A $3.5 million violin. A world-class musician. And no one stops to listen.

Joshua Bell, one of the greatest violinists alive, stands in a Washington, D.C. subway station, playing for an hour. Thousands walk past. Few stop. Even fewer notice.

Not because the music isn’t brilliant—but because the setting makes it invisible.

It turns out, if your best work gets lost in the noise, it changes nothing.

Culture works the same way.

People don’t respond to what you claim is important. They respond t...

Think about writer’s block. Someone says, “I don’t have any good ideas.” The best response? “Okay, but do you hav...

Culture isn’t a vibe. It’s not a feeling. It’s not a general sense of “we like it here.”

That’s fine if all you want is a pleasant place to work. A team that gets along.

But if you’re building something that matters—something that lasts—culture isn’t about harmony. It’s about clarity.

The best cultures aren’t the ones where everyone agrees all the time. They’re the ones where everyone knows where they stand.

What’s expected. What matters. Where the lines are.

Clarity beats harmony. Because ...

Culture was never a slogan.

It’s not a mission statement or a set of values listed on a website. It’s not what gets talked about in pregame speeches or hung on the walls of the locker room.

Culture is what actually happens.

It’s the stories that get celebrated. The behaviors that get praised. The standards that get upheld—not because a coach enforces them, but because the team owns them.

Culture is the shared understanding of “this is how we do it here.”

And here’s the thing—this kind of cu...

Most people think culture is something you talk about.

A slogan. A speech. A framed list of values on the wall.

But culture isn’t what you say. It’s what you do.

And most people get action backward.

They think motivation comes first. That a team has to feel inspired before they commit. That buy-in has to happen before accountability can.

But that’s not how it works.

The runner doesn’t wait to want to run. She laces up anyway. Three miles in, she’s flying.
The writer sits down uninspired. T...