The 50% Performance Opportunity Leaders Ignore

Why So Many Workplace Cultures Are Ordinary at Best

Walk into most organisations and you’ll hear leaders talk about how important culture is. You’ll see Values printed on walls and websites. You’ll read about “people being our greatest asset” in glossy reports.

But let’s be honest: most workplace cultures are ordinary at best. Not toxic, not catastrophic — just average. And that’s the problem. Average cultures waste enormous potential.

So why does this happen? From decades of working with organisations around the world, I see two big reasons.

1. Leaders don’t “get” the business case for culture.

Leaders nod politely when you talk about culture. They’ll agree it matters. But when it comes to decisions about where to invest time, money, and energy, culture too often slides into the “soft stuff” category.

The irony? The business case is overwhelming.

In research we conducted, more than 50% of middle and senior managers said performance would improve by 50% or more if their culture became as good as it realistically could be.

Just stop on that number for a second. A 50% improvement. Imagine if a new technology, a competitor strategy, or a regulatory shift promised that kind of performance lift. Every leader in the land would be all over it. Yet when the same potential lies in culture, most leaders shrug.

The tragedy is this: so many leaders fail to connect the dots between culture and performance. They underestimate the payoff. And in doing so, they settle for ordinary.

2. Leaders don’t know what to do.

Even when leaders understand that culture drives performance, many feel stuck. They want to improve culture but don’t know how. And so they grasp at what’s familiar:

• Another engagement survey.

• Another round of town halls.

• Another “values refresh” with shiny posters.

The trouble is, none of this shifts the ground-level reality of how people behave. Staff quickly spot the gap between the slogans and the lived experience. And so the culture stays the same — ordinary.

This isn’t a failure of will. It’s a failure of method. Leaders simply don’t have a practical language or process for working with culture.

Enter UGRs — Unwritten Ground Rules.

UGRs are people’s perceptions of “this is the way we do things around here.”

They’re not written in policies. You won’t find them on the Values wall. But they show up in everyday choices:

• Around here, it’s not worth raising new ideas because they’ll be shot down.

• Around here, customer issues only get attention if a senior leader complains.

• Around here, safety gets talked about — until production targets are at risk.

These UGRs drive behaviour. They define culture. And they often explain why the reality of a workplace is very different from the glossy aspirational version leaders think they have.

The power of UGRs is twofold: they provide a language leaders can use to talk about the real culture, and they provide a process to shift it. Once UGRs are surfaced and made visible, leaders can make deliberate choices about which ones to reinforce and which ones to replace.

Ordinary isn’t harmless.

Here’s the real kicker: an ordinary culture doesn’t just mean people are a bit uninspired. It means lost opportunities, lower performance, and hidden risk. The cost of “ordinary” is enormous.

If leaders truly believed culture could drive a 50% performance lift, they wouldn’t tolerate average. They’d be treating culture as a core business priority, right alongside strategy, financial performance, and safety.

So what’s missing?

The missing ingredients are simple:

1. Belief. Leaders must connect the dots between culture and performance. The business case isn’t soft — it’s hard numbers.

2. Know-how. Leaders need a practical way to see, talk about, and shift culture. That’s where UGRs come in.

Most organisations don’t fail because of bad intent. They fail because they settle for ordinary. And ordinary is the silent killer of performance.

Final thought

If you’re a leader, here’s the challenge: are you willing to look beyond the slogans and face the real culture in your organisation?

Because until you do, you’ll never move beyond ordinary. And the opportunity cost — in performance, safety, and people’s commitment — will keep piling up.

The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way. With the right language and process, culture can be shaped. And when it is, the payoff isn’t incremental. It’s transformational.