Every company has a list of values. Most of them are fine: integrity, respect, accountability, teamwork. You could move the poster from one lobby to another and nobody would notice.
What people actually learn about a company’s culture comes from somewhere else. They learn it from what happens when a top performer behaves badly. They learn it from who gets promoted, what gets laughed off in a meeting, and which problem everyone knows about and nobody raises. Over the years I have come to define culture this way: culture is what you tolerate.
The standard you walk past is the standard you set
When I started my last firm, there was no mission statement on the wall. The principles were already clear to me. Integrity was nonnegotiable. Arrogance was poison. If you said you would do something, you did it, and it was always fine to tell a client, “I don’t know, but I will get you an answer.”
Those principles held while the company was small and I was in the room. As we grew into other markets, they had to be carried by other people in other offices. In one of our offices, two managers built a subculture that none of us would have chosen. The warning signs became clear only after the damage surfaced. Our focus on growth had pulled attention away from our founding values, and bad behavior had room to hide. When we found it, we had to root it out, and both managers left.
It was one of the harder lessons of building the firm, and a personal one, because what I found was so far from the company I thought I was running. A written value did nothing to stop it. What mattered was what we were willing to notice and act on, and how quickly.
Culture resets through behavior, not speeches
Years earlier, I had taken over the Kansas City office of a consulting firm when it was the lowest-performing unit in the company. Morale was low, boundaries had dissolved, and respect for the company and for each other had eroded. I did not open with a speech. I listened first, made changes in sales and delivery, and gave the team room to step up. Some embraced it. Others chose to leave.
What I learned there, and again when I rebuilt another office in a different market, is that culture does not reset through speeches. It resets through consistent, visible action. The earliest sign that things were improving was not financial. There were fewer surprises. When something went wrong, people knew who owned it. Decisions were made faster and explained plainly. People watched what was now acceptable and what was not, and they adjusted.
Four questions to ask this week
If you lead a team, a function or a company, these questions will tell you more than an engagement survey will.
- What did we let slide last quarter, and who saw us let it slide?
- Who was recently promoted or rewarded, and for what behavior?
- What does a new hire learn in their first month, just by watching?
- When did we last hold someone to a stated value when it cost us something?
If the answers do not match the values on the wall, believe the answers.
Small moments add up
Nobody decides to tolerate bad behavior. It happens in small moments when waiting is easier than acting, and each one tells everyone watching what is acceptable. The same is true in the other direction. A leader who acts quickly, explains the reason plainly and does it the same way every time is building a culture, whether or not anyone calls it that.
You can start with a single thing you have been walking past.
About Eric Mahler
Eric Mahler is the founder and Managing Partner of Aretos Advisory, an executive advisory firm focused on transformation, AI governance, and leadership coherence. He has spent thirty years advising boards and executive teams across industries, including roles at Merrill Lynch, Southwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and Cap Gemini, and as the founder of Fulcrum Consulting, which he built and exited in 2024.
He is the author of The Center of the Compass, forthcoming from Amplify Publishing in December 2026, endorsed by Marshall Goldsmith, David Horsager, and Josh Linkner. He is also a keynote speaker on leadership, AI governance, and organizational resilience.
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