Culture Is the New Scapegoat for Poor Leadership
When everyone’s to blame…no one is.
There was a time when true leaders were quick to remind everyone that they were in charge. “The buck stops here” was a common phrase that may have fed a leader’s ego, but it also acknowledged accountability for everything that happened on their watch.
How times have changed.
‘Me’ Is Now ‘We’
These days, you can’t hear a story about a company in crisis without someone quickly attributing the issues to its culture—a toxic environment, misplaced priorities, putting profit above safety. No doubt these are accurate assessments of many companies’ issues.
But the not-so-subtle insinuation is that the problems are a collective issue. What was once a single seat of accountability has devolved into an amorphous goo that drifts through the organization like San Francisco fog.
Personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’ have been replaced by ‘we’ and ‘they’. In the worst cases, there’re no pronouns at all. Just a master-of-the-obvious statement that ‘mistakes were made’.
The way these stories are told, culture isn’t a waterfall propelled by gravity, but rather a volcano, where the lava is constantly pushed upward by each employee until it reaches the executive floor, consuming the poor leader.
The innocent bystander.
Maybe even a victim.
In For a Penny, In For a Pound
In 1965, the ratio of CEO compensation to the average worker was 21-to-1. In 2023, it had ballooned to 290-to-1. That’s a 1281% increase (and worthy of a separate post for another day).
You would think, or at least hope, this obscene land grab might warrant a modest increase in accountability. But in our bizarro universe, compensation appears to have zero direct correlation with accountability. In fact, the opposite seems true.
Abusive behavior by a key executive?
Kickbacks in the sales org?
Unreported security breaches?
Injured customers due to defective products?
You guessed it—blame the culture.
Then, to top things off, the CEO brings in a consultant to do a deep dive on culture. A few workshops later, a recommitment to “our shared values”, the obligatory quiz, and poof, mission accomplished. Culture fixed.
Except it isn’t.
Because the same person is still gripping the wheel. And the culture is still off course.
Maybe It’s Just Time To Go
Edgar Schein, an expert on org culture and leadership said it best: “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is create and manage culture.”
He wasn’t referring to speeches, posters, or mission-vision-values statements. He was referring to actions.
Who you hire
Who you promote
Who you fire
Who reports directly to you. Who doesn’t
What gets rewarded
What gets tolerated
Messages are meaningless without actions. And leaders’ actions—large and small, good and bad—are studied, internalized, and cascaded through an organization. Those actions define the culture. Period.
Shouldering the responsibility for defining a culture can feel overwhelming. Guess what? It’s supposed to feel that way. It weighs on you. It keeps you up at night. It prematurely ages you. It ensures that a leader remains keenly aware of the downstream impact of their behavior.
It would be nice to say that most leaders learn this with time.
Some do. But most don’t.
And if you’re stuck in an organization where the leader consistently recasts their own shortcomings as everyone else’s fault, you have a choice to make:
Stay, and hope for the best.
Or find a new place with a different leader.