To Change Company Culture, Focus on Systems Not Communication (A Response for Leaders)

A recent article, To Change Company Culture, Focus on Systems Not Communication, makes an important point: culture isn’t defined by what leaders say. It’s defined by what organizations do.

To Change Company Culture, Focus on Systems—Not Communication

That distinction is crucial.

Too many workplaces perform culture like theater: glossy diversity statements, mandatory harassment trainings, wellness perks while the real systems underneath remain untouched.

I’ve seen this firsthand. At one former workplace, our job descriptions ended with “We value diversity and inclusion.” We completed harassment and discrimination training. We had wellness programs. And yet the systems that actually governed how people worked were adversarial, contradictory, and unsafe. Performance reviews punished instead of developed. Accommodation requests were treated with suspicion, not care. HR meetings created more fear than support.

The systems told the truth. The slogans were just the costume.

What Leaders Need to Hear

If you are a leader who truly wants to “do the right thing,” here’s the reality:

• Culture is not what you communicate. It’s the sum of your systems, incentives, and accountability structures.

• Employees always see the gap. If you train them on inclusion and then promote based on favoritism, the promotion system is the culture, not the training.

• Systemic contradictions breed cynicism. Once trust is lost, employees assume the slogans are shields against criticism, not commitments to change.

Making It Actionable

Here are five steps leaders can take today:

1. Audit the Gap Between Slogans and Systems

Action: Pull up your last HR training slides, handbook, or DEI statement. Then ask:

• Do our performance reviews reflect those values, or undermine them?

• Do our promotion decisions align with inclusion, or with favoritism?

• Do employees actually feel safe reporting issues, or do they fear retaliation?

If your values are written in one place and contradicted in another, employees see the contradiction immediately. That’s your real culture.

2. Redesign Incentives

People follow what gets rewarded. If managers are praised for “productivity” but not for developing people, they’ll optimize for output, not inclusion.

Action: Tie part of manager performance evaluation to:

• Turnover rates in their team.

• Growth and retention of diverse talent.

• Peer and direct-report feedback on psychological safety.

3. Build Checks and Balances

Most workplaces unintentionally create fox-guarding-the-henhouse structures: HR manages both employee advocacy and company defense.

Action:

• Create independent ombuds or external reporting pathways.

• Make accommodation requests trackable and auditable.

• Rotate who sits in on reviews to prevent entrenched bias.

4. Turn Training Into Practice

Anti-harassment training and wellness programs are great but only if they connect to daily decisions.

Action:

• After training, managers must log how they’ll apply it in their next review, project kickoff, or conflict resolution.

• Follow up quarterly: Did that happen? If not, why?

5. Repair Breaches of Trust

If your company has already fallen into “culture theater” (slogans on paper, contradiction in practice), employees will be cynical.

Action:

• Acknowledge the gap out loud. (“We realized our systems didn’t reflect our values.”)

• Publicly commit to one systemic change within 90 days.

• Track and share results transparently.

These are not abstract ideals. They’re concrete levers leaders can pull.

The Non-Negotiables

If you want real culture change, there are a few “musts” that go beyond what most articles cover:

• Make invisible power visible.

  Publish who has decision-making authority at each level and how appeals work. Ambiguity around power is one of the biggest enablers of bullying and discrimination.

  
  

• Separate development from discipline.

  A “performance review” that doubles as both a coaching tool and a disciplinary record is inherently unsafe. Leaders need separate systems: one for growth, one for accountability.

  
  

• Track experiences, not just outcomes.

  Output metrics (deadlines, sales, code shipped) are easy to measure, but culture lives in how those outcomes are achieved. Pulse surveys, turnover interviews, and even listening sessions should be systematized not optional.

  
  

• Integrate accommodations into the workflow.

  Don’t treat accessibility or neurodivergent accommodations as exceptions. Bake flexibility into the system so no one feels like they’re asking for “special treatment.”

  
  

• Hold managers accountable for trust.

  Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers. If a manager consistently creates attrition or unsafe environments, that’s not a “personality clash,” that’s a system failure. Leaders must treat it as such.

  
  

• Close the loop when employees raise issues.

  When an employee raises an issue, leaders must show not only that it was “heard” but what action was taken and what systemic changes, if any, resulted. Silence erodes culture faster than open mistakes.

Culture is not the poster on the wall. It’s the friction or flow that employees experience every day when they navigate your systems.

Leaders who want to do the right thing don’t polish slogans. They align systems so those slogans ring true.