5 Signs your culture is fertile (or fucked-up) and 3 things you can do now.

This morning, I went into the garden to water the seeds. My cats Buttercup and Westley (thank you Princess Bride) came too. The garden is beautiful right now. Last year‘s kale has gone to seed and the five-foot plants are crowned with hundreds of lemon yellow flowers that bring my neighbor’s bees a buzzing. The bright orange calendula flowers that I use to make salve are a tumbling glory. In the next bed, peas climb bamboo poles, and tiny cilantros are the latest seedlings to pop out of this good soil.

Tall Kale plants are topped with yellow flowers, next to orange calendula in oval metal planter.

 After almost 30 years of gardening, and so much money wasted on plants that didn’t make it, I know that nothing works in a garden if the soil isn’t alive. I remember scratching shallows furrows in the dry clay behind my first house in Seattle, then wondering why all the ferns I planted died slow and horrible deaths.

This is what happens to great ideas in organizations with poor culture.

Have you heard the saying that “culture eats strategy for breakfast?” Let’s add this: good culture is like good soil – it is the difference between lush fertility and a constant uphill battle to produce.

Leadership is hard enough now: holding power well, using it with confidence and integrity while we take down old, bad examples of power, this is tricky as fuck. Trying to do it without a good culture is both exhausting and impossible.

 Here are five signs that your culture is getting in your way. (aka Fucked-Up)

1.        You are having the same meetings/ arguments/issues over and over.

2.        Accountability turns into a personality problem.

3.        You have high turnover, especially of BIPOC and queer and femme staff. (Or have a feeling that you will soon.)

4.        Important things get shunted aside for emergent crises. A lot.

5.        You have an “open-door policy,” but it’s not helping.

I know I said five but here’s one more: You have a code of conduct or set of values, but you haven’t referred to them for months… or is it years?

It doesn’t have to be that way, my loves. Here are five signs that your garden grows merrily. (Aka Fertile)

1.    You name conflict and work through it, (rather than avoid it so that it pops up later, whack-a-mole-like.)

2.    You (especially if you are in leadership) have regular time to be focused and look at the big picture and plan.

3.    The people with the least privilege speak and contribute ideas as openly as the ones with the most.

4.    Your team tells you when something isn’t working – both in private and in public.

5.    You know what crises to say “No” to – because your values are clear and active in your decision-making.

If you have more in common with the fucked-up list, please don’t despair. We are trying to build a new world from inside the old one and it is tough. But my friends, take a moment to think about the brilliance of your team or colleagues. Their quirky genius, their disparate knowledge, talents, and life experiences. What all of that was supported by a culture that allowed them to grow and flower and produce…together?

“But now?” you ask. “We should spend time and attention on this in the middle of a fascist dumpster fire?”

 Yes. Here is a phrase I have heard for more than 25 years in our sector, have you? “We don’t have time to do long-term work because the world is on fire.” How’s that working for us?

Now is the time. Now is the time. Now is the time.

We need to build our ability to learn together, solve problems together, and build and use power together. Now, when – tell the truth – we don’t yet have the political power to do what we must.

Build soil before you grow crops.

Look ahead. What if by the fall of 2026, your organization or campaign or coalition had moved one or two or even three indicators from the fucked-up column to the fertile column? And then we have elections. Young and forward-thinking progressives from Run for Something (who have recruited more than 40,000 candidates since November!) and other groups take back the House.

Now imagine that you have built your collective ability to focus and choose priorities, to solve problems with new ideas or approaches instead of getting lost in conflict. This is what fertile culture does. Like an ecosystem, it supports invention. (Btw: if we don’t have elections, we’re gonna need these skills more than ever.)

 It starts with leaders. It could start with you. Take a look at the fertile and fucked up lists again. Are the same issues coming up for you over and over? Are your values clear and present in your everyday decision-making? Are you responding to conflict with grounded confidence… or shrinking, silencing or snark?

Culture can seem amorphous, but if you are playing whack-a-mole with culture problems, you know they are very real. There are real solutions, and the good news is that they start with you, the leader. Yes, it’s a long-term effort, but here are three small things that can make a difference starting now:

1.    Develop a reflective practice. Yes, really. Your actions and reactions set the culture. A short pause before acting is the difference between unconscious repetition of the same patterns and waking up to respond the way you want to. Reflecting daily (even for one minute) grows your muscle to pause and respond rather than react. There are lots of options: choose one that is connected to breath or body. I created a practice for leaders using Tarot cards because they are easy, delightful and very wise. Check it out here.

2.    Schedule uninterrupted planning time once a week. I recommend Friday mornings so you can go into the weekend feeling settled. Tell your team it’s a priority and admit to them if it’s a challenge. Ask them to help you stick to it… and then listen if/when they do. Your example will give them permission to do their own planning and that will set their talents free. Take it a step further and declare Friday mornings meeting free. I promise this makes a profound difference.  (Check out this blog post on the cost of interruptions, how they align with privilege and power, how they fuck up creativity.)

3.    Name your inner critic. Mine is Edith. Naming her gives me just a bit of distance when I’m facing scary choices, puts me more in the driver’s seat and less clouded by stress or fear. This builds the skill of noticing a conflict and naming it, for yourself and that helps you do it for your team. I’ve offered this to dozens of leaders and heard over and over how simple and powerful it is.  

And get your fingers into the soil! Literally. Research shows that bringing your skin into contact with soil releases the happiness hormone, dopamine. It will feed your soul too.