What your fridge can teach you about culture

Photo by Lucie Liz via Pexels

Open your fridge.

At first glance, everything looks fine.

Milk? There.

Salad? There.

Leftovers? Tucked neatly at the back.

All good.

Until you start rummaging.

You lift the bag of spinach and discover it’s quietly liquefying in the salad drawer.

The milk smells… suspicious.

The “fresh” hummus expired three days ago.

From the outside, it looked healthy.

Under the surface? Something’s turning.

Culture is exactly the same.

Most leaders will confidently say:

“We’ve got a great culture.”

“People love working here.”

“Engagement’s strong.”

And they might be right.

But have they actually scratched beneath the surface?

Early-stage culture risk rarely announces itself dramatically.

It sits quietly in the corners:

• Overload that’s become normal

• Behaviour tolerated under pressure

• Confusion about decision ownership

• Energy thinning, slowly

If you don’t dig beneath the surface, you don’t see it.

And when you don’t see it, you can’t shape it.

The organisations that gain the edge aren’t the ones with the loudest values slides.

They’re the ones willing to look objectively at what’s really happening — and proactively nurture what’s healthy before cracks widen.

Photo by BOOM 💥 Photograph via Pexels

So where do you start?

Here are three simple questions that help you get under the skin of your culture.

1️⃣ Ask a new starter:

“How does it really feel to work here?”

New joiners see what everyone else has normalised.

They notice:

• Who speaks in meetings

• How decisions actually get made

• Whether leaders live the values

• How pressure shows up

And because it’s still fresh for them, they’ll often be honest.

Ask them at 30, 60 or 90 days:

What’s surprised you?

What feels energising?

What feels harder than expected?

Fresh eyes reveal what long tenure hides.

2️⃣ Ask someone to describe the culture on a great day… and a bad day

This is one of our favourites.

On a great day, you’ll hear:

• What the culture aspires to be

• Where it works brilliantly

• What fuels energy and performance

On a bad day, you’ll hear:

• The pressure points

• The behavioural cracks

• The unspoken frustrations

The gap between those two descriptions?

That’s your opportunity to improve.

Not your values statement.

Not your engagement score.

Your lived reality.

3️⃣ Ask:

“If you could wave a magic wand and improve one element of our culture today — what would you choose and why?”

This question goes straight to priority.

People won’t pick something trivial.

They’ll surface:

• Decision bottlenecks

• Meeting overload

• Lack of feedback

• Inconsistent accountability

• Permission-seeking habits

And when you ask why, you uncover impact — on energy, delivery, trust and growth.

That’s gold.

Why this matters

When leaders don’t look beneath the surface, risk builds quietly.

When they do, they gain clarity. And clarity creates advantage.

Objectively seeing your culture — and consistently nurturing healthy conditions — gives:

→ Teams more energy

→ Businesses more sustainable performance

→ Leaders stronger credibility

→ Careers a sharper edge

Like the contents of your fridge, culture doesn’t stay fresh. It’s shaped every day through habits, signals and systems.

If you’d like to go deeper:

📥 Download our 1-pager: How to Get Under the Skin of your Culture — a practical guide to assessing the real signals in your organisation.

🌟 Upgrade to Premium Club Membership and join the Skills Sprint, access online learning and additional tools to instantly evaluate your culture

Or

🎓 Join an upcoming Growth Culture Masterclass, where we explore how to turn culture from something you “hope is good” into a deliberate growth engine.