“The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” — Gruenter & Whitaker
Culture Isn’t a Couch: Building Corporate Culture That Works, Not Just Feels Good
Culture Isn’t an Accident
Culture is the invisible hand that guides decision-making when no one is watching. It’s what determines whether people lean in or check out, whether they take initiative or wait for direction. While many companies treat culture like office décor—nice to have, but secondary to strategy—the best treat it as a product to be defined, designed, tested, and iterated upon.
Let’s explore how culture has evolved, who’s gotten it right (and wrong), and how leadership—not HR—should be the active steward of a healthy, high-performing environment.
A Brief History of Corporate Culture
In the 1950s and 60s, corporate culture was rigid and hierarchical, modeled after military command structures. Employees followed orders; leaders gave them. By the 1980s, Peter Drucker had already coined, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” but few leaders were listening.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Silicon Valley companies began experimenting. Zappos paid employees to quit if they didn’t vibe with their culture. Google gave engineers “20% time” to innovate. Netflix famously published its Culture Deck, an unvarnished manifesto on freedom and responsibility that many now view as the gold standard of cultural candor.
These weren’t just perks—they were foundational operating principles. Culture was no longer about the ping pong table. It was about the behaviors that were rewarded, tolerated, or corrected.
What Good Looks Like
Netflix: Reed Hastings and Patty McCord’s Netflix Culture Deck wasn’t just lip service. It laid out a culture where “adequate performance gets a generous severance.” That brutal honesty signaled that talent density and candor were non-negotiable. More importantly, it empowered managers to act without second-guessing whether they had “permission” to uphold standards.
Shopify: Tobi Lütke’s culture manifesto, “We are a company of builders,” shifted the focus from meetings and consensus to making things. The cultural strategy supported a product-led, engineering-centric environment—and it showed in their velocity.
HubSpot: The “Culture Code” was part aspiration, part commitment. They anchored values in behavior: transparency meant open metrics, not just open-door policies. They constantly updated their code based on internal feedback, treating culture as a living document, not a launch-and-leave slide deck.
And What Bad Looks Like
Uber (early days): Uber’s aggressive “always be hustlin’” culture in the Travis Kalanick era drove growth at all costs. But its blind spot was toxicity. HR complaints were buried. Ethics were blurred. Eventually, the board ousted Kalanick. The lesson? Culture without guardrails becomes entropy.
WeWork: Adam Neumann sold a vision of community and spiritual uplift, but reality didn’t match the PowerPoint. The company conflated charisma with culture. Behind the scenes, excess, ego, and a lack of accountability led to chaos. Culture that isn’t tied to operational discipline becomes theater.
Yahoo (under Mayer): When Marissa Mayer ended remote work in 2013 to “improve collaboration,” she signaled a lack of trust rather than a culture fix. Rather than solving for alignment or communication, the solution was control. It backfired—undermining morale while failing to address deeper issues.
Defining and Developing Culture
- Define the “How,” Not Just the “What”
Culture is how work gets done. Start by identifying behaviors that lead to your best outcomes. If speed is essential, then bureaucratic approvals are a cultural anti-pattern. If innovation matters, then tolerating risk is part of the deal. - Codify It Early and Iterate Often
Write it down. Make it visible. From GitLab’s 2,000-page handbook to Amazon’s Leadership Principles, the best cultures are documented and referenced regularly. But they’re also living documents—updated as the company evolves. - Use Culture as a Filter
Hire, promote, and fire based on cultural fit and contribution. The “brilliant jerk” should never survive a strong culture. Make values behavioral, not aspirational—e.g., “acts with ownership” not just “integrity.” - Reward What You Want Repeated
Recognition systems should reinforce culture. Praise the engineer who coached a junior team member, not just the one who pulled an all-nighter. Incentives speak louder than posters.
Leadership’s Role: Disagree, Debate, Deliver
Leadership defines culture by how they disagree and commit. Strong cultures don’t mean harmony—they mean productive conflict. Here’s how high-performing leadership teams handle it:
- Disagree in the open: Hide disagreements and you breed mistrust. Model open debate in leadership meetings. Invite dissent—especially from the quietest voice in the room.
- No triangulation: Culture rots when execs talk about each other instead of to each other. Gossip is cultural cancer.
- Align in public: Once a decision is made, the leadership team must all carry it forward. Passive resistance undermines clarity and divides teams.
- Feedback is a two-way street: Execs should request and receive feedback from their teams, not just issue it downward. Psychological safety isn’t a perk—it’s fuel for improvement.
Culture Blindspots: The Leadership Audit
The biggest cultural failures often stem from what leaders don’t see or won’t say:
- Ignoring middle management: Most culture lives in the “frozen middle.” Train, empower, and hold them accountable. If your VPs say “we’re aligned,” but their teams are confused, you have a culture gap.
- Over-indexing on mission over mechanics: Passion won’t fix process. Great culture includes clear roles, good rituals, and decision-making hygiene. Don’t confuse “we all care” with “we know how to get things done.”
- Mismatched behaviors: If leadership preaches transparency but hoards information, culture breaks. If you say “bias for action” but punish mistakes, people freeze.
- Cultural monoculture: Over-hiring for “fit” often means hiring for sameness. Strong cultures allow for diverse styles and challenge. A culture of clones isn’t strong—it’s brittle.
Wrapping up…
Corporate culture isn’t about being “nice.” It’s about being intentional. A strong culture makes decisions easier, goals clearer, and performance sustainable. It reduces entropy, boosts retention, and fuels innovation. But it must be led from the top and modeled every day.
So ask yourself: Are we shaping culture—or just tolerating it?
