“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The famous quote reminds us that all of our plans and programs ultimately collapse without supporting values and habits. The same is true when discussing pure performance–you have to put company culture first.
TL;DR
- Organizational culture and performance are intertwined. The former determines how much energy people have for the latter.
- Celebrations (really small ones) energize the culture and support performance.
- Ranking priorities and letting people fail creates psychological safety.
- Rituals like recognition enhance performance by reducing social isolation.
The #1 thing to know about organizational culture and performance
Another popular saying claims that culture is what we tolerate. Focusing on the lowest common denominator doesn’t exactly lend itself to exceptional performance. Instead, let what you celebrate become your standard.
The behaviors we praise our teams for quickly become daily priorities. The more we see them praised, the more we emulate them, spot them, and praise them ourselves.
Teams enjoy better performance when they:
- Celebrate core values like growth, customer obsession, and ownership.
- Create a peer-driven culture of recognition where people support one another.
- Improve engagement by making everyone feel seen and valued.
| 🌮 Warmth and performance coexist in great cultures. A survey of hundreds of HeyTaco admins asked what their top two cultural aims were. The most popular answers were caring, supportive cultures (55%) along with high-performing, achievement-driven ones (50%). Teams that use recognition tools daily already know that appreciation and praise are the first pick if you also want to drive performance. |
How culture impacts performance: Daily realities
One of Gallup’s Workplace surveys found that employees with a positive work culture were 62% less likely to experience chronic burnout. They were also 4.3 times more likely to be engaged and 47% less likely to look for work elsewhere.
Here are the common environmental and cultural factors that may be holding back your organization’s performance.
Silent failure vs. psychological safety
Is “psychological safety” a sneaky way of saying we have to go soft on everyone? Hardly. It’s the research-backed way to unlock potential on any type of team. People need to feel like they can speak up, take risks, and learn.
Silent failure: People rarely ask for help, if at all. Even managers may hide their mistakes. Problems go unaddressed because no one feels their employer trusts them enough to make the right call.
Psychological safety: These cultures ask people what they think. They let them fall on their faces sometimes without fear of retribution. People are safe to admit mistakes so they can be discussed in the open, where everyone can learn from them and move on.
| 🎨 The art of failure. If this is something you need to turn around on your own team, start by sharing your own failures. In fact, make the next one the inaugural piece in the Museum of Failures. This is just one of many trust-building team rituals that give us unique things to celebrate. |
Chaotic busywork vs. clear priorities
Organizational culture and performance thrive when everyone knows their purpose. Purpose here isn’t about ultimate career aspiration or taking off on an existential quest. We literally mean what it is you’re meant to do today.
Chaotic busywork: People have a stack of things they could do, not a ranked list. This is how they end up reformatting internal documents instead of responding to clients. In low-trust cultures, employees choose whatever offers the most visibility, since presence and performance are basically the same in these environments.
Clear priorities: Strong cultures have communication guidelines and customs. Leaders rank priorities by force if needed. In flatter hierarchies, teams rank them on their own to naturally reduce bottlenecks. High expectations come with high levels of support. It’s also easy for employees to identify which company values are high-priority.
Rampant burnout vs. protected energy
Energy preservation is the new wellness program. Old programs targeted common areas of physical health. Then came mental health initiatives. Now, we make way for people to perform at their best.
Rampant burnout: Minimum requirements, frequent complaints, and the feeling that having an active green dot is what counts. “Oversight” is a kind way to describe the surveillance state employees perform under.
Protected energy: Meetings have an agenda and allow a five-minute gap to transition to the next block. Managers take breaks and encourage others to do the same. Communication expectations are defined, such as not having to respond after a certain time.
Isolation vs. micro-connection
Culture impacts performance when it’s present in some way, every day. Small things that seep into every cranny of the work experience. Even weekly culture-building events don’t have the aura of blink-and-you-missed-it moments built right into our work.
Isolation: Whether outcomes are poor or great, people aren’t given a specific reason. Everyone submits, but few are acknowledged until way later. People are unfamiliar with what exactly their coworkers do, especially in high-turnover industries.
Micro-connection: Peers share progress, feedback, and recognition almost every day. Leaders add context to results-sharing and explain decisions. Check-ins, Slack messages, standups, and 1:1s are multi-way exchanges and not monologues.
| ⚖️ Connection makes criticism fair. Isolation at work intensifies when the lion’s share of communication and feedback is about what someone could improve. If there’s no culture, one’s presence is justified by their performance, and their performance is never good enough, they won’t want to stay. Neutral everyday interactions are just as necessary as praise. |
Is your company culture eating your performance? (A brief diagnostic)
If you answer “yes” to more than three of these, a cultural shift is the answer to higher-quality performance.
- Are meetings usually scheduled back-to-back in the interest of “getting it over with?”
- Is it common for people to get Slack messages while they’re asleep?
- Would it be seen as awkward or untoward for an employee to push back on a decision or take a risk without checking?
- Has it been weeks or months since you celebrated a win with the team?
- Could you say that cross-collaboration is rare or nonexistent, with people hoarding knowledge?
- Do failures result in finger-pointing?
- Are one or more of your company values just words, not behaviors?
- Is PTO closely tracked but rarely taken?
Boost culture and performance without purchasing another portal.
Your performance plateaus are a cultural problem. The answer right now isn’t a fancy off-site; save that for later. And we’re not anywhere near trust fall territory, either. Organizational culture and performance come together with:
Tactical rituals–Brain dumps and brief resets between blocks of activity. These feel normal, are introduced and repeated on a cadence until they’re fully adopted.
Energy check-ins–People share where they’re at daily. Burnout prevention, workload balance, and a small connection with a chance to offer support.
Zero-pressure celebrations–Anyone can win at any time. It’s a habit to praise value-driven behaviors, incremental progress, or a good joke. And no one has to log in somewhere else to do it.
Want to start without making everyone suspicious? Begin by celebrating project launches. Teams like the one at Immunefi mark these moments with HeyTaco.
"We all want to be cool. And tacos made it cool to show appreciation." — Klavdija Janc, Technical Project Manager at Immunefi
