Your Culture is Showing – Whether You Designed It or Not

by Pamela Coleman

July 2026

According to Salesforce research, over 7 in 10 employees feel motivated to do their best work when they feel connected to their company's culture. What have you done to ensure your employees understand your culture enough to connect with it?

Establishing a culture employees can live by requires leaders to embody it, too. But leaders cannot do so without a clear cultural framework. SHRM's 2026 Global Workplace Culture Report surveyed 27,159 workers across 25 countries and found there is no universal "right" culture — organizations must align their cultural practices with their strategic goals, operational needs, and workforce dynamics. Even more urgently, culture manifests whether or not you intend it, and it continues to reshape itself as leaders come and go, during growth and acquisition, and as products evolve. Doesn’t it make sense to invest energy in its design and execution, as with any other goal?

The renowned merger between Boeing and McDonnell Douglas had catastrophic consequences because the cultures, or operating systems, within the two companies were vastly different. Boeing had a culture focused on quality and engineering excellence, whereas McDonnell-Douglas emphasized cost reduction and stock performance: move intentionally or move fast.

These two operating systems were at odds, and the merged culture became incoherent. Senior executives created incentive structures that rewarded hitting financial targets and punished raising concerns. In doing so, they created a lived experience that signaled the new operating methods to employees. Middle managers learned to suppress bad news or face career consequences. The organizational culture became one where admitting problems was more personally dangerous than hiding them. Employees learned that rewards came from speed, not caution. The consequence was devastating: two 737 Max crashes killed 346 people, Boeing's five-year total shareholder returns plummeted by over 50%, and the company faced investigations by the FAA, NTSB, and SEC.

Boeing didn’t set out to build a culture that silenced its engineers. It emerged by default, decision by decision, until the consequences became impossible to ignore. What is your culture showing right now — and did you design it that way? The Cultural Coherence Model guides leaders through the process of effective cultural design and execution. The book is available on Amazon.