Nova: Welcome to Aibrary. I'm Nova, and today we are diving into a book that asks a deceptively simple question: if 90 percent of leaders say culture is critical to their organization's success, why do only about 25 percent of them actually have a plan to shape it?

Nova: It really does. And that is exactly the gap Jenni Catron set out to close with her USA Today bestselling book, Culture Matters: A Framework for Helping Your Team Grow, Thrive, and Be Unstoppable. Catron is the founder and CEO of The 4Sight Group, and she has spent more than two decades leading teams in the music industry, in large nonprofits, and now consulting organizations on leadership and culture. She has seen culture at its best and at its absolute worst.

Nova: She does. She says, "Your culture isn't as good as you think it is." Ouch. But she also says culture is not fluffy. It is not about ping-pong tables or pizza lunches. It is the operating system of your organization, and it is either being built by design or drifting by default. Today we are unpacking her LeadCulture Framework, the five-phase cycle that turns culture from a vague aspiration into a deliberate, executable system.

Nova: So let's start with my favorite story in the book. Jenni Catron is the Executive Director at a large church in Nashville. Her team is small, about five people. Every Tuesday they have their staff meeting, and then they all walk over to the local Mexican restaurant for lunch. Chips and queso. It becomes their ritual, their bonding moment. Culture is easy when you are five people.

Nova: Exactly. Catron calls this the "flock ball" stage, where everybody is around the ball doing everything together. Fast forward a few years. The team has grown to 30 people. Another Tuesday rolls around, and they decide to stay onsite for lunch that day. Around 12:15, her phone rings. It is the Mexican restaurant.

Nova: They did. They said, "Hey Jenni, we are just checking to see if you are coming today." And in that moment it hit her. For five years, every single Tuesday, this restaurant had been stringing together tables to accommodate 30 people, taking up half the restaurant, all because she never stopped to recognize that the team had changed. She was trying to lead a 30-person organization the way she led a 5-person one.

Nova: That is exactly Catron's point. What works when you have five people will not survive intact at 30, much less at 300. Culture cannot just be "caught" at scale. It has to be taught. It has to be designed. If you do not intentionally architect it, it will evolve on its own, and probably not in ways you want.

Nova: So how do you actually build culture by design? Catron created what she calls the LeadCulture Framework, and it has five phases arranged in a cycle. Phase one is Assess. Phase two is Define. Phase three is Build. Phase four is Equip. Phase five is Commit. And then the cycle repeats.

Nova: That is exactly right. And Catron warns that assessing your own culture is incredibly hard, especially the larger your organization gets. The leader is often the last to know what the day-to-day experience actually feels like. She recommends forming a culture team made up of people from across the organization, not just senior leadership. You need the voices from the middle, the people who see the tension points senior leaders miss. Then you gather data through surveys, interviews, focus groups, listening sessions, and you diagnose the gaps between stated values and actual behaviors.

Nova: It is deeply uncomfortable. But Catron says if you skip assessment and jump straight to implementing changes, you risk reinforcing dysfunction or launching initiatives that ring completely hollow. Now phase two, Define, is about getting crystal clear on the culture you aspire to. Not mission statements or slogans. She asks questions like, "What do we look like at our best?" and "What values or behaviors do we hope people see if they joined our organization today?"

Nova: Yes. Catron tells the story of a leader who would walk around changing the color of baseboards in a building because he cared deeply about aesthetics and the environment. But he never told his operations team that this was a priority. To them, he just seemed obsessive and unpredictable. The lack of clarity created frustration on both sides. Once he articulated that aesthetics mattered to him and why, everything changed. Clarity breeds trust. Unspoken expectations breed confusion and micromanagement.

Nova: Build is where you move from vision to systems. Catron argues that this is where most leaders drop the ball. They say culture matters, but they do not invest in a plan. She says the plan needs the same rigor as any strategic initiative. That means embedding culture into hiring practices, performance reviews, communication rhythms, onboarding, rituals, decision-making frameworks, and role clarity. She emphasizes that structural clarity, things like who owns what decision and how feedback loops work, is just as foundational to culture as relational dynamics like trust and belonging.

Nova: That is one of her core arguments. Culture is a system. It is not just emotional energy. It is a network of structural levers, decisions, feedback loops, training, and accountability. If your systems do not reinforce your values, your values are just words on a wall.

Nova: Phase four, Equip, is where Catron says many well-intentioned culture plans fall apart. You can have the most beautiful culture definition and the smartest plan, but if your mid-level managers and supervisors do not understand or embody the culture, it will not stick. She calls these people "culture carriers," and they need training, coaching, and support.

Nova: Exactly. Without equipping, culture remains aspirational. Leaders revert to old habits under pressure. So Catron emphasizes leadership training, practical tools and playbooks, ongoing coaching, and what she calls "role modeling," where senior leaders must visibly model what they are asking for. You cannot ask for transparency while hoarding information. You cannot preach psychological safety while punishing bad news.

Nova: Right. Commit means embedding culture into the regular operating rhythm. Annual culture assessments. Quarterly reviews of how culture is being lived. Tying culture metrics into executive reviews. Celebrating culture wins through stories and rituals. And looking at who you hire and who leaves through the lens of cultural alignment. Then the cycle restarts. Assess again. Redefine. Refocus. Renew. Culture is never finished because your organization is never finished changing.

Nova: That is one of her core principles. Culture is a living system. It is shaped daily by decisions, behaviors, and feedback loops. A culture that thrives is dynamic and adaptive, not static. And every single leader in the organization, not just the CEO, is a culture influencer. Your voice, your behaviors, your tone, and your priorities all matter.

Nova: Let me share the origin story that set Jenni Catron on this whole path, because it is so relatable. Early in her career, she worked in the music business in Nashville. She was on a rocket-ride team at a record company. They were hitting every metric, every sales target. She felt connected, challenged, and she was having an absolute blast. She thought, "This is what work is supposed to feel like."

Nova: And then it ended. The company went through a corporate merger, and overnight, the experience went from amazing to awful. Her job did not change. Her responsibilities did not change. But her leader changed and her team changed, and suddenly she was drained, demotivated, and looking for an escape.

Nova: That moment planted the seed. She became obsessed with understanding what makes some teams great and others toxic. She went on to lead in different environments, including nearly a decade at that large church in Nashville, and in every role she kept experimenting with how to intentionally, purposefully build a team. Not with perks and fun stuff, but with the things that truly rally people together. Clarity of mission. Clarity of structure. Clarity of how decisions get made.

Nova: That is one of her most provocative arguments. She says everybody wants trust. It is the buzzword on every team. But trust is not something you can directly manufacture. What you can do is provide the conditions where trust naturally grows. Clear mission. Clear roles. Clear decision rights. When people know where they stand, how decisions are made, and what success looks like, trust deepens. When those things are murky, trust erodes no matter how many offsites you schedule.

Nova: That is a great way to put it. And Catron would say that when a leader fails to provide that clarity, they are not being neutral. They are actively creating a culture of confusion. Culture will form regardless. The only question is whether you are shaping it or it is shaping itself.

Nova: Let's talk about one of the hardest truths in the book. Catron says culture is shaped more by what you tolerate than by what you say. Your stated values are only as strong as the daily behaviors that reinforce or violate them.

Nova: Exactly. Catron is very clear that misalignment must be addressed. You cannot allow behavior that contradicts core values to persist. Every time you look the other way, you are not being gracious. You are rewriting the culture in real time, and everyone is watching. It creates cynicism. People start to believe the values are just for show.

Nova: It is terrifying. And Catron does not sugarcoat that. She acknowledges that culture work is vulnerable. It requires courage. But she also points out that the cost of inaction is far higher. Dysfunctional cultures drive out your best people, the ones who actually embody the values you claim to hold. They are the ones who leave first because they cannot tolerate the gap between what you say and what you do.

Nova: It really is. On the flip side, she talks about how stories and symbols can be used positively to reinforce culture. Celebrate the moments when someone lives out the values. Tell those stories. Make them part of the organization's shared narrative. Catron says culture gets codified through stories, legends, rituals, and artifacts. Not through memos.

Nova: You absolutely need both. She is adamant that culture is not just relationship or emotional energy, and it is also not just cold structural design. It is the integration of the two. You need the clarity systems to create the foundation for trust, and you need the relational rituals to create belonging. If you only have one or the other, you have either a bureaucratic machine or a feel-good club, neither of which sustains high performance.

Nova: So let's bring it all together. Jenni Catron's Culture Matters gives us a framework, but it also gives us a mindset shift. Culture is not a soft, secondary concern. It is the most critical lever a leader has. If your culture is not healthy, your strategy is irrelevant.

Nova: And the path forward is both simple and demanding. Assess where you really are, not where you wish you were. Define the culture you aspire to in behavioral terms, not platitudes. Build a plan with the same rigor you would apply to any strategic initiative. Equip every leader at every level to be a culture carrier. And commit to the cycle forever, because culture is never done.

Nova: It is. And she would remind us that if you do not lead your culture, it will still form. It will just form by default, shaped by whoever is loudest, whatever is most urgent, and whatever dysfunctions go unaddressed. The choice is not between having a culture and not having one. The choice is between designing it or drifting into it.

Nova: Because culture matters. It matters for the people you are trying to reach. It matters for the people you are trying to lead. And it matters for you, because your life is too short to squander in an organization that drains the life out of you.