An organization's real culture comes from what leaders actually do, not what they post on walls. When stated values contradict how people behave, fear and retaliation take over. The gap between what you say and what you do is what shapes everything.
You know, your contradiction defines your culture, not what you have on the wall. In fact, the fact that you're talking so emphatically about all these values that are up on the wall and then doing something that's exactly the opposite creates an even more divisive culture. There were groups that couldn't work with each other. Almost everybody was afraid of working with him, for him, or bringing anything up because There was execution around retaliation when somebody questioned him. It was the contradiction that created the culture. Now, I know you're going to say my organization's nothing like that. That's an extreme example. It is. But it supports the hypothesis that our contradiction, yours and your organization, mine and my organization, is what creates our culture.
