Gartner’s “culture prism” hit me like a hammer:
I’ve always believed that leadership starts with example — that if I live the right values, others will follow.
But the prism made me realize something uncomfortable: I’ve spent years explaining what good looks like, and far too little time explaining what bad looks like — or having the hard conversations when it happens.
In society, we start with what’s not acceptable: you can’t kill, you can’t steal, you can’t harm others — and everything else is up to you.
In organizations, we flip it. We talk about performance, excellence, and continuous improvement, but we rarely say what we won’t accept.
The result? The wrong behaviors quietly take root because nobody said stop.
Silence is not neutrality. Silence is permission.
When leaders ignore people, withhold feedback, or use offence as defence, they’re signalling that learning is dangerous and honesty is punished. That’s the opposite of continuous improvement — it breaks both the First Way (never pass a defect downstream) and the Third Way (create a culture of continual learning and experimentation) from The Three Ways of DevOps (IT Revolution – Gene Kim).
Culture isn’t built by posters or handbooks; it’s built in the small moments where someone chooses to speak up — or not.
So maybe the next evolution of our leadership handbooks shouldn’t just describe the desired behaviors. It should also draw the hard lines:
- We don’t ignore people.
- We don’t punish those who raise problems.
- We don’t weaponize authority.
- We don’t stay silent when others do.
The prism reminds us that shaping culture isn’t just about promoting excellence — it’s about refusing mediocrity in character.
