We were sitting with the leadership team of a global company—smart people, big goals, good intentions. The head of people turned to us, half joking:
“We’ve spent more time designing our new office floor plan than our culture.”
It was meant as a witty throwaway. But no one laughed. (Because it was true.) They’d spent months debating snack bins and ping pong tables—but the one thing that touches every person, every day?
Still running on default settings. Everyone could describe the vibe. No one could explain how it shaped outcomes. Or who was accountable when it didn’t.
And here’s what we know from decades of research…
Culture isn’t the brand. It’s the system.
It’s how power moves. How decisions get made. Who gets access—and who doesn’t.
If you’re not designing for it, it’s still working. Just not in your favor.
1. “Our culture is great—as long as you already fit in.”
One media company we worked with had a killer employer brand. Cool mission. Sharp team. Diverse hiring numbers.
And yet—people weren’t staying. Especially not those from underrepresented backgrounds. The exits were quiet. Polite. A steady stream.
One mid-level employee said it clearly:
“It’s not that the culture was bad. It just didn’t include me. I was adjacent to it. Watching it—not in it.”
This wasn’t a retention issue. It was a belonging design issue. No one had defined what inclusion actually looked like in the day-to-day. It was implied, not operationalized.
So we worked with leadership in Activation Sprints to map how inclusion—or exclusion—was showing up in real decisions:
- Hiring
- Performance reviews
- Promotions
- Team norms
Culture isn’t how it feels on your best day. It’s how it works on your average day. If you don’t design for inclusion, what you get is affinity bias, hierarchy loyalty, and a whole lot of “maybe next year” for people you can’t afford to lose.
2. You’re not losing talent. You’re wearing them down.
One consulting firm came to us with a pattern: high-performing, mid-career talent was leaving quietly—right at the cusp of leadership. Not early exits. Not performance issues. These were consistent contributors. Long haulers. Then… gone. One Black manager put it bluntly:
“I kept hitting goals. I kept mentoring. I kept showing up. I realized I wasn’t being evaluated—I was being bled dry.”
This wasn’t a pipeline issue. It was a credibility trap. These employees weren’t being supported—they were being over-relied on and under-advanced. We worked with the firm through Activation Sprints to map where the system was failing. What surfaced:
- High-performers were being overloaded, not elevated
- Advancement criteria were murky, subjective, and reinforced sameness
- Leadership potential was defined as “looking the part”—not delivering the impact
So we helped redesign the system:
- Clarified promotion criteria and made them visible
- Integrated real sponsorship into succession planning—tracking who was being advocated for (and who wasn’t)
- Built feedback loops that measured leadership impact, not just deliverables
You don’t lose people all at once. You lose them in check-ins. In missed opportunities. In who gets seen.
This wasn’t about moving everyone forward faster. It was about stopping the slow bleed of credibility for the very people holding the place up.
3. Your top talent isn’t watching your values. They’re watching your decisions.
At a healthcare company, the CEO was all-in. Public commitments. Diverse hiring. Strong policies. But internally, the leadership pipeline still looked the same. Promotions felt safe. Predictable. Familiar.
We spoke to a group of emerging leaders. One of them said: “I believe the company wants to be inclusive. But I know who gets the 11pm call when something big hits. It’s not people like me.”
That’s the gap. Inclusion isn’t about what’s stated. It’s about who gets pulled in when it matters.
We worked with their leadership to ask sharper questions:
- What behaviors actually get rewarded?
- Whose voice gets airtime when decisions are made?
- Are we distributing opportunity—or concentrating it?
The goal wasn’t a new training. It was to build a real culture operating system—one leaders could model under pressure, not just post about. Culture isn’t what you write. It’s who gets the callback.
So What’s the Work?
Leaders aren’t asking for more theory. They’re asking for help making inclusion real—through the way decisions get made, opportunities are distributed, and leadership is practiced.
The companies making progress aren’t waiting to align everyone first. They’re getting in a room, pressure-testing what’s happening, and co-creating what needs to shift.
We do this through a focused Activation Sprint model that gives leaders:
- A mirror: What’s actually happening in your system?
- A method: What can we redesign right now?
- A push: How will we know it’s working?
And through this, we co-create a focused approach in short order that gives traction. Because here’s the pattern we keep seeing:
- Companies hire diverse talent into broken systems.
- Those systems weren’t built for them.
- The company coaches the individual—then watches them leave.
- And the cycle repeats.
You don’t fix this with a new value statement. You fix it by redesigning how decisions get made, who gets seen, and what gets rewarded. Because inclusion doesn’t happen on its own—it happens when leaders build for it.
Ready to see if your culture is being designed—or just drifting?
Culture doesn’t shape itself. If your systems, leaders, and habits aren’t actively reinforcing inclusion, they’re reinforcing something else. Take Coqual’s Inclusion Health Check for Groups, Teams & Communities to see where you stand—and where traction is already building. It’s fast, confidential, and built for leaders navigating complexity.
