Culture by Design™ — a manager credential
Engagement is not a score. It is a practice.
Four elements. Twelve things a manager can actually do on a Tuesday. This is not an engagement survey, and nobody is scored by anyone else — the assessment tells a manager the truth about their own practice, and it belongs to them alone.
No account. No email. About four minutes.
- Leadership
- Communication & Connections
- Growth & Development
- Recognition & Appreciation
The problem
Managers are handed nineteen drivers and blamed when the score falls.
Every year the survey comes back. Somewhere in a dashboard there are nineteen engagement drivers, seventy leadership competencies, and a heat map with a red square on it. A manager is told to fix the red square. Nobody tells her what to do on Tuesday morning.
So the score falls again, and the conclusion is that managers are the problem. They are not. The problem is that we have thrown everything at the wall and called it a strategy.
Culture by Design gives a manager four elements and twelve practices. Not nineteen priorities. Twelve concrete things, each one small enough to start this week and specific enough to get better at.
- 4
- Elements — the whole framework, memorable in one sitting
- 12
- Practices a manager performs, not competencies they are rated on
- 0
- People other than the manager who see a manager's results
The framework
Four elements. Twelve practices.
Nothing here is abstract. Each practice is a thing a manager does with a person, on a day, in a real workplace — a plant floor, a branch, a school building, a clinic, a care home.
Element 01
Leadership
- Community of Practice
- Vulnerable, Authentic, Present
- Perspective
Element 02
Communication & Connections
- About Me
- The Daily DOSE
- Gratitude
Element 03
Growth & Development
- Rounding
- One-to-ones
- Meetings
Element 04
Recognition & Appreciation
- Re-recruit
- Recipe Cards
- Thank You Notes
Start here
The self-assessment is free, permanently.
Twelve statements. You will get a reading on each of the four elements, one focus area, and one action for the week ahead. Your results are yours. They are not stored against your name, not reported to your employer, and not compared to anyone else's.
There is no version of this that costs money. A tool that tells a manager the truth about their own practice should not have a price on it.
Begin the assessment- 12
- statements, plain language
- 4 min
- start to finish
- $0
- no account, no email, no seat license
The credential
Two levels you claim. Two levels you earn.
Awareness is honest but it is not an accomplishment, so the first two levels are self-claimed and free. Levels three and four are verified by Archetype Learning Solutions and cannot be bought, self-declared, or awarded by anyone else.
Level One
EYE Aware™
You know the four elements and can describe what each one asks of you.
Self-claimed
Level Two
EYE Culture Badge™
You are applying the practices with your own team, across every element, not just the ones that come naturally.
Self-claimed
Level Three
Culture by Design Practitioner™
You can analyze your own practice and adjust it. Verified through a cohort, your team's own input, and artifacts of real work.
Verified
Level Four
Culture by Design Mentor™
You have brought another manager to verified standing and can sustain a Community of Practice without outside help.
Verified
Verification
How standing is earned.
A cohort is not a workshop. It runs six facilitated Community of Practice sessions across a minimum of four months, because the interval between sessions is where practice actually changes. Every candidate leads a segment. Nobody passes by sitting quietly.
"Assessed on practice, not on documentation."
- 01
Join a cohort
Closed, for a single organization, or open and pooled across sectors. Mixed cohorts are encouraged — a manager learns more about their own practice from someone whose operational world looks nothing like theirs.
- 02
Practice between sessions
Six sessions, four months minimum. You try things with your actual team and come back with what happened, including what did not work.
- 03
Facilitate a segment
At least one, led alone. Teaching a practice to peers is the clearest evidence that you hold it.
- 04
Evidence, not a submission
Verified standing rests on what your own team reports and on artifacts an assessor reads directly — never on your description of an artifact, and never on your ability to write a compelling application.
- 05
Written findings, either way
Every candidate receives a findings file, whether or not the threshold is met. If it is not met, the file says exactly what is missing.
For organizations
A designation held by a place.
Credentials are held by people and travel with them. The site designation is different: it belongs to a facility, it is assessed one facility at a time, and it is earned only when enough of that facility's managers hold verified standing. A plant, a branch, a store, a school building, a campus, a clinic, a care home — one site, one assessment, one award.
Culture by Design Site™
- 60%of managers at the facility hold verified Level 3 or above
- 0managers remaining at Level 1
- 1named internal anchor at verified Level 3 or above
- 1named successor who has co-facilitated a session
Culture by Design Exemplary Site™
- 80%of managers at the facility hold verified Level 3 or above
- 0managers remaining at Level 1
- 1internal anchor holding Culture by Design Mentor standing
- 1successor who has led a full session alone
- 1full prior term as a Culture by Design Site
Assessed remotely by default
Document review and interviews. An on-site visit is available but never required.
Renewed annually, per facility
An organization may claim only the designations its facilities individually hold. No corporate-wide seal.
A facility drops a tier before it loses standing
Exemplary Site becomes Site. A Site lapses only after a full term below threshold.
One method, four translations
How this runs across four studios.
Culture by Design is not a fifth program sitting beside our four studios. It is the method inside all of them — the same four elements and twelve practices, translated for the people in the room.
What it costs
We do not charge per employee.
Nothing here costs more because your organization is larger. It costs more when it takes more assessor time. Managers are developed by cohort, facilities are designated one at a time, and the self-assessment stays free no matter how many people take it.
The fee buys the assessment, not the result. A facility that does not meet the threshold pays the same, does not receive the seal, and receives a full written findings report.
Request the full rate sheet- The self-assessmentLevels 1 and 2, self-claimed
- alwaysFree
- Open cohort seatOne manager, pooled cohort
- from$1,650
- Closed cohortUp to 12 managers from one organization
- from$15,000
- Site designationPer facility, scaled by manager count
- from$2,750
Where this came from
Built from our own research, not borrowed from someone else's.
Culture by Design grew out of qualitative research with managers and the people who work for them, and out of thirty years of practice in hospital systems, ports, schools, credit unions, manufacturers, and public agencies.
It is not derived from, mapped to, or validated against anyone else's instrument. We publish how the assessment is built, what it can support, and what it cannot — including its limitations — because a credential that will not show its methods is asking for trust it has not earned.
The book calls these twelve strategies. The method calls them practices — the same twelve, named for what a manager does with them rather than what a manager picks.
Questions people actually ask
Is this an engagement survey?+
No. An engagement survey asks your team to rate you and reports the result upward. This asks you what you do, gives the answer to you, and stops there. Nobody is scored by anyone else, and there is no leaderboard, ranking, or heat map anywhere in it.
Will my employer see my results?+
Not from us. The self-assessment produces a reading for the manager who took it. If you later pursue verified standing, you choose to enter that process and you decide what to share. Even then, the internal anchor at your facility holds no evaluative authority and does not score, rate, or report on individual managers.
Does this work outside healthcare?+
Yes, and it is designed to. The four elements describe what a manager does, not what an organization makes. Cohorts have deliberately mixed composition — a manufacturing supervisor alongside a credit union branch manager alongside a school lead — because that cross-pollination is something a single-employer cohort can never produce.
What if a manager scores low?+
Then the tool worked. A low reading on an element is information about where to put your attention this month, not a verdict. The assessment returns one focus area and one action, deliberately, because a list of twelve things to fix is the problem we are trying to solve.
What happens if our facility does not meet the threshold?+
You pay the same fee, you do not receive the seal, and you receive a full written findings report saying exactly what is missing. You may reapply after six months at the assessment fee with no second application fee. The fee buys the assessment, not the result — that is what makes the seal worth holding.
How many organizations have done this?+
The four elements and the twelve practices have been in use with managers for years, and the research behind them predates the credential. The credential structure itself — the verified levels and the site designation — is new as of 2026, and the first cohorts are forming now. If being early appeals to you, say so when we talk; there are founding terms, and a written case study attached to them. If being early is a problem, that is a reasonable position and we would rather you wait than be talked into it.
Can we license this and run it ourselves?+
Facilitation can eventually move in-house through a licensed facilitator, and a Mentor anchoring practice at their own workplace needs no license at all. But verification and awarding stay with Archetype Learning Solutions permanently. No arrangement, at any price, transfers the right to award the credential.
Begin
Start where it costs nothing.
A manager can take the assessment this afternoon and have one practice to work on by Tuesday. Everything above that — a cohort, verified standing, a designation for the facility — follows from managers who decided they wanted to get better at this. It does not start with a mandate, and it does not start with a purchase order.
EYE™, Culture by Design™, EYE Aware™, EYE Culture Badge™, Culture by Design Practitioner™, Culture by Design Mentor™, Culture by Design Site™ and Culture by Design Exemplary Site™ are marks of Archetype Learning Solutions, used under common law. No federal registration is claimed. © Archetype Learning Solutions. Prices shown are starting figures, effective 2026, and subject to change.