The Just Don't Get It!

leadership really works, and how essential culture is to everything that follows. That’s why it’s worth pausing before you start—to take an honest cultural pulse check. A Simple Assessment Take a walk through your facility with these questions in mind: Relationships and connection: Do people make eye contact when you walk by, or do they look away? Do leaders greet employees by name? Is there natural conversation and camaraderie, or does your presence create awkward silence? When teams interact, do you see mutual respect and collaboration? Obvious evidence of workarounds: Look for the obvious signs—cardboard acting as a shim or stabilizer, duct tape holding things together, handwritten signs taped to machines with warnings or instructions. These workarounds aren’t just maintenance issues; they’re cultural indicators. Do teams dig for root causes and fix things properly, or do they patch problems and move on? In healthy cultures, workarounds become the known villain—something to identify and eliminate, not accept and normalize. Trust and transparency: Do people speak openly about problems, or do they tell you what you want to hear?

30