Good Cultures Don’t Need Slogans

Why the loudest talk about workplace culture often signals the weakest culture of all

By LONNIE KING

There’s a strange irony about corporate culture: the companies with the strongest cultures rarely talk about it. And the companies that can’t stop talking about culture usually don’t have one worth keeping.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately — partly because I work for a company that, if I’m honest, doesn’t have a great culture. It’s not necessarily awful all the time, but it’s inconsistent. What one department experiences might be totally different from another.

Communication between groups is strained, trust feels optional, and too often people are more concerned with protecting their turf than with building something together. It’s hard to imagine that environment being described as a “good culture.”

But that’s what got me wondering: what does that phrase even mean? And, if you have to constantly tell people how great your culture is, do you really have one?

Culture as the Thing You Don’t Have to Talk About

Healthy culture is quiet. It doesn’t need branding, slogans, or a “Culture Committee.”

When people genuinely enjoy their work and respect their colleagues, they don’t have to wear matching shirts that say We’re All in This Together. They just are.

In a workplace where culture works, people know:

• what’s expected of them,
• how their work connects to a bigger goal,
• and that they’ll be treated fairly when things go wrong.

They don’t have to decode corporate jargon to find meaning or reassurance. They feel it every day — in tone, in trust, in small acts of respect that don’t need to be scripted or incentivized.

When culture is real, it’s lived, not marketed.

I think about it the same way I think about family or religious values. If I have to keep telling people what I value, but my behavior doesn’t make those values obvious, then people have every right to doubt whether I really value those things at all.

Families that truly have strong values don’t spend much time bragging about them — they live them. Their actions make it clear what matters to them. You see it in how they talk to one another, how they handle conflict, how they show up when things get hard.

Corporate culture works the same way.

When a company truly values people, respect, honesty, or collaboration, you can see it in the way people treat each other — even under pressure. But when those things have to be announced or marketed, that’s a red flag. Because if a company has to tell you how great its culture is, it probably isn’t.

The best corporate cultures are self-evident. You can feel them before you read them in a handbook. You see it in low turnover, genuine teamwork, and departments that don’t treat each other as rivals.

The worst cultures, on the other hand, produce the opposite — constant turnover, quiet frustration, internal bickering, and entire teams that function like isolated islands.

And no amount of slogans, “value statements,” or leadership emails can fix that disconnect.

A strong culture doesn’t need to be advertised. A broken one can’t stop talking about itself.

When the Branding Machine Kicks In

The moment a company starts building a campaign around its “core values” or “shared culture,” it’s often because the real thing is slipping away.

Think about it: nobody has ever had to start an ad campaign for gravity. You only have to explain the concept of gravity when people have stopped feeling its pull.

That’s what most culture initiatives are — elaborate ways to compensate for the absence of something that should be naturally occurring.

They roll out posters, PowerPoints and cultural flywheels with words like Integrity and Collaboration…but they have to do that because those qualities aren’t showing up in the day-to-day grind.

They host “culture weeks,” “fun days” and “employee engagement surveys” because leadership senses something’s wrong — but can’t quite figure out or admit how deep the disconnect goes.

But when the culture is right, fun days are grassroots affairs, not corporate mandates. And employees are organically engaged with each other. It’s all very natural.

It’s the same reason we don’t see happy couples posting hourly declarations of love on Facebook. People who feel secure don’t need to keep proving it to the world.

Insecure people — and insecure companies — do.

The Many Cultures Inside One Company

Of course, it’s not always black-and-white. Big companies, like the one I work for, aren’t monolithic. They’re more like mosaics of subcultures — small, localized ecosystems shaped by middle managers, team chemistry, and everyday norms.

Some departments might feel collaborative and positive, while others are riddled with distrust or indifference. The “corporate culture” that leadership touts may exist in PowerPoint form but vanishes entirely by the time it reaches the warehouse, the field office, or the purchasing department.

That’s why two people can work for the same company and describe it in completely different ways — one calling it “a great place to work,” the other barely hanging on.

Culture isn’t what the company says it is; it’s what the employees feel it is.

The Quiet Test of Culture

So maybe that’s the test.

If your company’s culture has to be talked into existence, it probably doesn’t exist. If your leadership team feels the need to keep reminding everyone of “who we are,” it might be because nobody can recognize that identity in what they see on a daily basis.

In fact, the best places to work spend very little time publicizing how important their associates are to them. But I guarantee you those associates know it instinctively. Because they see it in action.

Real culture doesn’t need a slogan. It doesn’t have to have catchy WIGs (“Wildly Important Goals”). Real culture is embedded in the way people treat each other, the tone of the meetings, and whether cross-department emails sound like cooperation or combat.

It’s not the values written on the wall — it’s the values that survive the quarterly fire drill, the budget cut, or the tough conversation nobody wants to have. Because in the end, good culture doesn’t announce itself.

It shows up. Quietly. Consistently.

And you know it’s there — not because someone told you, but because you can feel it and want to be in the thick of it.

Grace and grit to you! — LK