Culture Cosplay: Why We Spend Billions Pretending to Change

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Great cosplay is performance art.

Lovingly crafted personas. A calendar of must-attend events.
Catch phrases and signature moves rehearsed and ready.
A relished escape from daily reality.

Sound familiar?
Swap the costumes for company swag, and you’ve got a typical team retreat.

ROI Reality Check

The big picture doesn’t look great.

The corporate training market pulls in around $361.5B in 2023 globally. In return for that investment, only one in four leaders rate their development programs as “high quality,” and industry surveys suggest most leadership training ineffective. The management consulting industry is even bigger. We spend $1T+ worldwide, but large-scale transformations still succeed only ~30% of the time.

But on a smaller scale, 86% of participants in CCL programs self-report leadership effectiveness gains, and this industry study claims a return of $3 to $11 for every $1 spent. That's pretty good!

Of course, the good news is mostly vendor-reported, not market baselines. 

Still - despite the murky success rates, we can clearly run projects that improve workplace culture. It's been done, it's do-able, and when it's done, we reap rewards.

But more often, companies invest in culture cosplay parties.

They bring in a vendor to host it. You get an invite and a quiz, so you can come dressed as your favorite personality type. You play "what if" games, imagining how you’d gracefully handle scripted conflicts. You all pretend that the workplace will change because you envisioned it. See? Behold your glorious sticky-note mosaic.

Maybe dressing like a mermaid will help you swim?

Business publications herald the importance of qualities like psychological safety, inclusion, trust, and agility. These qualities are real, measurable, and strongly tied to business outcomes.

But slipping into a mermaid tail won't teach you to swim. And a one-day workshop on psychological safety won’t make it feel ok to point out your boss's errors. If you want your team to trust each other when they dive into choppy seas, you'll have to spend lots of time in the water together first.

So why are so many culture services one-offs?

We're all complicit in this inflated cosplay economy.

• Vendors pretend workshops create lasting change.

• Leaders pretend they want lasting change.

• Everyone pretends the stickies on the wall mean something.

Meanwhile, nothing really changed since the last recession.

What makes an event cosplay, rather than a useful rallying point for aligning teams and inspiring change?

Follow-through, of course.

Is it the vendor's job to make sure people follow through?
No. Outsiders have no authority over how your team spends their day.

Is it the leader's job to make sure people follow through?
Well, maybe, but they aren't experts here and they've got bigger problems.

Practically, you get a positive ROI if, and only if, the managers and team members follow through with the change. And of course, they aren't in the room when the contract is signed.

So, we stick to the activities we can put dates and dollars on, and ignore the hard conversations about what real change requires.

Over the past three articles, we've explored this dynamic using Culture Math; a way of treating culture as a manageable strategic asset. If you’ve followed this series, you know Culture Math is a way to distinguish the performance art from productive investments.

As a reminder, here's the basic equation.

👉 The logic:

• TCC = total culture cost, aka what you spend, including:

  • A. One-time / Event-driven investments (resets, workshops, new systems, retreats)

  • B. Recurring spend (licenses, benefits, coaching)

  • C. Active maintenance (leader time, rituals, comms, lifecycle practices)

• Impact (±) = how culture shows up in business performance.

• RoC  = whether your investments are compounding into advantage, or furiously digging a dank hole.

Minding your Culture Math breaks this doom-loop. It helps you see:

• Where one-offs can be useful as signals or seed investments. Or when you’re using them as a perk, with no more expectations.

• When ongoing reinforcement is required to convert spend into impact.

• How to contract in ways that build internal capability rather than perpetuate dependency.

Let's dive into how to contract differently so your investment pays off.

How to Improve the ROI on Outside Culture Services

1. Beware of supplier-induced demand.

Vendors are really good at educating potential buyers about the problems they should worry about. At one level, this is marketing. That's what businesses do.

And naturally, the problems we see most clearly are the ones we get paid to fix.

Like the pharma ads convincing you that feeling tired is a disease, consultants are trained to define your pain and sell the cure. Before long, every company thinks it needs an “AI strategy” the way everyone with a backache once thought they needed Oxy.

As Maxim Sytch points out, a lot of that $1T+ spend is driven more by what we've been told we need than by real problems that need solving.

So before thumbing through HBR for guidance...

2. Start with the problem to solve, not the solution.

Culture cosplay begins with buying experiences. Meaningful change begins with defining problems.

Don’t begin with “We should do a retreat” or “We need psych safety training.”
Instead, ask: “How does our culture make it harder for us to achieve our goals?" and "What do we want to be true about our culture?"

Ideally, you should craft a clear problem statement that makes the gap between your current and desired state clear. As in: Today, (describe the current culture or practice). To help us achieve our goal of (goal goes here), we want to change our (culture/practice) so that (desired future state).

Examples:

• Learning waste: Today, we spend $2M annually on training but don't know which new skills get used. To help us achieve our goal of building a strong leadership pipeline, we want to change our learning approach so that every training includes on-the-job application with manager accountability.

• Decision bottleneck: Today, all decisions require executive approval, creating 2-week delays on average. To help us achieve our goal of launching products 50% faster, we want to change our decision-making practice so that teams can approve most decisions within 48 hours.

• Feedback void: Today, employees only receive feedback during annual reviews, with 68% saying they don't know where they stand. To help us achieve our goal of retaining top talent (currently losing 27% annually), we want to change our feedback practice so that everyone gets weekly support, coaching from managers, and clear performance indicators.

• Innovation theater: Today, we run quarterly innovation workshops but have launched zero employee ideas in two years. To help us achieve our goal of 20% revenue from new products, we want to change our innovation practice so that every workshop leads to funded pilots with 90-day success metrics.

This is difficult. If your culture isn't what it needs to be, you're probably facing a intertwined mess of problems.
Where do you even start?

You could call in a consultant to run a big discovery project for you. If you go this route, keep step 1 in mind and consider using separate vendors for discovery and delivery.

Alternatively, you could start with the problem that feels most pressing. The fastest way to learn what really needs to change in an organization is to try and make changes. The stickiest sticking points will quickly reveal themselves.

3. Match the project to fit the goal.

Disappointment comes from a mismatch between what’s purchased and what’s required. So how can you determine the right level of outside services for the result you need?

Look at your problem statement, then review the table below. It outlines typical levels of outside engagements with the impact you can realistically expect from each.

The Culture Contracting Scale

And right here you can see why it's so easy for us to fall into culture cosplay.
Most outside contracts are for Sparks to Recharge projects, while we know logically that to get meaningful change, we'll need to Develop & Maintain or an invest in an Overhaul.

But can you afford that?
And do you really want to be yoked to an outside vendor for the long haul?

This is really a build vs. buy decision. In some organizations, it makes better sense to own the capabilities for sustaining change by staffing internal coaches, OD practitioners, and facilitators.

For others, you'll want to:

4. Tailor the contract to fit your budget.

Juicy problems attract hefty proposals. They put it all in there! Assessments, workshops, training, coaching, comms support—a whole range of potentially useful stuff—and now the cost of "doing it right" exceeds your budget.

It will be tempting to delay the more complicated-but-necessary work and instead opt for a quick workshop. Why take on the expense and hassle of overhauling your internal communications and team structures when you can just run a "constructive conflict" training instead?

When you run into budget constraints, resist the urge to pretend a one-off project will have the impact you need.

Instead, get creative.
You can:

• Look for boutique firms and independent experts. These small shops often provide senior-partner level expertise at a fraction of the cost of a big consultancy.

• Start smaller. One practice, one better meeting, one more beautiful workspace. Then, keep going. As someone who's led projects across the full range, I know that many small steps often move cultures more effectively than trying to force change in one big shove.

• Divide the project between outside and inside resources. Many providers offer advisory retainers for supporting internal teams, and train-the-trainer services for scaling projects.

Regardless of how much of this project you contract out, you'll want internal folks involved because you need to...

5. Invest in Maintenance.

The fastest way to waste money is to keep buying Sparks and Pilots without reinforcing them. A small, steady investment in Maintenance—the repeated actions and environmental cues that bring your desired culture alive every day—usually drives the biggest ROI relative to cost.

Good providers can help you figure out what to include in your maintenance plan.

Questions to Discuss When Scoping Projects

For those one-off projects:

• What value(s) is this meant to inspire or reinforce in our culture?

• What specific behaviors, skills, or conversations could this kickstart?

• What would need to happen for this to stick? What might prevent sticking?

For longer projects and fractional support over time:

• Which maintenance practices will you run, and what do we need to lead?

• What would we need to handle this on our own? How can we make that happen?

• What factors influence the expected payback period for this work?

• How will we measure progress across (the impact metric you care about: revenue, quality, talent, efficiency, innovation, reputation)?

Short Version: Cosplay vs Culture Change Projects

So let's do the math.

Pull up your projects from last year. Sort the time and expenses into categories:

• A (One-time): Workshops, keynotes, retreats, that design thinking bootcamp

• B (Recurring): Annual surveys, recurring events, coaching contracts

• C (Maintenance): Daily practices, rituals, regular check-ins, ongoing reinforcement

Check your ledger. What percentage went to C? If it's under half, you're putting on a show.

That’s buying the mermaid tail but avoiding the water.

Culture Math Invites Integrity and Fiscal Responsibility

If you're a consultant reading this, you know exactly which of your clients are cosplaying. You can probably name the ones who'll buy another Spark next quarter while the results from their last three workshops gather dust.
As one strategic planning facilitator said over drinks, "Another binder of shelf-shit out the door."

And if you're a leader, you know whether that "transformational" retreat left behind anything beyond the sweatshirt.

Over many years of relative prosperity, we've grown a $1T+ industry that could ignore this math. Leaders swimming in cash can afford to play. What's another $100k here or there? Pish.

And hungry consultants need to keep it simple. Exposing the math complicates the conversation, which kills deals.

As long as feeling like you did something matters more than making real change, only consultants willing to lose the deal can afford to challenge a project's scope.

But when budgets are tight, this math matters.

The era of generous discretionary spend is coming to a close. Unemployment, inflation, and interest rates are up, growth is slowing, and CFOs are asking harder questions. If you can't speak to ROI, you won't get funding.

Implications for leaders
Before your next project, answer these questions:

1. What problem are we actually trying to solve? (Not what solution are we buying)

2. Who will own making this real after the vendor leaves?

3. What percentage of our culture budget goes to maintenance vs events?

In other words, treat your culture investments like you would any other capital expenditure.

For everyone: The next time someone proposes a one-off workshop, ask them to complete this sentence:
"We expect this workshop to create lasting change because _."

If the answer is "because the content is really good" or "because people will be inspired," you're planning a cosplay.
Are you cool with that?

You know, sometimes, maybe so!
I have a client who hosts regular events because… well, because they said they would, and they can afford to do it.
That's it.
So we plan a bit of fun, some time to talk about current issues, and leave it at that. We're engaging honestly to put on a show that will maybe, hopefully, make people feel a bit better about staying with the company.

They also know that when they're ready to get specific about development, reinforcement, and daily practice, we can have a meaningful discussion about ROI.

We all know that real culture isn't a costume you put on for special events.
It's what you wear to work every single day.

Working with Us: If you’d like to explore how we can help your organization, please check out our services here and get in touch.

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