Nice people, broken system: why your culture work isn’t working.

Executives who treat culture as “how nicely people are treated” or “how fun the place feels” are flying blind; culture is the system of structures, processes, and shared habits that either amplifies performance or quietly taxes it.​

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Why “nice culture” isn’t enough

Many senior leaders genuinely believe they have a good handle on their culture because they see engagement events, hear polite feedback, and feel confident in their own intentions. Yet research consistently shows that executives and HR leaders rate their cultures far more positively than employees do, creating a dangerous perception gap. When leaders equate culture with surface signals, pizza lunches, friendly tone, a handful of high performers, they miss deeper dynamics: unclear roles, fragile cross-team relationships, inconsistent decision‑making, and unspoken histories that shape how people actually behave. Those elements of structure, not sentiment, determine whether the strategy gets executed or stalls.​​

The illusion of "I know our culture."

Two forces drive overconfidence. First, distance: executives spend most of their time in strategic meetings and filtered conversations, insulated from day-to-day friction. Second, optimism bias: leaders naturally focus on the culture they think they've built, not the one employees actually experience. Surveys show that while a large majority of executives believe their organizations invest in and continually improve culture, less than half of employees agree, and front-line staff often report very different realities around trust, clarity, and inclusion. The result is a "strategic alignment illusion," where leaders assume teams are on the same page, even as only a small fraction of employees say leadership has clearly communicated where the organization is headed and how their work connects.​

Sadly, I work regularly with executives who really believe they have their finger on the pulse of their culture. When using data, however, it shows a very different story. Structured culture assessments cut through this illusion by measuring the underlying system rather than relying on anecdotes.  And, real data removes bias.  A robust tool that looks at purpose and goals, roles, processes, team relationships, cross-functional collaboration, problem‑solving, commitment, and organizational learning will show, with uncomfortable clarity, where culture is supporting performance and where it is quietly eroding it. Here are three case studies using a data-driven cultural assessment, the results, the realization, and the solution that got things back on track.

What data-driven culture work reveals: case study number one

A local client, a boutique, bespoke piercing studio, assumed they had a "people problem" and went shopping for a hard-charging HR director to "fix behavior"; the assessment showed strong purpose, clear roles, and high commitment, but serious gaps in process, team relationships, and inter-team coordination. What looked like attitude issues were actually the predictable result of vague workflows and inconsistent handoffs, creating stress and conflict, problems only visible when data was mapped across the whole system.​​ Using the data, we were able to create clear, structured processes that eliminated role confusion and ultimately the conflict that resulted.  The whole team felt included, heard, and worked together in a much more structured way.  Results are visible in their Glass Door reviews: "don't even consider applying here if you're not an employee serious about quality results"!  Quality: up. Client satisfaction: up. Turnover: down.

When structure is the real culture: case study number two

In a medical equipment manufacturer, executives invested heavily in leadership training for a small cohort, convinced that poor collaboration was a skills gap. The learning assessment and culture survey told a different story: teams had strong internal processes and healthy local relationships, but leaders outside the C‑suite had never seen the strategic plan and could not articulate what they were collectively working toward. Scores in passion, commitment, and organizational knowledge lagged, not because people were lazy or unskilled, but because the structural connection between strategy and daily work was missing.

Once executives shared the plan, cascaded clear goals, and created simple mechanisms for cross-functional planning, engagement and alignment improved, not because people were "nicer," but because the architecture of the culture was finally coherent.

When "people problems" are really process problems: case study number three

A local automotive repair shop came looking for help with what the manager described as "behavior and attitude issues" on the team. There were frequent conflicts, frayed relationships, and a sense that people "just weren't professional enough." On the surface, it looked like a textbook culture problem: difficult personalities, poor teamwork, and low morale. Many leaders in this position default to more rules, tougher supervision, or replacing "problem employees."​

The organizational assessment painted a different picture. Scores clustered low in organizational/team processes and organizational relationships, while other areas, like basic role understanding, were relatively stronger. In practice, there were almost no clearly defined workflows, handoffs, or standards for how work should flow between technicians, service advisors, and the front desk. Vehicles backed up, expectations clashed, and everyone interpreted "the right way" differently. The so-called culture problem was largely the predictable human response to chaotic processes. Once the team mapped key processes, prioritized fixes using simple Lean tools, and instituted weekly rounding and feedback between the manager and staff, relationships improved, role stress dropped, and the "attitude issues" largely evaporated. The culture didn't change because people became nicer; it changed because the system stopped putting them in constant conflict.​

In all three cases, the real cultural leverage came from clarifying structure and information flow, not from more perks or motivational speeches.​​

Why executives need data, not just instincts

Data-driven culture work is not about reducing people to numbers; it is about giving leaders a realistic baseline from which to lead. Highly data-driven organizations are several times more likely to report significant improvements in decision‑making, operational efficiency, and performance than those relying on intuition alone, precisely because they can see patterns that do not show up in leadership anecdotes. In the culture domain, that means understanding where psychological safety is fragile, where knowledge is hoarded instead of shared, where processes are sabotaging relationships, and where strategy is failing to reach the front line. For executives, the question is no longer "Do I have a good feel for our culture?" but "Am I willing to confront the difference between the culture I think we have and the one our data reveals?" The leaders who embrace that gap, and act on it, are the ones whose organizations stop confusing "nice" with "healthy" and start building cultures that can actually deliver on strategy.

Culture work isn't about being nicer; it's about reducing rework, conflict, and downtime by tightening roles and processes so people can do their jobs without constant friction.  What gets dismissed as 'soft' culture is often just unpriced operational drag, lost hours, avoidable mistakes, and churn that quietly eats margins.

Looking to better understanding your culture? We have two signature assessments: Culture Assessment that measures the eight elements of culture and our Learning Organization assessment - how is your organization learning, or is it?