The Executive Voice

The Hidden Cost of Getting Culture Wrong

You can't bully and intimidate people into doing their best thinking - where employees are operating in a culture of fear. Yet as tech companies prepare for 2027, the pressure to deliver more with less, can create exactly that kind of culture.

The current business environment is pretty brutal. In tech, we’ve had more than three years of relentless layoffs, mixed financial results, shareholder scrutiny and uncertainty about returns on enormous AI investments. These are testing leaders. This week's US midterm elections have also exposed growing public resistance to technology's expansion, particularly data centres.

Inside this boiling cauldron, CEOs are demanding greater productivity, tighter costs and stronger financial results.

I focus on communication on any given topic and when it comes to culture, my question is: “Could the way you’re communicating your expectations as a leader be creating a culture that undermines the very performance you're trying to improve?”

When High Expectations Become Fear

According to Dice's 2026 Tech Sentiment Report, 29% of tech professionals worry about or expect layoffs at their current employer, up from 22% in 2024. Nearly half report burnout. Significantly, employees confidence in tech’s long term future, dropped from 80% to 60%.

Against that backdrop, even reasonable management messages can take on a different meaning.

"We expect everyone to operate at the highest level" might be intended to inspire excellence. Employees worried about their jobs may hear something closer to a warning.

The danger is that people become more concerned about protecting themselves than challenging poor decisions, raising risks or contributing new ideas.

And that's not good for business.

Gallup's research across more than 180,000 business units found that those with the highest employee engagement achieved 23% higher profitability and 18% higher sales productivity than those with the lowest engagement.

Engagement isn't the same as culture, but ‘engagement’ is about having a two way communication flow which infers an open, robust culture.

True Engagement Thrives on Genuine Debate

What isn’t helpful or healthy is a warm, huggy workplace where everyone gets along, and poor performance is tolerated. A workplace isn’t a social club. It’s a business where serious stuff gets accomplished, and where profit and shareholder value are respected.

When it comes to culture, the sweet spot is a place where talented people share an ambition to produce exceptional work, are held to high standards and can challenge decisions without fear of punishment.

The last half of the sentence is what matters the most: employees feeling comfortable challenging leadership openly.

And the clues to whether this is happening are often in how people communicate. Ask yourself these 3 questions:

Agreeable and silent employees doesn’t necessarily mean they’re aligned and accepting of your strategic direction and goals.

They may even be opposed to your mission. If they don’t believe in what they’re doing, they’ll do the bare minimum that’s required.

This is a culture that’s nervous about today and fears tomorrow.

Before Setting 2027 Plans, Assess and Adjust the Cultural Tone

Start by paying closer attention to the language you use and how your people respond. Are you communicating ambition and clear expectations, or unintentionally creating insecurity and fear?

Notice what happens when someone challenges your thinking or delivers unwelcome news. Do you encourage an honest discussion, or does your response make people think twice about speaking up again?

You shouldn’t avoid difficult decisions, demanding targets or honest conversations about performance.

But you should set the right tone that embodies the right culture by explaining your reasoning, being clear about expectations, and being open to people challenging you.

How your people communicate, and how you communicate, can reveal a great deal about where your culture is heading, and what that could mean for future performance and profitability.

Communication That Earns Influence

Culture: The Competitive Advantage You Might Be Destroying

Your sales team is hitting its revenue targets. Everyone is celebrating the big wins. But are you winning the right business, and at what cost? Because a sales culture that rewards winning above everything else can undermine profitability, customer trust and future revenue.

The warning signs often show up in how your people communicate, both with each other and with buyers.

Your Culture Travels with Your Sales Team

Consider a large technology pursuit involving sales executives, technical specialists, finance and delivery teams spread across several countries.

Different professional backgrounds, national cultures and expectations about authority can make collaboration difficult. One person openly challenges a proposal. Another considers public disagreement inappropriate. Someone else stays silent because the sales director has already made up their mind.

Now add the pressure to close a multimillion-dollar deal.

If your culture rewards getting deals over the line at any cost, people may hesitate to question unrealistic promises, challenge pricing or flag delivery risks.

The pursuit might succeed. But the commercial consequences can surface months later through shrinking margins, delivery disputes and an unhappy customer.

As many of us have experienced, winning a deal isn't necessarily winning good business.

Your Buyer Has a Culture Too

Your team's internal culture is only half the challenge.

Buyers have their own expectations about trust, risk, authority and decision-making. National differences matter, but so do organisational cultures.

A financial institution might demand extensive evidence and careful risk assessment. A fast-growing technology company might value speed, flexibility and experimentation.

Neither approach is inherently better. But your sales communication needs to reflect how that particular buyer evaluates decisions.

An internal sales culture that prizes aggressive selling, confident claims and rapid deal closure can work against you when buyers expect measured advice, transparency and evidence.

And here's the thing: your sales team might be exceptionally good at communicating your company's value while being remarkably poor at understanding what the buyer values.

That's an expensive blind spot that I’ve often been confronted with supporting large deals.

What Does Your Sales Culture Reward?

It’s important to look beyond revenue targets when assessing how well your team is performing.

And listen to the language used in pursuit reviews.

Are conversations dominated by "How do we win this?" or do people also ask, "Should we win this, and under what terms?"

Both questions matter.

As you prepare your 2027 sales strategy, consider whether your sales culture encourages honest debate, commercial discipline and genuine curiosity about buyers.

Your sales culture doesn't stay inside your business. Buyers experience it through every conversation, promise and decision. And ultimately, your financial results reflect the consequences.

Voters Send Big Tech a Message: Not in Our Backyard

The US midterm elections delivered a warning to Big Tech. Opposition to data centres helped Democrats win key races, with voters concerned about electricity prices, water consumption and environmental damage. Australia is seeing similar resistance. In September, community opposition helped stop a $1.2 billion Sydney data-centre project, while a NSW parliamentary inquiry this week called for tougher oversight of the industry's expansion.

Sources: WIRED | Reuters — Australia | Lane Cove Council

My POV

I don't cover politics, but this is about something larger: has Big Tech become so caught up in the AI race that it's stopped listening to ordinary people? Though just now OpenAI pledged to cover its data centres' electricity and infrastructure costs and address community concerns. Hmm. Is this too little, too late? Also, can it afford these commitments. And will it actually deliver on them? I don’t know? All I know is that Sam Altman says a lot but many have found him untrustworthy. Good PR matters. But people won’t trust you if you don’t back up your promises with action.

Source: OpenAI's 5 November announcement

Phrase of the Week

Social Licence to Operate: The trust and acceptance a business earns from communities affected by its activities, beyond legal approvals, and which can determine whether projects succeed or face resistance.

A question running through this week’s issue: how much confidence comes from the figures, and how much from believing the story around them?

A Prompt to Expose Your Culture’s Blind Spots

You may have a clear idea of the culture you want, but is it the culture your people actually experience?

The gap often lies in the behaviours you reward, the decisions you make and how people communicate when things go wrong. And don't assume every team shares the same culture.

Use the prompt below to uncover potential blind spots before setting your 2027 priorities. It will help you examine whether your culture encourages high performance and sound commercial judgement, or unintentionally rewards fear, silence and poor decisions.

THE PROMPT

Act as an organisational culture and business performance advisor. Help me identify potential blind spots in my organisation's or team's culture, particularly those affecting productivity, innovation, trust and profitability.

Begin by interviewing me about my organisation's culture. Ask the following questions one at a time, allowing me to respond before moving to the next:

Ask follow-up questions where useful, and challenge my assumptions rather than simply accepting my answers.

Then help me identify:

Distinguish between evidence and assumptions. Don't diagnose our entire organisation from my perspective alone. Suggest ways to test your findings with employees, including whether different teams experience different cultures.

Finish with three warning signs I should monitor and three questions I should ask my people.

If this helped you think differently about communication, forward this newsletter to someone who leads, sells or explains complex ideas in tech.