Welcome to Friday 411, issue #126. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you will create behaviors that generate a healthier culture. 

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1 Insight 

A healthy company culture isn’t mysterious. It’s simply values lived out in everyday behaviors. 

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Healthy company culture is like the Loch Ness Monster. Some swear they’ve seen it. Others insist it’s just a myth. Every now and then, someone shares a fuzzy picture—“Look! There it is!”—only for skeptics to roll their eyes and say, “That’s not real.”  

That’s how leaders often treat the culture they seek. It feels mysterious, hard to define, maybe even impossible to capture unless you’re lucky. Some leaders get glimpses of it when things are going well, but then it disappears into the fog.  

Here’s the truth: culture isn’t magical, and it isn’t mythical. It’s not a creature hiding in the deep waiting to surface. It’s understandable and observable. Most importantly, it’s something you can shape.  

In today’s newsletter, we’re going to look at how you shape culture by conducting a Culture Audit. 

 

 

What Culture Really Is  

Every organization has a culture. Culture is the lived-out values and beliefs of your organization.  

Whether they’re written down or not, every company has values. Your company’s values shape your decisions, behaviors, and norms. The important questions are:  

1. 1. Do you know your company’s values?  
   2. Were these values intentionally selected? (In other words, do values drive behaviors or do haphazard behaviors represent unintended values?)  
   3. If company values are predetermined and stated, do employees’ behaviors line up with those values?  

When values and actions don’t match, you create an unhealthy culture. Leaders say one thing but do another. Cynicism creeps in. Trust evaporates.  

When values and actions match? Teams thrive and companies succeed.   

 

 

The Leader’s Role in Culture 

Healthy cultures don’t appear by accident. Leaders shape them through consistent action. In our work with companies across industries, we’ve seen five leadership practices that create a healthy culture: 

1. 1. Express values often. Talk about them in meetings, hiring, and recognition. 
   2. Expect values-driven behavior. Clarify what behaviors you want to see. 
   3. Reinforce them. Affirm people when you see them living the values and redirect when you don’t. 
   4. Reward them. Don’t just celebrate results—celebrate lived-out values. 
   5. Don’t tolerate violations. Looking the other way when values are ignored destroys trust. 

We once worked with a leader, Joel, whose company claimed “service” was their top value. But every month, Joel would reward his top seller with a bonus. 

The result? Employees cared about landing the sale, not delivering on their promises. Customer complaints piled up. Employees started rolling their eyes anytime leadership mentioned the importance of service. 

Joel decided things needed to change. To spark transformation, he talked about service in every meeting, training his team with a focus on quality. He took his team to experience meals in restaurants that modeled excellence in service. While in the field with his team members, he coached, affirmed, and corrected their customer service habits. Joel shifted the bonus structure to reward both top sales and highest customer service scores. After 60 days, the culture changed. Service wasn’t just a slogan. It became a standard. 

 

 

The Culture Audit: A Practical Tool  

How do you know if your culture is healthy? How can you close the gap between what you say you value and what actually happens?  

That’s where the Culture Audit comes in. It’s a simple four-step process you can use with your team:  

Step 1: Pick one value.  

Don’t try to tackle everything at once. Select one core value.  

Step 2: Identify behaviors that reflect or conflict with that value.  

Using that value, identify the behaviors that conflict or reflect that value. Conflictive behaviors are actions that contradict the value. Reflective behaviors are actions that align with the value.  

Ask your team to identify five different types of behaviors:  

1. 1. Habits (actions that people do automatically)  
   2. Attitudes (how they talk and think)  
   3. Resource allocation (where money and time goes)  
   4. Policies (the official rules)  
   5. Processes (how repeated work gets done)  

Step 3: Decide whether each behavior needs to continue, stop, or be replaced.  

Look at each of the behaviors you identified. For each of them, determine if it needs to continue, stop, or be replaced.  

• • Continue: These behaviors clearly align with the value and should be reinforced.  
    Joel provided monthly service training to his team. He believed he should continue while making it more hands-on. 
      

• • Stop: These behaviors contradict the value and bring no benefit.  
    Joel allowed his team to bad-mouth customers when they filed a complaint. He recognized that this behavior needed to stop. 
      

• • Replace: These behaviors contradict the value but are rooted in something good.  
    Joel determined that he didn’t need to stop giving bonuses. But bonuses did need to change so that he rewarded both sales and service.   

Step 4: Prioritize 1–2 behaviors to change.  

You can’t fix everything in your culture at once. You can build momentum by implementing one or two behaviors to reinforce, stop, or be replaced. 

 

 

How a Culture Audit Helps  

Leaders often feel the gap between vision and execution. They may have written inspiring values, but day-to-day actions tell a different story.  

The Culture Audit bridges that gap. It gives you a structured way to check whether your values are more than wall art and gives your team permission to be honest about what’s really happening.  

Culture isn’t like chasing Nessie. You don’t have to hope you stumble onto it. You can audit it, shape it, and strengthen it—one behavior at a time. 

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1 Action 

Gather your team this week to run a Culture Audit on one of your values. 

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