If the right culture drives retention, and retention drives performance, and performance drives growth—how do you create that kind of culture?

Better yet: who creates it?

Most leaders will say “We do. Leadership sets the culture.”

But here’s an uncomfortable truth: You influence the culture, but your frontline leaders create it.

And if you don’t understand this distinction, you’ll continuously throw money at cultural issues without actually creating any change.

Let me show you exactly what I mean.

What Culture Actually Is (And Isn’t)

Let’s start with a baseline definition so we’re all on the same page.

Culture is the collective dynamic that results from the relationships and the purpose within your organization.

It’s not your values on the wall. It’s not the mission statement senior leaders create. It’s not what you say in all-hands meetings. It’s not what you want it to be or hope it will be or are trying to will into existence.

Your culture just is.

It’s what people experience through their relationships and how connected they feel to the purpose of their work.

Here’s the critical part most leaders miss: culture is a lag measure, not a lead measure.

You cannot fix culture directly. It’s an output. It’s the result of how leaders build relationships and drive purpose—or don’t.

If you want to change your culture, you have to change the input. And the input is the quality of leadership in your organization at all levels and how they connect with each other.

Because while senior leaders can influence culture, it’s ultimately the frontline leaders who directly influence the majority of the organization—and they’re the ones who create it and bring it to life.

The Two Ingredients That Create Culture

Culture has two components: relationships and purpose.

Relationships—how people interact, communicate, and support each other. Do they trust their leader? Do they feel valued? Do they have psychological safety?

Purpose—do people understand why their work matters? Do they see how they contribute to the greater picture? Do they feel connected to something bigger than themselves?

When both are strong, you create engagement. People show up, care, contribute, and have a reason to stay and seek more.

But when you’re missing one or both, people disengage. Not intentionally—subconsciously, they shift into a clock-in, clock-out mentality. What does that turn into? Quiet quitting. Turnover. And the rest is history.

Here’s what most companies misunderstand: Culture isn’t something you can create by announcing new values or printing them on ID cards.

Culture is the accumulated result of thousands of interactions that take place every single day, over time, again and again.

Culture is something that’s already happened. It’s being created whether you recognize it or not, whether it’s something you want or not, whether you’re intentional about creating it or not.

Which means if you want a different culture, you don’t start by trying to fix the culture you have. You have to identify what the inputs to that culture are and address those inputs. In most organizations—especially industrial organizations—that input is your frontline leaders.

The Role Senior Leaders Play vs. The Role Frontline Leaders Play

Frontline leaders don’t play the only role in culture. They just play a very important one. They play the role that brings culture into existence.

Senior leaders define organizational direction, purpose, mission, vision, and strategy. They set expectations and model how relationships are supposed to work. They build the systems that develop, organize, and run things operationally. They influence culture through decisions, investments, and infrastructure they intentionally design.

Frontline leaders execute relationships daily through coaching, feedback, support, and accountability. They transmit purpose through how they communicate, prioritize, and lead. They make thousands of micro-decisions each day that shape the experience of every individual. They create and scale culture across 80-90% of your workforce through their direct daily contact.

Both matter. Both are critical.

Senior leaders influence the culture—it starts with them. But frontline leaders create the culture. They bring it into existence. They bring it to life.

Because culture isn’t what we discuss in boardrooms behind closed doors. It’s what’s experienced on the floor.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Think about it: Your employees building your parts, designing what you’re selling to customers—they’re not interacting with executives or general managers every day. But who are they interacting with every day? Their supervisor.

That supervisor determines whether employees feel heard or ignored, whether they understand why their work matters, whether they feel supported or micromanaged, whether they trust leadership or feel manipulated, whether they feel like they’re part of a team or just a means to an end.

Every single day, your frontline leaders are making deposits or withdrawals into the relational and purpose accounts of your workforce. Over time, those deposits or withdrawals compound into what we call culture.

The Air Traffic Control Problem

Here’s what often happens between senior leadership trying to design culture and frontline leaders tasked with implementing it:

Senior leaders, you’re like air traffic control. You’re responsible for the airspace and all of the aircraft flying through it—their safety, their direction, how they all work together. But your frontline leaders are the pilots. They’re the ones on the front lines moving each aircraft based on the direction and guidance you give them.

Now, if those pilots aren’t receiving the instructions you provide, how do you think the experience within those aircraft is going to be? Better yet, if the pilots haven’t been systematically developed so they know how to bring to life the instructions you provide, how do you think the experience on that aircraft is going to be?

Through layers of mid-level management, ideas, initiatives, purpose, and examples get watered down and lost in translation. By the time they reach the frontlines, these individuals—even if they receive a little bit of what was initially communicated—typically don’t have the development, the skills, or the clear direction on how to actually create it and model it.

The flight experience is defined by the pilot, not by air traffic control—even though air traffic control has a huge influence on it.

It’s the same with your organization. The employee experience is defined by the frontline leader. It’s influenced by the senior leader and every layer in between. But it’s brought to life by the supervisor. And your culture is the culmination of all those experiences brought together.

Why This Is a Strategic Issue, Not Just an HR Problem

Why does this matter beyond engagement scores and retention metrics?

Because your culture is ultimately your competitive advantage—or your strategic liability.

Here are some eye-opening metrics from Gallup:

• Organizations with strong cultures are 21% more profitable.
• They experience 59% less turnover.
• Safety incidents drop by up to 70% when leadership quality improves.

Culture shows up in your operational metrics every single day. Production efficiency. Quality. Schedule. Safety. They’re all downstream of your culture.

And what’s your culture downstream of? The quality of your leadership infrastructure and your frontline leaders’ ability to provide purpose and positively influence relationships.

So if you want better operational performance, you can’t just optimize processes and equipment. It all starts and hinges on the quality of your frontline leaders.

This isn’t soft skills—even though that makes up a huge part of it. This is strategy.

And here’s what’s interesting: Very few companies do this well. Very few companies can strategically see the importance of systematic investment into their leadership infrastructure.

So what does that tell me? It’s a huge opportunity for you. An opportunity to be different. And what happens when you’re different? You create a culture that’s magnetic—that people want to stay at, that attracts others to you.

That’s everything every organization is looking for today. And you have the keys to make it happen. And it directly impacts your bottom line.

The Questions You Need to Ask Yourself

If you’re a senior leader: Are we developing our leaders intentionally to create the culture we want so it can have the impact we desire? Or are we leaving that culture to chance?

If you’re a frontline leader: Are you creating culture on your team intentionally? Do you see that as your role? Or are you just managing tasks and schedules to keep up with what your leadership needs from you?

What to Do Next

If you want help building this system, if you want the tools to create this culture that makes such a difference in organizations, we have resources available for you.

For frontline leaders and senior leaders: Download The Leader’s Preflight Checklist at operationlead.com/checklist—a set of steps to take each week to empower your team, develop relationships, and provide purpose so you can engage your team and lead them to something significant.

For senior leaders: Check out last week’s episode here and download The Hidden Cause of Disengagement, Turnover, and Stalled Performance at operationlead.com/retention—a strategic guide to lead you through this entire process.

Ready to explore what a systematic approach to frontline leadership development could look like in your organization? Request a discovery call at operationlead.kit.com/requestcall. No cost, no pressure—just a conversation about what you’re looking to achieve and how to do it.

Here’s what I want you to remember:

Culture is not created in the boardroom. It’s created on the floor, in the warehouse, on the line—through the thousands of daily interactions supervisors have with employees each day. It’s their lived experience. That’s what culture is.

Frontline leaders create that. But you have the tools and the influence to help them create one that makes a positive difference—for them, for you, and for the people they lead.

Senior leaders set the strategy. They can even design the culture. But frontline leaders execute the culture. And what’s executed is what’s created.

If you want a culture that drives retention, performance, and growth, you have to develop the leaders who create it.

Your frontline leaders ARE your culture. Invest accordingly.

Let’s Lead,
Craig