Open-sourcing culture: What happens when we build it together?

In open source, the best projects aren’t built by one person; they are built by communities. Culture works the same way. It’s not handed down; it’s built up, through shared values and everyday decisions.

By now, we all know that culture isn’t something you write on a slide and present at an all-hands. It’s not a perk, a ping-pong table or a one-off workshop. At SUSE, we’ve learned that culture is the product of choices people make every day, regardless of their job level or role. It comes to life in how they show up, how they collaborate and how they respond to challenges. And like any good open-source project, the best culture is the one people have built together.

Leadership plays a critical role in this. The behaviours role modelled by an executive team have an outsized and direct impact on how employees show up. Often, this plays out in how commercial decisions are made and communicated. While sometimes decisions are not easy, they require the same level of transparency and commitment to retain trust from employees. This is a time of geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, and therefore, employees need to know what companies stand for, and a shared set of mission and values plays a vital role in this.

That’s what inspired us to take a different approach last year, when we revised our mission and values in a deliberate, collaborative way involving the entire workforce, and then made the choice to share our process with the world - in true open source style.

A natural step for an open source company

As a company rooted in open source software and culture, collaboration and transparency are core to how we operate. Open source is built on shared ownership and continuous contribution. There’s no single author or fixed blueprint, just a community improving things step by step.

When we set out to refresh our mission and values, we leaned into that mindset. All 2,600 SUSE people across 40 locations were invited to shape the direction. Over a focused nine-week period, we ran 65 workshops across our global teams. More than 1,000 colleagues contributed over 7,500 data points from words that best described the company to ideas about what our mission should capture. We focused on having an open and honest conversation, mirroring how open-source communities operate.

Our people then voted on proposed values and helped refine the final outcome. In total, over 4,000 individual comments played a part in shaping our cultural foundation.

We also deliberately timed this project to take place just before our annual goal-setting cycle. That meant that with the new mission and values already in place, teams could immediately apply them as a guiding framework when planning their objectives. Most companies take months to implement changes, while we made them relevant from day one.

To keep the momentum going, we developed toolkits for managers to bring the values into everyday moments - from team meetings and one-to-ones to development check-ins. Culture gains traction when it shows up in the rhythm of real work.

What changed?

Following the launch of our mission and values, we achieved an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) of 57, placing SUSE in the top 5 percent of the tech sector benchmark group. An increase of seven eNPS points in a six-month period is indicative of overall satisfaction and engagement with SUSE as an employer. Our survey participation rate has trended at 86 percent for four years, demonstrating the autonomy of our people in contributing to our future.

Core open source values like ownership and accountability played a key role. When people understand their influence, they become more confident in their decision-making and more invested in each other’s success. And none of this was accidental. Culture should always be an intentional commitment, shaped through structured conversations and ongoing reflection, where every action matters and every voice contributes. Learn more on our GitHub page on Open Culture.

We know that change is deeply uncomfortable for many, so it is important to help team members feel safe to innovate and navigate the change without losing trust.

A few lessons

For HR leaders exploring a similar path, co-creation may feel messy at first, but it’s worth it. Here’s what has helped us make it work:

• Start early. Bring your people in at the beginning of the process. Real co-creation means building the structure together.
  
• Stay transparent. Let people see what’s being said and how it’s being used. Sharing progress builds trust.
  
• Make values practical. Language should feel usable in the day-to-day. If people can apply the values in meetings, hiring and performance conversations, they’ll stick.
  
• Support your managers. Teams experience culture through their immediate leaders. Give managers tools, prompts and examples to bring values to life in a way that works for them.
  
• Iterate over time. Culture needs maintenance. Build in regular points to reflect and refine, just like any good project.
  
  

Be human in a time of change

The most important lesson: be human. By allowing your team members to feel comfortable being their authentic selves and feel ownership over culture, it can help unify your organisation across time zones and cultures.

The culture workshops became opportunities for people to come together and shape something important. They were as much about strengthening connections as they were about outcomes. The process also created space for more inclusive conversations. With an average employee age of 46, our workforce includes people balancing family care, health challenges and career pivots. Culture co-creation helped surface these perspectives and ensured they were reflected in what we built.

When culture is shaped by the people living it, it becomes something they genuinely want to protect and grow. It stops being a branding exercise and instead transforms into a working system, reflecting the reality of employees and the direction of the business. That doesn’t mean everything goes perfectly. But, like any open-source project, the true value lies in how we keep building on what we’ve started.

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