Leadership and Life Essentials: Fuzzy, Flat, and Flailing: Why Your Culture Lost Its Energy (and How to Get It Back)

Tell me if you recognize this feeling.

It doesn't feel like a crisis.

I mean, no one's doing a swan song as they quit and nothing's really on fire.

But you also can't say that things are great.

They might feel off, maybe.

And frankly, your business just isn't as fun anymore.

It used to jazz you, and now that feeling seems to be gone.

It's just a bit harder than you want it to be.

Like, things are getting done.

People are doing their job.

But the energy just seems to be flatter or maybe gone.

You can't quite put your finger on what changed and you certainly can't articulate it, but you feel it.

And if you have felt it, you're not imagining it.

You're also not alone.

It's one of the common things that founders describe to me.

And Almost every time when I ask them to actually describe their culture, to tell me in plain terms what it is, they can't.

They often reach for the same line that everyone reaches for.

We're like a family, or we have a great culture.

But then they can't tell me what that is beyond the tangible things, like we have a state-of-the-art coffee machine, or we leave early on Fridays.

They can't give me the why these are important.

The we're like a family line is common though.

And there's a reason that phrase comes up often.

A family runs on unspoken sense of what's okay and what's not.

Who you can count on.

How you treat each other when things get hard.