Let’s stop calling it culture: it is poor management
We talk about culture constantly. HR teams run surveys, launch “culture transformation” programmes, and refresh mission statements. Yet year after year, many organisations face the same issues: disengaged employees, inconsistent performance, and a lack of accountability.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of the time, this isn’t a culture problem. It’s a management problem.
When leaders struggle to manage effectively, “culture” becomes a convenient diagnosis. It sounds softer, less personal, and easier to discuss than the hard work of changing leadership behaviour. But blaming culture doesn’t solve anything. It simply allows the real issues to persist.
Management Is the Engine of Culture
Culture is not something you design in isolation. It’s a by-product of how people are led, how decisions are made, and which behaviours are reinforced, or ignored, every day.
It’s not the slogans on posters or the values on a website. Culture is the lived experience of employees.
When managers avoid difficult conversations, shift priorities without clarity, tolerate underperformance, or reward visibility over impact, the outcome is predictable. Culture doesn’t create these behaviours. Management permits them.
How “Culture Problems” Show Up in Reality
In my advisory work, the same issues are repeatedly labelled as “culture problems” when they are, in fact, management failures.
- Low accountability culture
Goals are unclear and consequences are applied inconsistently.
- Low employee engagement
Engagement erodes when managers fail to give feedback, recognise contribution, or connect work to outcomes. Engagement is a response to leadership.
- Silos and internal politics
Often the result of poorly defined incentives and decision rights, not culture, but weak organisational design.
- Lack of ownership
Teams won’t step up when autonomy and accountability are misaligned. Management sets the conditions; culture reflects them.
What This Means for HR
If organisations genuinely want to improve “culture,” HR needs to stop measuring symptoms and start addressing behaviour.
- Look for patterns
How decisions are made, how meetings run, how performance is discussed, and how often feedback actually happens.
- Prioritise skill over slogans
Too many managers are promoted without being taught how to manage. Development must focus on fundamentals: clarity, accountability, delegation, and honest feedback.
- Hold the line
Behaviours leaders tolerate quickly become the culture, regardless of stated values.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Culture has become a catch-all because it feels big, abstract, and difficult to fix. But when you break problems down, they almost always trace back to how people are managed day to day.
In 2026, instead of launching another culture initiative, a better starting point is a simpler question:
Which management behaviours are holding us back and what will we do differently this quarter to change them?
Because until management changes, culture won’t.
About the author
Maria Bartolo Zahra is Managing Partner and HR & Compensation Specialist at SurgeAdvisory. She has over twenty years of human resources and business advisory experience.