The Culture Gap No One Talks About

"My team and I mapped their culture across departments. After a few sessions, a pattern emerged. But it wasn't innovation; it was confusion. Across the organization, "innovation" meant different things to different people. Engineering thought it meant working fast-ship fast, iterate faster. Sales thought it was permission to cut corners. The product team thought it was about continuous improvement. Legal felt left out because there's no room for disruption in compliance."

"The numbers reveal an uncomfortable truth: Nearly half of employees can't remember their company's values. Almost one-third of U.K. employees say their organization's vision drowns in corporate jargon. In the U.S., over 30% of employees believe their leaders don't behave consistently with stated values. When you can't see your actual culture, you can't fix what's broken. You spend money and time on the wrong problems while real issues get worse. People find ways around broken systems."

Different departments interpret core values differently, with engineering equating innovation to speed, sales to cutting corners, product to continuous improvement, and legal to compliance constraints. Only 28% of employees report understanding company culture, and nearly half cannot recall stated values. Many leaders mistakenly believe employees share their cultural perception. Misalignment leads to wasted resources, unresolved systemic problems, eroded trust, and departing top performers. When culture is invisible, organizations cannot identify or fix root problems. Clear, shared definitions and visible signals of values are necessary to align behavior, reduce confusion, and improve retention and performance.

Read at Psychology Today