How do your employees behave when the path isn’t clear? When a customer asks for something unusual, when a colleague misses a deadline, or when a decision needs to be made without guidance from a manual or a manager?
That’s your corporate culture, in motion.
Culture drives business outcomes in ways that are difficult to quantify but impossible to ignore. It isn’t what’s written on posters or recited in all-hands meetings. It’s what people rely on when there’s no script. It’s the behavior that fills the space between policies and decisions. To understand your company’s true culture, observe what people do when no one’s telling them what to do.
So if you want to shape that culture rather than inherit it, start here.
Setting Direction
- Share a clear vision. People work better when they know what they’re working toward. A shared purpose fosters alignment across all decisions, both large and small.
- Define your values, and live them. Integrity, curiosity, empathy, urgency. Whatever they are, make them real. People can sense the difference between values that are lived and those that exist only on paper.
- Focus on what excites your customers, not just what satisfies them. Customer satisfaction is a baseline. Energy and advocacy come from a deeper connection.
Daily Behaviors
- Treat your employees like the front-end of your customer experience, because they are. They carry your values outward. So ask yourself: beyond providing a paycheck, what are you really giving them?
- Give credit where it’s due. Always. Never take it, never distort it. And never make excuses. Own mistakes clearly and move forward. That’s how trust is built.
- Speak with candor, and pair it with respect. The most efficient teams communicate clearly. That means honest praise, honest feedback, and honest expectations. Praise in public. Address challenges in private.
- Lead visibly. People will do what you do long before they do what you say. And much of what they follow won’t be spoken. Culture spreads through tone, timing, posture, silence, and consistency.
- Listen closely. Listen to what’s said, and what isn’t. Listen for hesitation. For silence. Real listening uncovers what surface communication misses.
- Avoid knee-jerk negation. “No” and “but” shut things down. A well-placed “yes” keeps exploration alive and helps people stay in problem-solving mode.
Protecting Culture
- Protect the team from toxic behavior. One destructive employee can drag down ten good ones. No individual contributor is worth the erosion of shared trust.
- Let go of what worked in the past. The pace of change makes clinging to old approaches risky. Stay open. Past habits often underperform in a world that has moved.
- And don’t forget to make room for joy. Fun matters. It energizes, spreads, and sustains momentum. Teams that laugh together, win together.
I have worked with companies where a strong culture accelerated decision-making, attracted talent, and created a competitive advantage. I have also seen organizations where toxic culture drove away top performers and paralyzed execution. The difference was in the daily behaviors that leaders modeled and reinforced.
At a technology company, unity behind a clear vision created and sustained momentum. Sales teams treated clients as partners, including them in designing and evaluating future products. Engineers joined customer calls. Support teams shaped roadmaps. The mission was authentic, and top talent sought them out. That alignment accelerated growth and created competitive advantages others couldn’t replicate.
In a SaaS company, one executive’s personal relationship with the CEO made his business unit untouchable. The platform crashed repeatedly in demos and production, but leaders who raised concerns were marginalized and eventually pushed out. The business unit disappeared within two years. The cost of protecting one person destroyed value for everyone.
A fintech CEO micromanaged one function with which he was familiar. Employees bypassed their managers and escalated directly to him. His calendar was filled with tactical issues while operations deteriorated. After restructuring reporting lines, clarifying decision rights, and automating key processes, managers regained authority, the CEO focused on strategy, and the company reduced operating expenses while increasing sales.
Culture is not built once and taken for granted. It is reinforced every day in how you lead, how you speak, how you listen, and what you reward. Most of all, it shows up in the choices people make when they’re on their own.
So ask yourself: when no one’s watching, what do people at your company choose to do?