Why culture will make or break your company in the age of AI

Culture is becoming an overused word in business.

You see it on careers pages, in pitch decks, and often reduced to a handful of carefully chosen values that sound impressive but rarely hold up. When we sat down with Alexandra Saad, it was clear she has little interest in culture as a slogan.

In her eyes, culture is infrastructure, the underlying system that determines whether a business can actually deliver on its ambition. And in a world accelerating towards automation and artificial intelligence, she believes it will become the single biggest differentiator between companies that evolve and those that quietly erode.

Alexandra’s career spans public institutions, global multinationals, early-stage startups, entrepreneurship and now scale-up leadership. The common thread is building. 

That builder mindset shapes how she approaches culture today.

Alexandra’s move into people and culture was intentional, but it was not linear. Born in Romania, she left early in her career to pursue broader opportunities. She began in a public institution before transitioning into Vodafone’s call centre environment, where she quickly discovered her first professional love: training.

On her first day, she decided she wanted to become a trainer and pursuing that path required a 70% pay cut.

She went on to build the training structure for one of Vodafone Romania’s largest call centres and later became the company’s first international transfer, helping to establish the learning and capability function for Vodafone Qatar. It was an opportunity to build from scratch, in a new market, within a new cultural context.

From there, her journey took her through Egypt and Dubai, into entrepreneurship, and eventually back into corporate life within a scale-up environment. Looking back, she recognises that what appeared to be a series of bold, disconnected moves were in fact driven by a consistent instinct.

It’s that word ecosystem that reveals how she thinks about culture.

Ask Alexandra ten years ago for her culture framework, and she would have confidently outlined phases, steps and structured rollouts. Today, her answer is far more nuanced.

This is where many organisations misstep, borrowing frameworks from companies operating in different markets and different pressures. They replicate language without interrogating whether the conditions are comparable. When the culture work fails to land, they assume the concept is flawed rather than the application.

A startup navigating survival mode requires something fundamentally different from a 3,000-person multinational managing complexity and scale. A business operating in London will experience cultural dynamics differently from one in Doha or Cairo. Stage and geography matter, and pretending otherwise leads to performative initiatives rather than meaningful change.

The starting question is “where are we right now, and what are we trying to become?”

That orientation towards reality defines her approach.

Alexandra articulated her definition of culture as the intersection of five interconnected elements: 

Somewhere in the middle of those forces, culture forms.

What people believe about a company, how they behave within it, and how they experience their work is shaped by the processes that govern decisions. The environment in which they operate, the technology that enables or restricts them, and the structure that defines power and accountability.

Many companies claim agility as part of their culture, and it appears in strategy decks with impressive frequency. Yet if decision-making remains centralised, processes are manual, technology is outdated, and hierarchy slows every move, asking employees to “be more agile” is little more than wishful thinking.

In other words, culture is what systems allow.

Belief in culture is one thing, but securing investment for it is another. We asked Alexandra how she translates philosophy into metrics that resonate with executive leadership.

Her response again reflected her systems thinking. Culture cannot be reduced to a single KPI. An annual engagement survey captures a dimension of employee sentiment, but it tells only part of the story. To understand culture properly, organisations need a more holistic dashboard.

Depending on context, that might include process adherence, decision-making speed, learning adoption, internal mobility, performance consistency or customer impact. In highly regulated environments, strong process compliance may indicate a healthy culture. In fast-growth technology businesses, speed and experimentation may serve as better indicators.

The key is aligning declared intent with operational reality. When the ecosystem is coherent, culture shows up in performance, not platitudes.

Today, Alexandra leads learning, culture, people experience, employer brand and internal communications for one of Africa’s largest proptech companies. She joined during its transition from startup to scale-up, a moment she describes as the ideal environment for a builder.

Initially tasked with establishing a corporate academy, she saw an opportunity to do more. Real estate in Egypt is a significant economic driver, yet professional standards and development pathways have not always kept pace with growth. Through education and capability-building, she set out to influence not just internal culture but industry perception.

That ambition reflects a consistent theme throughout her career. She is driven by the desire to make a tangible difference. Yet she is also pragmatic. Earlier in her journey, she stepped into entrepreneurship to focus exclusively on organisational culture, only to realise that the market was not yet ready to invest in it at scale. Timing matters, and sometimes leadership means recognising when the ecosystem is not prepared for the vision.

As our conversation drew to a close, one theme became increasingly clear. The next decade will not reward leaders who simply implement technology faster than their competitors. Nor will it favour those who treat culture as an afterthought once they secure growth targets.

It will require leaders who understand systems, recognise that culture is not decorative but structural, and design organisations intentionally rather than letting them evolve by accident.

In a world defined by speed and automation, what makes a company distinctly human may become the only element competitors cannot easily replicate. That distinctiveness will emerge from the deliberate alignment of people, processes, environment, technology and structure.

And as Alexandra’s career demonstrates, alignment does not happen by chance.

Whether you're shaping culture at a startup or redesigning it within a scaling organisation, Alexandra's systems-based approach offers a practical blueprint. Think in ecosystems, align your infrastructure to your ambition, and never treat culture as an afterthought. 

Get these foundations right, and culture starts becoming the infrastructure your business runs on.