Where Does Your Organization Live?
I didn’t always understand what a great culture looks like. As a young West Point cadet and later as an Army officer, I only had a vague notion of what culture was at all. Throughout my journey as a Soldier, though, I came to understand that there is a profound difference between healthy cultures and toxic ones. The former generates continued excellence because people are genuinely vested in the outcome. The latter ultimately drives off the best and brightest because there is no effort to make them want to buy in.
The examples are everywhere, and some of them are spectacular failures. When financial analyst Greg Smith left Goldman Sachs in 2012, he wrote a remarkable piece in the New York Times describing an environment that had become, in his words, as toxic and destructive as anything he had ever seen. He described a firm that had veered so far from the place he had joined out of college that he could no longer in good conscience identify with what it stood for. Over three million people read his account. Goldman Sachs, one of the most iconic financial institutions in the world, had allowed its culture to decay to the point where its most talented people could no longer tolerate being there.
That same year, the Australian Olympic swimming team arrived at the London Games heavily favored. They left with one gold medal. An independent review commissioned in the aftermath found a failure of leadership and culture at the heart of the collapse — bullying, misuse of prescription drugs, breaches of discipline — what the report called a “toxic” culture consuming the team from within.
Two very different organizations. Two very different industries. The same underlying problem: leaders who had lost sight of what their culture actually was, as opposed to what they assumed it to be.
That gap between assumption and reality is where cultures fail. And closing that gap starts with an honest look at where your organization actually sits today.
The Framework
In my 2017 book, “We’re All In,” I introduced the Five Levels of Culture as a way to help leaders see their organizations clearly. Not how they hoped they looked from the outside, but what was actually happening on the inside. The five levels are:
Level 1: The “Nametag” Culture
Level 2: The “Follower” Culture
Level 3: The “Points of Light” Culture
Level 4: The “Coalition of the Willing” Culture
Level 5: The “We’re All In” Culture.
Each level has its own characteristics, its own strengths and blind spots, and its own set of leadership behaviors that either sustain it or move it forward. None of these cultures are accidental. They are all the product of the leadership choices made at every level of the organization, day after day, over time.
Let me give you a brief portrait of each one. As you read, I want you to be honest with yourself about where you recognize your own organization.
Level 1: The Nametag Culture
The Nametag culture is what it sounds like: people are present, but that’s about as far as the connection goes. This is a loose confederation of individuals acting in their own personal interests. There is no clear azimuth, no shared sense of mission, no values that anyone could articulate if you put them on the spot. If a mission statement exists, it was written by one person and lives on a plaque in the lobby that no one reads.
As the Cheshire Cat tells Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” Nametag organizations wander. They do what they’ve always done. That becomes their strategy.
It’s not a question of whether a Nametag culture will implode. It’s a question of when.
Level 2: The Follower Culture
The Follower culture is healthier than Nametag, but it is still not an environment where great work happens consistently. Leadership here is highly centralized and controlling. The operative word is compliance. People follow the rules because they’re expected to, and when the rules don’t cover a situation, they wait for someone to write new ones before they act.
There is little trust and almost no empowerment. Decisions flow in one direction, from the top down, and the workforce has learned not to get out ahead of the leadership. Morale tends to be low. Longevity matters more than performance. The “Good Idea Fairy” visits the leadership often and the team chases one initiative after another, never quite finishing any of them.
In a Follower culture, everybody is just trying to survive.
Level 3: The Points of Light Culture
Level 3 is where things get interesting, and more complicated. This is the first level where genuine leadership starts to emerge. A few individuals in the organization have bought into the mission. They model the values. They are developing other leaders. They care about the culture and are actively trying to improve it.
The problem is that they are surrounded by people who aren’t there yet. The “Points of Light” are isolated pockets of excellence in an organization that hasn’t collectively committed to making excellence the norm. Without consistent support from senior leadership, the bright shining individuals wear down. Their energy fades. They either revert to the mean or leave.
Points of Light cultures have real potential. They also have real friction. The leaders who recognize this level for what it is and invest in the bright lights of buy-in are the ones who successfully make the climb to Level 4.
Level 4: The Coalition of the Willing
At Level 4, the culture has shifted meaningfully. The majority of team members have now bought into the organization’s goals and are beginning to align their personal goals with the company’s direction. The azimuth is clearer and better understood across the team. Leaders are developing other leaders. Trust and empowerment are present, not just as concepts but as actual practices.
This is a healthy culture. Most organizations that do serious work on their culture reach Level 4 and feel the significant difference from where they started. The temptation at this level is to stop. To say, “We’ve done it. This is good enough.”
It isn’t. Level 4 is not the destination. It is the launching pad.
Level 5: The “We’re All In” Culture
Level Five is The Level Five Culture of Commitment. It is a culture of excellence where fully committed team members see their personal success and fulfillment in the achievement of the organization’s goals and objectives. People here don’t work for a paycheck. They work because they believe in what the organization stands for and what it is trying to accomplish.
In a Level Five Culture, people understand the why. They exercise judgment when the situation calls for it. They hold each other accountable without being told to. They take initiative. They develop the next generation of leaders because they understand that the culture’s survival depends on it. Mission First, People Always is not just a slogan here. It is the way things actually work.
The data indicates only about 13% of the workforce in any given organization is truly All In. That number tells you something important: Level 5 is rare. It takes deliberate, persistent leadership to build it and even more persistence to sustain it. But the organizations that achieve it are the ones that outperform their competition year after year, attract and retain the best people, and weather disruption better than anyone else. They are home to committed adaptive leaders and team members who feel like they really belong.
Where Are You?
Over the next several weeks, we will go deeper on each of these levels: what they look like in practice, what keeps organizations stuck at each one, and what Adaptive Leaders can do to move their teams forward. We’ll look at the specific behaviors and conditions that characterize each level, as well as the leadership decisions that determine whether an organization climbs or stagnates.
For now, I want to leave you with the most important question in this framework:
Where does your organization actually live right now? Not where you hope it is. Not where it was two years ago. Where is it today, based on what you observe every week when you walk the floor, sit in your leadership meetings, and listen to how your people talk about their work?
That honest assessment is the starting point for everything that follows.
I’d love to hear which level resonates most with where your organization is right now. Leave a comment below and let’s talk about it.
Enjoy the journey!
