I once had an employee who was, by every measurable standard, exceptional. Great work. Delivered on targets and deadlines. Exceptional billable hour ratio. On paper, exactly what you want.

But something was off. And for longer than I’d like to admit, I didn’t let myself see it. 

The signs were there. People started going quiet when this person walked into the room. A good employee resigned — someone I really didn’t want to lose. Then another. By the time I understood what was actually happening, the culture I thought I was building had been quietly hollowing out for months. I could tell it would be a long road to recovery. 

Why didn’t I act? I think part of me was blinded by the performance numbers. But if I’m being honest, it was more than that. I wasn’t leading well. I didn’t address the behavior when I should have. And what I’ve come to understand is that inaction is its own kind of decision. By not stepping in, I was effectively endorsing what was happening. 

That experience changed how I think about organizations. You’ve probably heard the phrase (often attributed to Peter Drucker) that culture eats strategy for breakfast. I thought I understood it. I didn’t. Not really. Not until I watched a single person’s behavior undo years of strategic progress, one team interaction at a time.

What I learned wasn’t just “hire for cultural fit.” It was something more fundamental: culture isn’t a layer you add to an organization. It’s the foundation. And if you don’t build it deliberately, something will fill that space anyway. It just won’t be what you wanted.

Culture doesn’t start with your first hire. It starts with vision.

For a number of years, I taught at Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD). At the beginning of each year, when students started building their portfolios, I’d tell them to begin not with their work samples but with their career objectives — or even their very first vision document. What kind of environment do you want to work in? How do you want to spend your days? How do you want to engage with people? What does a good life actually look like for you?

The point wasn’t self-indulgence. It was sequencing. If you don’t know what you’re building toward, you can’t make good decisions about what belongs in the portfolio and what doesn’t.

The same is true for founders. Before the first hire, before the org chart, before you’ve settled on your services or your go-to-market strategy, the culture conversation needs to happen. What kind of company do you want to build? What do you believe about how work should get done? What’s non-negotiable, regardless of someone’s performance numbers?

Most founders skip this. Not because they don’t care about culture (most do), but because it feels like something you get to later. The innovation comes first. The product comes first. The funding runway comes first.

But that’s exactly backwards. By the time you have twenty people in the building and a strategy underway, you already have a culture. You just may not have chosen it.

That’s why, when I first started thinking about Genetica in 2024, I didn’t start with an org chart or the services we would offer. I started with everything I had learned about culture and vision over 20+ years at Summerfield Advertising. What are our values? What does it mean to actually live them — not put them on a wall, but make decisions by them? And I deliberately sought out people who shared those values and could get on board with the vision. 

That clarity doesn’t just shape who you hire and how you work. It shapes how you show up for clients, how you handle the hard conversations, and what kind of company you’re still proud of when things get difficult.

Strategy tells you where to go. Culture gets you there. 

Look, you need strategy. I’m not arguing that you don’t. But the best strategy in the world will be derailed by poor culture. And that doesn’t even have to mean a negative or toxic environment. It can simply mean poor alignment across teams and tiers of the company. Or, as I learned the hard way, a single person who’s a poor cultural fit — and a leader who fails to live their values when tough decisions have to be made. 

Conversely, when you have the right team around you, and you’re all aligned on vision, purpose, and values, you can shift together on strategy and tactics as new opportunities arise or market conditions change.   

The companies I’ve seen navigate real adversity — missed milestones, funding shortfalls, pivots that nobody planned for — had something in common. Their teams were aligned not just around a strategy, but around a shared sense of how they were going to do the work together. That kind of alignment doesn’t come from a handbook. It comes from founders who decided early what they believed, and built everything else from there.

For me, it starts with a simple question: who do I want on this bus with me? 

We’ll talk about how you make those decisions next time.