I read this article twice

Hi Reader

The majority of the start-up founders & business leaders I get to work with are drowning in input I did something this week I rarely do. I read an online article twice. The second time I printed it out to read properly. The story goes something like this.

It’s April 1984. Two guys were sleeping in a Volkswagen in a car park in Basel, Switzerland. Every morning they'd wake up, wash themselves in the train station toilets, and walk to their stand at the industry's big annual business show. If anyone asked where they were staying, they'd tell them the Hilton.

Their whole industry was going under at the time. Cheaper technology from abroad had already decimated the workforce and driven 2/3 of the companies out of business. By this stage anyone with sense had already jumped ship. That said, these two guys were trying to rebuild something everyone else had written off as flat-lining and near dead.

To cut a long story short, they pulled it off. The best bit is that the industry they saved is now the source of what wealthy (and/or image conscious) people wear on their wrists as a signal of who they are.

Simple enough story so why, you may ask, did I read it twice? Good question.

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When you look at what they actually did, none of it was what I would have expected. There was no rebranding exercise or freshly minted mission statement. Given the lack of $$ there were no consultants brought in to write a vacuous culture deck.

They went to first principles and rebuilt the actual work at the component level. In other words, they redesigned what each craftsman did in the morning, stripped their product down from ninety-one parts to fifty-one and rejected the whole framing of the industry that was killing them and built something different from the ground up.

Simple. But simple is hard and what saved them was the boring, patient, unglamorous work of rebuilding daily practice.

I’ve thought about this a lot all week because it's the exact opposite of what I watch most founders & business leaders do when something's not working. The reflex is a new campaign, new values posters as posters and desktop screensavers, a team-building day to “get alignment” or a training day on whatever's currently in vogue. None of that shifts anything meaningfully because none of it touches cornerstone daily practices.

It served as a timely reminder to me from days past in the world of sports performance.

Your culture is what your team does on a Tuesday morning at 10:47am when everyone is left to their own devices - in the office, at the home desk or on the road. So it’s certainly not what your values statement says they should do. Your performance is what emerges from a hundred small habits and not from the ‘campaign’ you ran to improve it. Over the long term your organisation thrives on the cohesion that arises from performing people that stay with you. A workplace team who go the distance and defend the work is the one that's been formed by the actual work itself, not the one that's been told they're valued in a quarterly briefing.

You might be nodding along now but how would you litmus test this?

Pretty challenging, right?

Experience tells me that if your culture can be summarised in a slide deck, then it doesn't really exist yet. All that exists is the version of it you've been able to put into words. Real embedded practice is invisible from the outside. It can't be copied by anyone who hasn't spent many months inside it, feeling it and absorbing it. Everyone else tries to mimic what they can see - environment design, language, visible rituals - and none of that works because the visible bits aren't the important components. Not close.

Anyways, two lads in a car park in Basel worked all this out in 1984 without a cent in their pockets. Most founders & business leaders are still getting bent out of shape writing the values statement.

I've worked at the intersection of organisational success and human performance for quite a while. Reality is that most organisations are achieving about 50%-55% from their people - and yes, I know, you do plenty of 'in the job' training & coaching. That's not the issue...the issue is not factoring in the human performance component.

If that feels interesting you'll get me at paulclarke.ie@gmail.com or paul@theleaders.coach

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Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel | Leadership Speaker & Strategist | Creator of Master the Unseen™

DeDe Halfhill is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, keynote speaker, and leadership strategist who helps leaders Master the Unseen™—the hidden forces shaping their teams, decisions, and cultures. With 25+ years of high-stakes leadership experience, including two combat tours in Iraq and advisory roles to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, she understands what it takes to lead when uncertainty is high, stakes are real, and trust is non-negotiable. DeDe equips leaders with the tools to recognize hidden leadership dynamics, step into hard moments, and sustain real impact. Because leadership isn’t just about strategy—it’s about recognizing what’s shaping the moment before it happens and having the courage to act on it. She has spoken to executives across industries, from Fortune 500 companies to military leaders, helping them see what others miss, lead with clarity in high-stakes moments, and build lasting leadership cultures rooted in trust and accountability. Her work challenges conventional leadership wisdom, proving that the biggest threats to success aren’t always external—they’re often the unseen undercurrents, blind spots, and emotional forces leaders fail to address. 👉 Learn more at dedehalfhill.com