What We Tend, Blooms: CTA's Approach to Culture

Mar 27

Most organizations have done the training. You know the one: a dry slide deck on power and privilege, a facilitator you'll never see again, and a shared Google Doc of "action items" that quietly dies in someone's Drive folder.

We've been trying to do something different.

Since 2023, CTA has been partnering with The Darkest Horse on a continual learning Community of Practice program that's less about checking a box and more about actually changing how we work together. That means being honest about our strengths and our shadows, building real structures for accountability, and crucially, not treating culture as a one-time event.

Planting the Seeds - Learning in community, not a conference room

The first thing we did differently: we committed to a year-long program instead of a workshop. Learning happened with the whole organization together in a repeated cycle of learning and integration. Throughout the program, insights deepened in small "pods" – self-managed peer groups that met monthly to reflect, share, and witness each other. No advice-giving, no problem-solving. Just honest conversation and the kind of trust that takes time to build.

Over the course of 2023 and 2024, we tackled the stuff that actually matters: where inequity shows up in our own org (pay transparency, whose voices carry weight, who gets recruited), how supremacy culture traits like urgency and perfectionism quietly shape our work, and what it looks like to have genuinely difficult conversations instead of avoiding them. Small shifts in process, communication, and expectations were created over time and with trust.

We didn't solve everything. But we built a shared language and a real foundation — and that's what made the next challenge possible.

Growing pains - Scaling learning to structure

In mid-2025, we nearly doubled our staff to support a large new contract. This forced the question: how do you preserve strong culture when adjusting to rapid growth?

The answer that emerged: intentional propagation. We love the people we work with, value their unique contributions, hold space for their different experiences, and have a solid foundation to build on. We wanted to take the best parts that we see every day on our teams and tend to them, nurturing and propagating the best parts and cultivating and iterating as we learn and grow together.

This meant moving from a learning program to something more structural. In October 2025, still supported by The Darkest Horse, we launched CTA's Cultural Propagation Practice — five working groups, each owning a piece of how we actually live our values day to day:

Hiring & Onboarding — how people are recruited, join, brought into the team, and thrive
DEIA Pod Content — keeping small-group reflection, learning and growth alive
Engagement & Comms — connection and storytelling, internally and externally
Excellence & Value — how we price, scope, and show up for clients and ourselves
Leadership Team Alignment & Visibility — clear decisions, shared context and priorities, organizational confidence

Every CTA team member has a role in one of these groups. That's the point. Culture isn't a top-down initiative. It's what everyone does, repeatedly, over time.

These working groups will continue to take the “big questions” we ask ourselves and spend the time, energy, and resources to codify artifacts and ideals that will take root over time.

In 2026, each group has an OKR that connects cultural ideals to actual business practice, because if it doesn't show up in how we work, it's just theory. And we’re keeping our pods running too, as a space for ongoing connection, learning, and reflection.

Taking Root – Listening as a practice, not a formality

Building the process is only half of it. We also need to know how it’s landing routinely and candidly.

Regular staff engagement surveys give us an honest read on the stuff that actually matters: whether people’s strengths are being used well, whether our culture is genuinely inclusive day-to-day, and where management needs to show up differently. Not just whether staff believe CTA values these things, but whether they actually feel it.

The goal isn't a score. It's to catch challenges early, celebrate what is working, and make sure we’re growing something worth tending. You can't grow what you don't tend to.

The work of building a culture worth keeping is really never done, and we think that’s the point. There’s always more to tend, more to learn, and more to grow into together.