01-08-2025
It Isn't A Vibe, It's A System: Why Culture Needs Strategy
Bryant Richardson helps business leaders drive growth through customer experience. He is Founder of Real Blue Sky.
You've probably heard it before. Maybe you've even said it:
'We've got a great culture. You can feel it when you walk in the room.'
It's meant as a compliment. The energy seems high. People smile in meetings. Messages are filled with shoutouts and team wins.
But culture isn't a feeling. It's the sum of the choices your team makes when no one's looking. And when those choices don't align with your values, your customer experience starts to wobble—long before the metrics catch up.
In Gallup's 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, employees who have a sense of belonging to their company's culture are 2.7 times more likely to take ownership of quality and nearly five times more likely to respond to customer needs with agility. That's not a vibe. That's a competitive edge customers can feel.
The Myth Of 'Feel-Good' Culture
A few years ago, I worked with a company that looked like a culture win from the outside. Company values framed in every room. Weekly events. Catered lunches. An always-on tone of celebration.
But when I asked a few questions...
How are hard conversations handled?
What happens when a top performer violates the values?
What does accountability actually look like here?
...the room got quiet.
One leader admitted, 'We try to keep things positive. We don't want to rock the boat.'
What looked like harmony was actually avoidance. And that avoidance had a cost: rising turnover, stalled initiatives, customer complaints that sat in queues too long. Morale wasn't the only thing drifting. So was the customer experience.
Peter Drucker is often attributed with the quote, 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast.' But the wrong kind of culture? That eats trust for lunch, and customers for dinner. And trust erodes long before customers walk away.
Culture Drift Is Common; Even Among Great Leaders
Culture rarely collapses in one big moment. It drifts quietly through the decisions leaders make every day.
You hire fast under pressure. You let a high performer operate by different rules. You delay a direct conversation to keep the peace. You prioritize speed and comfort over clarity and follow-through.
None of these are catastrophic. But stacked together? That's your new culture.
Even the most intentional leaders can miss the shift—until signs show up in employee disengagement, customer dissatisfaction or slowed momentum.
Gallup's research shows why it matters: Business units in the top quartile of employee engagement outperform the bottom quartile with 23% higher profitability, 18% higher productivity and 10% better customer loyalty. Culture, when aligned and reinforced, drives both internal performance and external trust.
When The Brand And The Experience Don't Match
One of the fastest ways to detect culture drift is to compare your external brand promise to the day-to-day employee and customer experience.
I worked with a company that had 'customer obsession' printed everywhere—from recruiting pages to all-hands decks. But inside, departments were siloed. Customer feedback was gathered but rarely acted on. Service teams were overwhelmed and unsupported.
The culture wasn't toxic. It was just untrustworthy.
And customers could tell. Net Promoter Scores fell. Referrals slowed. Support escalations increased.
They didn't have a messaging problem. They had an operational credibility gap.
Culture isn't wall art. It's behavior behind the scenes. It's how decisions get made, how accountability is enforced and how customers are treated when things go wrong.
Three Culture Diagnostics To Run Today
If you want to understand your true culture, stop reviewing what's written and start examining what's rewarded.
Forget what's said in team meetings. Watch who gets recognized, promoted or excused. If output trumps integrity, or speed beats alignment, that's your culture in practice.
When a top performer rolls their eyes in a team meeting and nothing happens, everyone sees it. Inconsistency breeds cynicism. Fairness builds credibility.
Trust doesn't scale on vibes. It's created through clear expectations, real feedback loops and consistent leadership behavior. If your people are guessing, they're not trusting.
From Drift To Design
Culture isn't an energy. It's operational infrastructure. Built through policies, behaviors, incentives and consequences.
It drifts when those elements fall out of alignment. But drift isn't destiny. Culture can be examined, redesigned and reinforced.
In their 11-year study of U.S. companies, Kotter and Heskett found that businesses with performance-focused cultures experienced over 750% net income growth, compared to just 1% growth in companies that let culture stagnate.
That kind of delta doesn't come from perks. It comes from design.
So ask your leadership team:
Where are we drifting?
What are we tolerating that contradicts what we claim to stand for?
And what are we doing, systematically, to rebuild trust, accountability and clarity?
Because culture isn't what you say in a meeting. It's what people believe when they're making hard decisions without supervision. And it's what your customers feel, especially when things go wrong.
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