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.