Root and Branch: Why Culture Still Matters
- Impact Boards EM
- Jul 1
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
Kieran Moynihan
Managing Partner, Board Excellence
In an increasingly volatile and chaotic world, the concept of organisational ‘culture’ is struggling – including in corporate boardrooms. Trump 2.0 has caused a number of leading global corporations, primarily headquartered in the US, to rollback.
The board has a crucial role in setting the culture of the organisation and overseeing the performance of the CEO and executive team in embedding and bringing to life the behaviours and values that represent the desired outcomes.
In reality, a significant number of boards struggle to fully understand the true culture in their organisation and how it is experienced by employees and customers. A board chair recently shared with me the struggles he and his board have had with a dominant CEO who is very resistant to all efforts of the board to hold him accountable for the serious problems caused by a toxic culture which has taken root in the company over many years.
While alarming levels of employee turnover and multiple harassment cases became the norm, this CEO adopted the position of: “If I am delivering on the financial numbers, what’s happening internally in the organisation is not the board’s concern. Nothing to see here, our culture is fine and these issues are just run-of-the-mill for any large organisation."
Progressive boards have taken a more proactive posture in recent years and set the bar high for the executive team to excel on culture. Through active oversight of employee engagement, retention, customer satisfaction levels and feedback, boards can intelligently assess whether the actual experienced culture aligns with stated values. This has resulted in boards mandating meaningful employee surveys, insights into exit interviews, and whistleblower reports to understand the cultural issues that need attention.
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