UK: Finding the perfect formula for workplace culture

Hands up. I’m biased. Throughout this year’s Formula 1 season, I’ve been rooting for McLaren’s Lando Norris. He did it. He won his maiden title.

The Formula 1 track and its vast infrastructure may not look like your average workplace, but there are more similarities than you might imagine. McLaren’s CEO, Zak Brown, was asked yesterday by Naga Munchetty how the team managed the double: the Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles. His answer was disarmingly simple. It’s all about people and culture. With 1,400 staff, you have to row in the same direction, support each other and know your role. In his view, culture drives performance.

Commentators and other F1 teams generally agreed that McLaren’s controversial “Papaya Rules” policy of treating both drivers equally and fairly, would never work. The wisdom was that you must have a number one and a number two; equality might be laudable, but it doesn’t work in a fiercely competitive environment. They were wrong.

Winning in F1 without a designated number one is a reminder that high performance is not a personality cult. It is a management choice. When leaders set clear roles, invest in trust, and reward collective effort as much as individual brilliance, the results compound. Strong performance is built by strong management, and strong management is sustained by a strong culture. McLaren proved that fairness is not the enemy of ambition; it is the operating system that lets ambition run flat out.

In any workplace, if you want the double of results and resilience, then treat your people like drivers who can both win, and give them a culture that makes it possible.

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