Tending to the Culture

It had been a long 28 hours transiting “back home” for my summer holiday break after living in Brazil for most of 2026. A wonderful friend collected me at the airport and drove me home. I couldn’t wait to Just. Be. Home. 

But as my friend’s car pulled into my driveway, my smile faded and I was dismayed by what I saw. 

Instead of being greeted by my usually cheerful garden, I was shocked to be greeted by a property that had the look of total neglect. Unbeknownst to me, the gardener that I’d hired to maintain my property had just stopped showing up somewhere around mid-April. 

My garden, which I’d always lovingly maintained… was a total disaster. 

Perennials had bloomed in spring but had never been deadheaded or cut back, so long spindly dead blooms were everywhere. 

Invasive groundcover was rapidly overrunning carefully planted flowers. 

The long gravel driveway? Choked full of tall weeds. 

The rose garden? Overrun by grass that had seeded and grown tall. 

Just two short months was all it took for my garden to go from being beautiful to looking completely neglected. 

Over the next two days, I pulled 5 heaping wheelbarrow loads of weeds and I filled the wheelbarrow up several more times with prunings and cutbacks that were sorely needed. And as I toiled away, pulling weed after weed out of the garden, I got to thinking about care and neglect. 

A garden needs regular, ongoing care and maintenance to look its best, perform its best, and give you what you are wanting from it. And it struck me that there’s an analogy here between the garden and a healthy workplace culture. 

You can’t just plant a garden and call it all good and let it go. Culture is the same. Culture is not a one-time, you checked the box so it’s “done,” kind of thing. Both gardens and workplace culture require ongoing tending and care to remain healthy. I think most managers and leaders realize this, which is a good thing.

However, there are a lot of nuances to culture that I think a lot of folks get wrong. Let me explain. 

“Kamikaze care” - While you can do what I call “kamikaze gardening” (ignore the garden for several weeks and then dive in to “fix” it and bring it back to snuff), it ultimately means that the garden is in a default state of under-care or neglect. Within organizations, “kamikaze culture hits” are surprisingly common - I have seen a number of workplaces where the default cultural norm is one of neglect or under-care, but then leadership tries to “fix” morale with sudden, strong infusions of care in the form of a fancy happy hour, or nice gifts, or a sudden hit of a lot of attention. The research shows that these things are no substitute for regular genuine care. Instead of consistently high performance, you will see significant dips and ebbs in engagement and productivity. 

Individual needs - Different plants in the garden require different kinds of care to thrive. There is no “one size fits all” approach. The same holds true for people. What might demonstrate care for you does not land with another person. As the leader, you have to learn how your employees experience care and what conveys value to them. Doing this well is an art form; understanding how to balance caring for all with individualized attention is no easy feat. But it does lead to improved culture and happiness for your team. 

Tending the whole versus tending a few - A garden, like a workplace team, is the sum of its parts. While you might have favorite plants, you have to take care of all of the plants for the garden to thrive as a whole. In your organization, you might have employees that you like more than others. Regardless, you must tend to the care of all of them in equal measure if you want the team and the organization to succeed. 

When we stop showing up to tend to culture, or if we tend to it the wrong way, neglect settles in and chaos takes over. That can take on a variety of looks, but some warning signs are: 

Apathy or lack of care 

Less laughter 

Individuals retreating to their offices or being less visible 

Higher absenteeism rates 

Lower productivity

And with too much neglect, toxicity sets in like a blanket of rapidly advancing and invasive weeds in a garden. Once the workplace culture gets to that point, it is dangerous to the long-term health of the organization. The amount of work that it takes to resolve toxic culture is immense, and it usually involves a change in the leadership of the organization. 

And so, for the success of everyone concerned, managers and leaders should ask themselves these questions regularly:

What specific actions am I taking TODAY to tend to culture?

Do I know what my team members need to feel valued and cared for by me? 

Have I intentionally set out to learn about my team’s needs and interests?

Do I know what makes my team members get up in the morning… do I know their “why” for being a part of this organization? 

Like a garden needs regular tending to be at its best, organizational culture must be tended and cared for. If you want your team to be both happy and productive, you should proactively and regularly tend to culture.