The Question That Tells You What Your Culture Really Runs On

In brief

The myth: you find out what your culture is from surveys, values statements and turnover numbers.
The truth: those tell you what already happened. The fastest read on your culture is one question: why did we decide it that way?
The answer usually falls into one of three places: because we had to, because a person said so, or because that’s who we are.

When leaders want to know how their culture is doing, they usually look at numbers. Engagement scores. Turnover. Exit interview themes. Glassdoor ratings.

Those numbers matter. But they all have the same problem: they’re late. By the time engagement drops or turnover climbs, the culture has already shifted. The numbers tell you it happened. They don’t tell you when, or why.

The myth: you measure culture with surveys and statistics

It’s an easy belief to hold. Surveys feel objective. Turnover is a hard number. Values are written down. Together they seem like a complete picture.

But surveys measure how people feel about what already happened. Turnover counts the people who already decided to leave. And values describe what the company says, not what it does. None of them show you the culture while it’s being made.

The truth: culture shows up in the reason behind a decision

Every decision a company makes comes with a reason, spoken or not. Why did we promote her? Why did we let that behavior slide? Why did we change the policy? Why did we take that client?

Ask “why did we decide it that way?” and listen to the answer. It almost always lands in one of three places.

“Because we had to.” The reason is the law, a regulation or the bare minimum required. There’s no company standard behind it, only the floor. When this is the main answer, the culture is running on whatever people bring with them, and fear often fills the gap.

“Because that’s what [a person] wants.” The reason is one leader’s preference. That’s how the founder likes it. That’s what the VP would do. There is a standard, but it belongs to a person, not the company. When that person leaves, the standard leaves too. And different leaders bring different standards, which is how one company ends up with several cultures.

“Because that’s who we are.” The reason ties back to the company’s own identity, the personality it has named and the behaviors it has described. The same hard choices still come up. The difference is that they’re made, and checked, against a standard the company itself wrote.

That answer is the live read on your culture. Surveys and turnover are still useful. They confirm, later, what the answer to that question was already telling you.

Why this question works

It’s in the moment. You don’t have to wait for the next survey. You can ask it this week, about a decision made yesterday.

It’s hard to fake. People can say the right things about values. It’s much harder to give a reason that ties back to identity if that isn’t how the decision was really made.

It works at every level. A frontline supervisor deciding a schedule and a leadership team deciding a restructuring both have a reason. The question applies to both.

One caution: the question is about how a decision was made, not whether it should have been made. Leaders still own the decision. What the question checks is whether the reasoning runs on the company’s identity or on something else.

What to do with the answer

Start asking it. In leadership meetings, in one-on-ones, after big decisions. “Walk me through why we landed there.”
Listen for whose standard it is. Is the reason the law, a person or the company’s identity?
Pay attention to answers that can’t be explained simply. No decision is too complex to explain plainly. If a leader can’t explain the reasoning in a way their team can follow, that’s worth noticing. It’s often where off-identity reasoning hides.
Give people the standard to point to. If the answer is rarely “because that’s who we are,” it’s usually because no one has written down who you are. That starts with naming your company personality and describing it in behaviors people can see.

The same question works in everyday conversations too. When an employee asks why a rule exists, the answer they get tells them what the culture runs on. I wrote about that in Every Conversation Is a Culture Conversation.

A culture doesn’t become toxic in one decision. It drifts, one reason at a time. That’s why I say there’s no such thing as a non-toxic culture, only one that’s managed or one that isn’t.

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