Most organizations are branding their culture, not building it.
Most organizations have a culture story. Very few can prove it holds up when things get hard.
Ann Melinger, CEO of bink., is trying to change that. Her team just launched the Culture at Work Study - research designed to surface an honest picture of how culture actually operates inside organizations. Not the version in the all-hands deck. The version employees experience every day.
I asked Ann a few questions about her research, what leaders aren't saying out loud, and why knowing the gap and doing nothing about it might be the most dangerous move of all.
The survey is open through May 20. More on that at the end.
Every company claims culture is a priority. What made you decide this moment specifically needed a formal research study?
Culture has never been more discussed — or more abstract. It's on the cover of Harvard Business Review and all over LinkedIn. Leaders talk about it constantly.
But the gap between claiming culture matters and actually doing anything structural about it has never been wider. In many organizations, culture is still managed through values language and engagement programs, not through systems, incentives, and performance outcomes.
We saw an opportunity to step back and ask: what is actually shaping culture right now, and how does it hold up under pressure? Not just inside one company, but across organizations.
The premise of this study is that culture is what leaders, systems, and incentives reinforce and not what's written on a wall. Where do you see the most obvious gap between stated values and actual behavior?
Most companies say they value core values like collaboration, accountability, and innovation. But when you look at how performance is managed and decisions get made, the signals are often very different:
Collaboration is a stated value, but individual performance is what's rewarded
Accountability is emphasized, but top performers get exceptions
Innovation is encouraged, but risk-taking is quietly penalized
People aren't reading the values poster. They're watching who gets promoted, who gets protected, and what behavior gets excused in a crunch. Employees notice those inconsistencies, even when they go undiscussed.
"Operationalizing culture" is a phrase I’ve heard you use. What does it look like when an organization is doing it badly?
The most common version isn't neglect. It's treating culture as a communications problem.
That often looks like launching a values refresh with new language and updated visuals, then changing nothing about how decisions get made or how people are evaluated. Organizations in that position think they're operationalizing culture. They're really just branding it.
“The most common version isn’t neglect. It’s treating culture as a communications problem.”
When culture breaks down, what do you think leaders misread first?
They tend to misread it as a communication or engagement issue, when it's really a systems and ownership issue.
Leaders reach for communication as the fix because it's visible and fast — and it doesn't require examining their own behavior or disrupting systems that are producing results, even when those results come with cultural costs. So organizations end up spending a lot of time addressing symptoms instead of root causes.
You designed this study to capture "what leaders won't say out loud." What do you think people know but aren't saying?
I don't want to get too far ahead of the data, but I think there are a few things leaders sense and don't often name.
That results are sometimes prioritized over stated values — and there's a quiet discomfort about it that rarely gets surfaced
That certain behaviors are tolerated because they drive performance
That culture looks different depending on where you sit in the organization
That under pressure, the real culture becomes visible in ways that are hard to walk back
If organizations get the research and sit on it — what's the cost?
Misalignment that compounds over time. When there's a gap between intent and reality, it doesn't stay static. It shows up in inconsistent decision-making, confusion about priorities, erosion of trust, and slower execution. And ultimately, performance suffers.
What's harder is that people usually feel those gaps before they can describe them. Doing nothing doesn't maintain the status quo. It allows the gap to widen.
[BLOCKQUOTE] "The most dangerous moment in culture work isn't ignorance. It's informed inaction."
“The most dangerous moment in culture work isn’t ignorance. It’s informed inaction.”
Last one: what's the question you wish more leaders were asking themselves about their own culture right now?
"What are we consistently reinforcing through our decisions, systems, and behaviors — and is that what we intend?"
Culture is already being shaped every day. Few leaders pause to examine whether it's being shaped intentionally, or simply by default, one unexamined decision at a time.
Take the survey — closes May 20
The Culture at Work Study is open through May 20. It takes about 15 minutes and responses are anonymous. You can opt in to receive early access to the findings when they're published later this year.
If you're responsible for culture, employee experience, HR, or internal communications, this is worth your time. Peer-informed data on how culture operates - ESPECIALLY the kind people are willing to be honest about - is hard to come by.
I'll be sharing the findings once they're out.