I’ve watched the same movie too many times. A CEO declares that culture matters, the board nods, investors smile, and then performance doesn’t spike fast enough. Pressure builds. The rhetoric shifts. OKRs get weaponized. People get pushed. The environment turns toxic. The board congratulates itself on “raising the bar,” and quietly ignores the collateral damage. Nothing changes until the board demands it.
I’m writing this because culture isn’t a soft topic; it’s a performance system. If governance doesn’t prioritize it with the same rigor it applies to revenue, the organization will drift into short-termism, performative toughness, and burnout masquerading as execution. That is a losing strategy.
The short-term trap: performative toughness breeds toxicity
Every time leaders confuse toughness with harshness, they plant the seeds of a collapse. I’ve seen OKRs used the right way:
to focus, align, and learn, and I’ve seen them misused as a cudgel to force output.
When OKRs become punishment or surveillance, leaders think they look decisive. In reality, they’re building a toxic environment. Attrition rises, creativity falls, and the cost of silence multiplies.
Culture is an investment. It has a time horizon. If you’re expecting a quarter-over-quarter culture dividend, you’ll panic and revert to fear-based management.
That panic is contagious. Boards and investors have to hold their nerve and insist on a more mature dashboard that mixes performance and culture, not pit them against each other. Otherwise, the system will cannibalize itself.
What boards must do differently?
If you want a different outcome, change what you measure and what you talk about. Don’t just approve budgets and applaud product roadmaps: interrogate the conditions that produce sustainable performance.
Measure the CEO on culture, not just numbers. Build explicit cultural metrics into their evaluation and incentives. Treat them as leading indicators of performance, not an HR afterthought.
Track engagement, well-being, and belonging. Not vanity surveys, real trend data with open comments, cohort cuts, and follow-through. Ask whether people feel respected, safe to speak up, and proud to be here. If those indicators are deteriorating, revenue growth is on borrowed time.
Put culture on the board agenda at every meeting. Bring it out of the “people update” and into core governance. Ask:
Where is trust eroding?
Where do we see disrespect?
What friction points block collaboration?
What is the CEO personally doing to model the standard?
This is not theoretical. Look at what Frances Frei did during Uber’s reckoning. She didn’t launch a feel-good campaign; she led hard conversations, asked uncomfortable questions, and brought accountability to the top. That’s the work. Culture changes when leaders change, starting with the CEO and extending to the board.
The data doesn’t lie, but we often do to ourselves
I’ve worked with over 1,500 executives, and I ask two simple questions.
First: Have you experienced toxic behavior in the last six months? Roughly 50% say yes.
Second: Were you the cause of any of those instances? Roughly 99% say no. The math doesn’t add up.
This is the leadership blind spot. We overestimate our intentions and underestimate our impact. Business school trained many of us to be the smartest person in the room, to optimize for the right answer, and to compete for visibility. That conditioning often nudges us toward “me over we.” Most people aren’t malicious; they’re patterned. But patterns have consequences.
The fix starts with reflective accountability. Not a grand apology tour, an honest audit that begins at the top. I have to be willing to say: I’m part of the problem and I’m part of the solution. Then I have to change my behavior in public, consistently, so others see a new standard and feel safe to follow it.
Operationalizing empathy with real metrics
Empathy without measurement is theater. Measurement without empathy is control. The goal is data-driven humanism: rigorous metrics that illuminate, not intimidate.
Here’s how I operationalize it with boards and CEOs:
Define a small set of leading indicators: engagement quality (not just participation), well-being (burnout risk, workload sustainability), and sense of belonging (inclusion, respect, pride). Track them longitudinally and by critical cohorts.
Tie accountability to action, not optics. The CEO’s score isn’t a trophy; it’s a prompt: What did you learn? What did you change? What did your top team change? What moved?
Create governance rituals. Every board meeting starts with a brief culture pulse and ends with explicit commitments: what the CEO will model, what the C-suite will cascade, what will be revisited next time.
Protect against weaponization. Cultural metrics are not a new stick. If scores dip, the response is learning and support, not punishment. Otherwise, people will game the numbers and you’ll lose the truth.
Set the time horizon. Agree upfront that meaningful culture shifts take quarters, not weeks. Patience is a governance virtue.
A quick note on employees: this isn’t about entitlement. When people sign on, they’re accountable for effort and outcomes. But leaders set the conditions. If I want performance at scale, I have to design a system where people can thrive, tell the truth, and take smart risks without fear.
My commitment: and my ask of you
I will keep asking the hard questions at the top:
Where am I creating fear?
Where am I rewarding performative toughness?
Where am I ignoring signals because the numbers look fine? And I will keep tying culture to governance, because without that link, good intentions die under pressure.
If you’re a board chair, investor, or CEO, here’s the invitation: put culture on the scorecard, put it on the agenda, and put yourself in the mirror. Demand patience and proof. Refuse vanity metrics. Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding. Then have it again.
Because until boards and investors demand more of CEOs on culture, with real metrics, real accountability, and real time, nothing will truly change. And if nothing changes, the toxicity you tolerate today will be the performance risk you report tomorrow.
