why they are there. The rule is simple: if you cannot state the goal, you are not ready for the meeting.

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That is the difference between lite and full. The distributor’s two-question meeting set and this Fortune 500’s four deep commitments are the same idea at two depths, both anchored to the same activity, both designed to fire the right thoughts at the right moment. One is a quick team win. The other is the engine of an enterprise culture change.

And meetings were only the first activity. Feedback came next, because feedback is how you actually grow people. Watch what happens here: the feedback set is three of the company’s core commitments, recontextualized for feedback, with no activity-native additions at all. And two of them, stay curious and speak truth with respect, are the very same core commitments that showed up in meetings, now tuned to the feedback conversation instead of the room. That is the mechanism working exactly as intended: one commitment, lived everywhere, in its own specific way. Here is that set.

Feedback Commitments

The next domain in the same Fortune 500 transformation

Feedback is how you really grow your people. Not training programs. Not annual reviews. The single most powerful development tool a leader has is feedback, and research shows employees who receive meaningful feedback regularly are far more likely to be motivated to do outstanding work. Where meetings and email are largely mechanical, feedback is deeply human, so the commitments go further.

1. Grow your people

Do not just manage your people. Coach them to excellence. That is your true purpose as a leader.

2. Stay curious

Know your people. Observe through a development lens. Ask before you tell.

3. Speak truth with respect

Be specific. Be direct. Be empathetic. Focus forward. Make it land.

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Deep Dive: Grow Your People

One commitment, fully unfolded

Your most important job as a leader is not hitting the numbers. It is building the people who hit the numbers. That happens through coaching, not managing. And coaching happens through feedback, not once or twice a year, but constantly, as a rhythm, as a standard, as a way of leading.

Managing versus coaching

Managing is top down: directing, evaluating, assigning. Coaching is the inversion. You are underneath them, supporting them, lifting them up. Your job is to help them see what they cannot see, build what they have not built, and become what they are capable of becoming.

The annual review is not a development strategy

By the time you sit down in December to talk about something that happened in April, the moment is gone and your team member has spent eight months not knowing where they stand. Make feedback a rhythm, not a review: weekly in the moments between, monthly in the one-on-one, quarterly in a dedicated development conversation.

The test

Is this person better than they were six months ago? If the answer is no, that is on you.

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Look at what these examples have in common. Every one takes the best practices of how to do something well and compresses them into language simple enough to remember in the moment. None of it is abstract. And whether it is two questions at a mid-size company or four deep commitments carrying a Fortune 500 culture change, the move is identical: name the activity, decide how it should be run, and commit to it together. I have done this many times now, across companies large and small, and it works every time the commitments are real and lived.

How to Start This Week

Here is the best part: you can put this into practice now, without waiting for anything. Here is exactly how to begin.

1Pick meetings. It is almost always the best place to start. Everyone has them, everyone feels the pain, and the win is immediate and visible. If meetings already feel solved, start with email instead.

2Write two or three commitments. Keep it simple. The two meeting bookends above, open with the goal and close with the decisions, are a complete starting set on their own. Steal them, or adapt the language so it sounds like your team.

3Bring them to your team and commit out loud. Do not roll them out by memo. Put them in front of your team, agree to them together, and say them out loud. A commitment only works when it is shared and public.

4Live them for a month, then check in. Hold each other to the standard in every meeting, and after a few weeks ask the room what is working and what needs to change. That is the whole loop: commit, practice, refine.

Activity commitments are where the whole architecture lands. True North drives decisions, core commitments set the shared behaviors, operating commitments focus each function, and activity commitments make it all concrete in the things people do together every day. Like core commitments, they are horizontal, the same activity run the same way across everyone, which is what makes them such a powerful and accessible place to start. And the best first activity is the one you already know. Read next: Meeting Culture, the complete guide to the activity where culture lives most.

Work with Joe

Want to reset how your team works, starting now?

Activity commitments are the fastest, most concrete way I know to change a culture, and you do not need a company-wide program to begin. I help teams and organizations pick the activities that matter most, design the commitments for them, meetings, email, feedback, decisions, and roll them out so they stick. Whether you want a lite set for one team or a full program across the enterprise, this is some of the most immediately rewarding work there is.

If you want to reset how your team runs the things it does every day, let’s build it.

See How Joe Works with Clients

Or email Joe directly at joe@stratechi.com

And follow Joe on LinkedIn for new content and insights.

Joe Newsum: McKinsey alum, former CEO, COO, CFO, and CMO, and creator of Culture by Commitment, working directly with Fortune 500 CEOs and executive teams to build cultures that hold.

Part of the Culture Guide

This is one piece of a complete, free guide to building a high performance culture. Start at the Culture Guide hub for the full system, or jump to the ideas most worth your time:

Culture Strategy ›

The strategy: deriving the culture your business needs from your True North, your advantage, and the behaviors that win.

Culture by Commitment ›

The method behind this page: how shared commitments, not values, actually build culture.

What Is Organizational Culture ›

The big idea: it was never values, it was always language. Why most culture work fails.

How Language Creates Culture ›

The mechanism: language shapes thinking, thinking shapes behavior, behavior becomes culture.

The Four Types of Culture Commitments ›

The framework: the four kinds of commitments that build culture, and where meetings fit in.

How to Make Culture Change Stick ›

The proof: concentrate, model, and reinforce until the new way holds on its own.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is an activity commitment?

An activity commitment is a shared commitment for how a team runs a specific recurring activity, such as how we run meetings, how we write email, how we give feedback, or how we make decisions. Instead of leaving each activity to everyone’s improvisation, the team agrees on how it should be done, the language, the standard, and the behaviors, and commits to it. Activity commitments are the most concrete and granular level of culture, because culture lives in the activities people do together every day.

Where do activity commitments fit in the commitment architecture?

Culture by Commitment builds culture on four levels of commitments. At the top is the True North, the mission and vision that drive every decision. Core commitments are the shared behaviors everyone follows, and operating commitments focus each team, department, and function on its work. Activity commitments are the fourth and most concrete level: they take all of it and make it real in the recurring activities where culture actually lives, like meetings, feedback, and email. They are horizontal, the same activity run the same way across everyone, which makes them the most accessible entry point into the whole architecture.

Do you need core commitments before activity commitments?

No. That is one of the most useful things about them. Any team or leader can adopt activity commitments on their own, right now, with no core commitments and no company-wide launch. A team of five can reset how it runs meetings or email this week and feel the difference. When an organization does have launched core commitments, activity commitments are how those higher commitments get operationalized and made sticky, but the activity level works perfectly well on its own as an entry point.

What activities can have commitments?

Almost any recurring activity that shapes how people work together can carry commitments: meetings, feedback, communication, one-on-ones, decisions, problem solving, planning, prioritization, business reviews, governance, reporting, hiring, onboarding, coaching, recognition, and many more. The most fertile activities are the high-frequency, high-visibility ones, because resetting how an activity that happens constantly is run changes the culture fastest.

Can you start with just a couple of activities?

Yes, and you should. The discipline is concentration: pick one or two activities where you feel the most friction, reset them well, and let the change take hold before adding more. A lite version might be a few commitments for a single activity. A complete version is a fuller set across the key activities, the way a large organization rolls it out. Both are legitimate, and starting small almost always beats trying to fix everything at once.

Why do activity commitments improve efficiency so much?

Because without them, how you run every meeting, email, and decision is left to each person to do however they see fit, which is chaotic and quietly expensive. People burn enormous mental energy just interpreting each other: what does this email want, when is it due, who decides, what is this meeting for. Shared activity commitments remove that interpretation tax so the energy goes to the work. In my experience, when a team resets how it runs meetings and email, it recovers a meaningful share of the time sunk in them, often a fifth to a quarter, which can translate into a double-digit improvement in overall efficiency.