Why Smart Teams Fail. It’s Not What You Think

Can your team see, discuss, and change its own culture? If not, risk is hiding in plain sight.

What Is Culture?

Culture is how we work together:

• How we make decisions and set priorities
• How we share feedback and hold one another accountable
• How we use power and authority—formally and informally
• How we surface disagreements (or don’t)
• How we celebrate wins and learn from failures
• How we address—or fail to address—root causes

In short, culture is the human operating system that turns strategy and resources into results.

A personal lesson. Early in my career as a systems engineer and tech team lead, I learned the importance of culture the hard way. My IT team hit every project milestone—on time, on budget, met every objective—yet when it came time to renew – we still lost the client. Why? Difficult interpersonal dynamics had eroded trust and were a barrier to a successful business relationship – we were good, but just too hard to deal with to be worth it.

Later, as a partner in a consulting firm during a key transaction, my partners and I left serious money on the table—not because of a bad market or flawed services, but because we couldn’t agree on – or even talk about – the issues that mattered most. Both experiences taught me: no matter how smart your strategy, culture eats it for breakfast.

What is Cultural Intelligence or “CQ”?

Cultural Intelligence—or CQ—is the ability to see and understand how culture impacts results and having the agency and skills to do something about it. This includes not just business outcomes like financial performance, quality, customer satisfaction or safety, but also human outcomes like engagement, retention, and collaboration.

Here’s a quick way to think about it:

• If you can read your team dynamics as clearly as you can read a product spec, a code base, a lab report or a financial analysis – you have high CQ.
• If human dynamics sometimes confuse you, or if you’re unsure how to address patterns you see, or feel your team is not changing fast enough, then your CQ may need strengthening.

This has always mattered. But today, the expectations are higher: employees and stakeholders are looking for real cultural leadership—not just operational management—from those in charge. Leading your culture is not one of those jobs AI can do for you, and you can’t expect HR to take care of this on their own.

Leaders who build CQ in themselves and their teams gain a massive advantage: they can diagnose issues earlier, adapt faster, with less drama, and lead cultures that deliver both business performance and human resilience.

1. When Culture Turns Deadly

Culture-work is often fun – even joyful – and should not be seen as only focused on correcting a problem or addressing a failure. It is often about increasing flow, happiness and enjoyment at work. It’s about delighting customers and creating loyalty.  Product features are easy to copy, but a strong culture is a competitive advantage – with customers and employees – that is hard to duplicate.

However, when I saw the recent documentary about the Titan tragedy, I had to take notice.

Netflix’s Titan: The OceanGate Disaster shows how dissenting engineers were marginalized, safety warnings dismissed, and a “founder-knows-best” mindset drove fatal decisions—prompting one former director of engineering to say, “Culture is what killed the people. 100 percent.”

This was the belief of the former director of engineering, not the head of HR.

NASA’s 1986 Challenger inquiry reached the same verdict almost 40 years ago: managers ignored engineers’ O-ring warnings, prioritizing schedule over safety.

And let me be clear: in both Titan and Challenger, it seems all the leaders involved sincerely wanted to be safe. The CEO of OceanGate – quoted in the documentary – says he had a granddaughter he planned to see grow up, that “no one will die on my watch” and that the company should fail rather then be unsafe. I have no doubt these feelings were true. But clearly it was not enough to counter other forces at play in the culture and avoid a tragic outcome.

2. Why This Matters to Every Leader

• Leadership behavior sets the tone. A 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review study found toxic culture is most strongly predicted by toxic leadership and group norms.
• Healthy culture drives results. McKinsey’s 2024 research shows organizational health remains the single best predictor of long-term value creation.

Whether you’re launching spacecraft or leading a sales team, ignoring culture is an expensive gamble.

3. The Three Capabilities of High-Reliability Teams

1. See the culture Make the invisible visible with real data—surveys, 360s, and behavioral observations.
2. Discuss the culture Create psychological safety and constructive conflict. If people can’t challenge assumptions, you’re flying blind.
3. Change the culture Align behaviors with your mission and strategy. Preserve what works, fix what doesn’t, and measure progress.

These steps echo the conflict-resolution roots of the Harvard Negotiation Project: tough issues become solvable only when they’re named and examined openly. That which is not discussed, will eventually become un-discussable.

4. Put It on Your Next Agenda

1. Open with evidence. Bring one data point—retention, rework cost, wasted time or near-miss—that culture likely influenced. Ask: What are the key components of our culture?  How do they support, or obstruct, our mission?
2. Run a “Titan Test.” Ask: Which warnings are we not hearing? What is important that we are not talking about?
3. Map See-Discuss-Change gaps. Choose one habit to start or stop this quarter. Ask: If we are to be the masters of our culture, where should we start?

Small, disciplined moves beat heroic speeches.

You don’t need a documentary—or a disaster—to start building a better culture. You just need the courage to ask the right questions, and the will to act on what you hear.

5. A Humble Invitation

I don’t build submersibles or rockets—but for 30 years I’ve helped leaders and teams make their cultures safer, smarter, more productive and more resilient. If your team needs fresh eyes, new skills for strategic thinking, advanced facilitation, or a practical playbook to see, discuss, and change the way you work, let’s talk.

Let’s build cultures that are not only fast and innovative—but grounded in trust, curiosity, and candor.

References

1. Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, 2025.
2. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster findings, U.S. Rogers Commission Report, 1986.
3. MIT Sloan Management Review, “Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture,” 2022.
4. McKinsey & Company, “Organizational Health Is Still the Key to Long-Term Performance,” 2024.
5. Harvard Law School, Program on Negotiation, Overview of the Harvard Negotiation Project.