The Silent Standard: Why Culture Is What You Tolerate, Not What You Say

In May 2018, Starbucks made a remarkable decision. The company closed 8,000 stores across the United States for an afternoon of racial bias training, sacrificing millions of dollars in revenue and wages to take a visible stand.

The immediate cause was an incident in Philadelphia: two Black men, waiting calmly for a friend, were arrested after a Starbucks employee called the police. The public outcry was swift and widespread. For many companies, a carefully crafted apology would have been the extent of the response.

Starbucks understood something deeper.

They recognized that slogans, mission statements, or corporate policies do not shape culture. It is shaped by an organization’s actions, especially when those actions reinforce its identity.

Culture is not defined by what is written on the wall.

It is defined by what you do when the stakes are high and the world is watching.

What Culture Is (and What It Isn’t)

When most people hear the word “culture,” they think of visible markers: language, traditions, art, or national customs. In a business setting, they might point to team norms, company values, or an employee handbook.

These are all important elements of culture, but they are not culture itself. They are artifacts – the shadows that culture casts across our lives.

At its core, culture is not something you can capture in a document or display on an office wall. It is not what you say, what you believe, or what you write down.

Culture is what you consistently do.

It lives in daily decisions, small behaviors, and unspoken standards. It shows up in what people expect, what they tolerate, and what they refuse to accept.

Artifacts like rules, stories, rewards, and rituals can influence culture, but they do not create it. They only reflect it. To understand culture, we must look beneath the surface, past the slogans, and into the habits.

Why Culture Matters More Than Ever

Culture has always shaped human society, but today, its influence is amplified like never before.

Centuries ago, power was concentrated in the hands of a few. In the 12th century, kings ruled absolutely, and practices like slavery were widely accepted. Liberty was a distant concept, reserved for the highly privileged.

The Magna Carta shifted the course of history in 1215. For the first time, frustrated landowners forced a king to recognize limits on his authority. The document itself had a short life, but its ideas endured. It planted the seeds of individual rights, checks on power, and collective accountability.

Today, those seeds have grown into the foundation of modern culture.

Across the world, most societies recognize core values like free will, personal security, and the rule of law. The internet has decentralized power even further, giving individuals unprecedented economic influence. People can now exercise as much (or as little) market power as they choose, often independent of traditional institutions.

This shift underpinned the Great Resignation of 2021 and the “quiet quitting” movement that followed.

As people reevaluated the role of work in their lives, they weren’t simply chasing better pay or hours. They responded to cultural misalignments, rejecting environments where stated values did not match lived experiences.

The world is more connected, prosperous, and statistically safer than ever. Still, cultural conflict has rarely felt more intense. Economic divisions, racial tensions, religious disagreements, and ideological battles create an atmosphere of deep mistrust.

We no longer live in isolated communities of uniform thought. We live in a world where diverse identities, beliefs, and expectations collide daily.

In this complex environment, culture is no longer a background consideration. It is a strategic force that can bind people together or tear them apart.

The Core Truth: Trust, Conflict, and the Three Cultures

After years of building and working with teams, I discovered a critical truth: The most resilient organizations are not the ones that avoid conflict. They are the ones that foster trust and constructive conflict.

Strong cultures are not afraid of disagreement.

They make space for dissent, diversity of thought, and hard conversations, without losing cohesion. They understand that true alignment is not the absence of friction. It is the ability to move forward together in spite of it.

Within every organization, there are three cultures at play:

The culture the leader wants – the aspirational vision
The culture the leader sees – the filtered reality through a leadership lens
The culture that actually exists – the lived experience of the people inside

Organizations thrive when these three cultures are aligned.

Confusion, disengagement, and dysfunction reign when they drift apart.

The work of leadership is to close these gaps through consistent action that reflects the culture they want to see, not through louder slogans or stricter rules.

Trust is built through patterns of behavior.

Conflict is not a threat to culture. It is a signal – an opportunity to test whether the foundations are strong enough to hold. In the end, the true measure of a culture is not how well it operates under perfect conditions, but how resilient it remains when challenged.

How Culture Is Built: Vision and Enforcement

Enduring cultures are not accidental. They are the result of two forces working together: vision and enforcement.

A strong culture begins with a clear and compelling vision. It paints a picture of a future that people want to be part of. It answers questions of purpose and direction:

Where are we going?
Why does it matter?
How do we define success?

When leaders articulate a vision that resonates, they invite people to opt in to the work and to a shared identity.

Vision creates energy.

It attracts those who believe in the cause and are willing to act in service of it, but vision alone is not enough. Cultures take root and grow by enforcing the daily standards that guide behavior.

High standards must be upheld, not just spoken.

Organizations use two main levers:

Reducing friction for desirable behavior through incentives, recognition, and systems that make good choices easy.
Increasing friction for undesirable behavior through consequences and structural barriers that discourage misalignment.

Cultures do not rise to the level of their aspirations.

They settle to the level of what they consistently tolerate.

Consider the workplace that quietly accepts the misconduct of top performers. It sends a clear message that results matter more than integrity. Conversely, a leader who shows up prepared, attentive, and engaged signals that every meeting (and every person in the room) matters. Both examples create ripples that shape the environment.

Vision inspires.

Enforcement sustains.

Together, they forge the invisible structures that make culture durable over time.

What You Allow, You Encourage

Culture does not declare itself in slogans. It reveals itself in the behaviors leaders permit, ignore, or reward.

Every organization communicates its true values through what it tolerates. A small unaddressed allowance becomes the blueprint for what others believe is acceptable.

Consider the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. In its early days, the partners committed to being a founder-friendly venture capital firm. To match this commitment, they instituted a simple but powerful rule. You were fined $10 for every minute you were late to a founder meeting.

It was not about the money. It was about the signal.

Founder time was sacred.

Respecting it was not optional. It was enforced.

No long speeches were needed about valuing entrepreneurs. They didn’t need any elaborate cultural documents. The $10-per-minute rule sent a clear, unmistakable message that they are serious about how we show up for the people we serve.

Now contrast that with a company that quietly accepts chronic lateness to client calls or tolerates disengagement during team meetings. No fines are issued, and no correction is made. The implicit message is just as clear… “We talk about excellence, but we do not demand it.”

Employees and team members are always watching, and they learn by what is practiced, not by what is proclaimed. Over time, the standards that are enforced (or ignored) define the culture more than any set of written values.

You cannot claim to value excellence while excusing mediocrity.

You cannot claim to value respect while tolerating disrespect.

You cannot claim to value integrity while protecting those who undermine it.

Culture is not built in grand gestures. It is built in the daily enforcement of standards, especially when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient to do so. As any parent knows, what you allow, you encourage.

Build Intentionally or Drift Accidentally

Culture does not happen by accident.

You either shape it with intention, or it shapes you through drift, compromise, and erosion.

Every day, in every organization, culture is built through the standards that are upheld, the behaviors that are reinforced, and the choices that are tolerated. Transformation does not come from new slogans or lofty speeches. It begins in the quiet, consistent choices leaders make when no one else seems to be paying attention.

If you want to build an enduring culture, start by examining your own habits.

What are you tolerating?
What are you encouraging?
Where are you enforcing the standards that matter most?

Culture is not a poster on the wall. It is the lived reality of what you do – again and again – until it becomes who you are.

If you are serious about building a stronger, sharper investment business, join us at The Deal Foundry Monday Meeting.

It is a live, weekly session for real estate entrepreneurs who are committed to building not just better deals, but better companies. Inside, you will find practical tools, honest conversations, and a community of sponsors who understand that culture is not just a “nice to have” but a competitive advantage.

Sign up for the next Monday Meeting and take the next step toward building with intention.