Despite all the talk about culture as a strategic asset, only 23 percent of employees globally say they are engaged at work, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report. Nearly 6 in 10 are quietly disengaged, doing the minimum, and emotionally checked out. 44 percent report experiencing significant daily stress. These numbers are not small. They reflect a systemic disconnection between what companies think they’re offering and how people are actually feeling.
Culture, at its core, is about what people feel, believe, and experience daily. Today’s workforce is calling for something deeper, especially Millennials and Gen Z, who now make up the majority. They crave purpose, psychological safety, transparency, and to be heard and understood. This isn’t about fueling a greater sense of entitlement but rather co-creating cultures that people can thrive in. They are asking valid questions: Does this place really see me? Am I driving impact?
We are not just working differently. We are feeling differently.
Listening is the Foundation
There is a kind of listening that changes things. Not the kind that checks boxes or tallies feedback scores. True listening is attuned, active, and ongoing. It recognizes that employees are not static data points.
They are dynamic, evolving humans navigating ambiguity, change, and increasing complexity both at work and in life. When organizations fail to listen in a meaningful way, they fail to adapt. And when they fail to adapt, they lose trust, talent, and time.
The modern organization is still largely designed for a different era that is hierarchical, reactive, and focused on efficiency over empathy. Yet we are now in a moment where agility, humanity, and culture are becoming the differentiators. In environments shaped by constant disruption, leaders can no longer rely on after-the-fact pulse surveys or once-a-year engagement reviews to guide decisions. The gap between sentiment and response is too wide. And the cost of inaction is simply too high.
From Feedback to Action
Feedback without follow-through leads to cynicism. Employees want to know that what they say actually shapes what happens. This is the real work of culture: closing the loop between listening and doing, between insight and action.
This requires a reimagining of traditional people practices. What if we thought of listening as a daily, integrated leadership behavior rather than an annual HR activity? What if managers were supported to respond not just with empathy, but with informed, measurable actions that address root causes, whether that’s clarity of role, workload distribution, or team dynamics? What if employees had the tools to act on their own insights, too, through coaching, reflection, or development opportunities?
We often assume culture lives in the abstract, in values, mission statements, or offsite gatherings. But culture is also in the small, repeated moments: how meetings begin and end, how feedback is given and received, how decisions are made and communicated, and whether people feel safe enough to share what’s really on their minds.
Listening, when done well, reveals where friction lives. It illuminates the delta between what a company says it values and what it actually tolerates. And it gives leaders the opportunity to respond before disengagement takes root.
Rethinking Organizational Health
Organizational health is not a fixed state. It’s a reflection of how effectively a system enables people to thrive and perform. Too often, we assess outcomes like productivity or engagement without assessing the conditions that shape them. Are teams underperforming, or are they under-supported? Are managers equipped with the context, tools, and feedback they need to lead well? Are structures unintentionally reinforcing overload, misalignment, or ambiguity?
As someone who has spent two decades in organizational development, I’ve learned that performance issues are rarely rooted in people alone, they are rooted in the systems surrounding them. Healthy organizations take a diagnostic view. They ask: Are our expectations clear? Are our teams resourced appropriately? Are we measuring success in ways that reflect both results and experience?
True organizational health requires more than broad engagement strategies. It demands a continuous, nuanced understanding of how the work environment, policies, leadership practices, norms, and support systems either enables or hinders performance. When we get curious about those inputs, our interventions become more timely, targeted, and effective.
High-Performing Teams Are the Strongest Signal of Culture
If you want to understand the real culture of an organization, look at its high-performing teams. They are navigating ambiguity, solving problems, and showing up for one another every day. These teams are living proof of what culture looks like when it works, not just as an aspiration, but as a felt experience.
High-performing teams operate with shared clarity. They communicate openly, recover quickly from tension, and invite dissent without devolving into dysfunction. They hold each other accountable while offering support. These are not just productive groups, they’re resilient, adaptable, and relationally strong.
The conditions that make this possible are rarely accidental. They are cultivated through conscious leadership, consistent behaviors, and psychological safety. Culture doesn’t just trickle down; it’s co-created in the day-to-day interactions: how meetings are run, how decisions are made, how feedback is offered and received.
Studying these teams offers powerful insight. They reveal the “real” operating system of a company beyond what values statements claim. Just as importantly, struggling teams reveal just as much. Not as failure points, but as signals: Where is trust breaking down? Where is clarity missing? Where is the system falling short?
Culture lives at the edges. In the teams that excel and in the ones under pressure. If we study both, we can start to build cultures that are not just aspirational, but achievable cultures that hold up under stress and evolve with intention.
From Culture Narratives to Culture Systems
For years, we have treated culture as a story we tell, crafted in values decks, refined in onboarding materials, and reiterated at all-hands meetings. These narratives matter, but they are no longer enough. In a world where context changes rapidly, where hybrid teams span geographies and expectations evolve faster than structures, culture must be more than a narrative. It must become a responsive system.
This means creating conditions where feedback is not delayed or diluted, but surfaced and understood in real time. Where patterns of disconnection, whether burnout, team strain, or equity concerns, are caught early. Where leadership development is tailored to what teams are actually facing on the ground.
Culture is not a byproduct of business. It is the operating system. Treating culture as a system does not diminish the human element; it protects it. It demands we become more thoughtful stewards of the human experience at work. It asks us to build organizations that learn continuously, respond in real time, and adapt with care. Cultures that don’t just listen, but understand. That doesn’t just state values, but live them consistently, and at scale.
The Opportunity Ahead
We are at a crossroads. Employee disengagement, burnout, and mistrust are rising. The question is not whether we can build better cultures. It’s whether we are willing to do the deeper work required to sustain them.
Culture cannot be outsourced, automated, or engineered into existence. But it can be cultivated. It can be shaped through intentional listening, meaningful action, and consistent care. And while technology may never replace the human aspects of leadership, it can help us illuminate the invisible, surfacing sentiment, uncovering patterns, and providing timely insights that help leaders lead better.
The widening culture gap is not inevitable. It is a call to lead differently, to prioritize the relational alongside the operational, to build cultures where people feel seen, supported, and inspired to do their best work.
This is the work of our time.
