MONDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2026 · ISSUE #31
THE OPEN
Good morning. Thanks for opening Still Monday again. Keep voting, replying and recommending us to anyone whose company has a 47-page culture deck and a manager who has never read it.
Today’s question:
What is your company culture?
The values on the wall?
The CEO’s town hall?
The annual retreat?
Gallup has a less glamorous answer. There is a decent chance it is your boss.
Let’s get to work.
BIG STORY
Your company culture may be one person.
Companies spend enormous amounts of time describing culture.
Mission.
Values.
Purpose.
Behaviors.
Leadership principles.
Sometimes there is a laminated card.
Then an employee joins a team and experiences the company primarily through one human being.
Their manager.
Gallup’s research finds that managers account for roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement. Its latest workplace analysis also shows global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, with declining manager engagement playing a major role in the drop. Gallup.com
That creates an uncomfortable truth for leaders.
Corporate culture can be beautifully designed at headquarters and badly delivered ten feet away.
Imagine the company says:
We value ownership.
Manager requires approval for everything.
We believe in transparency.
Manager withholds information.
We encourage experimentation.
One failed experiment appears in the performance review.
We care about development.
Every one-on-one becomes a status update.
Which culture does the employee work in?
The PDF?
Or Tuesday afternoon?
Gallup says only two in ten U.S. employees currently feel strongly connected to their organization’s culture. Employees who do feel strongly connected are 4.3 times as likely to be engaged and 47% less likely to be looking for another job or watching for opportunities. Gallup.com
The manager sits directly in the middle of that experience.
And managers themselves are struggling.
Global manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, a much steeper decline than among individual contributors. Gallup.com
That matters because exhausted managers do not distribute culture particularly well.
They distribute urgency.
Meetings.
Approvals.
Requests.
Whatever arrived from leadership ten minutes ago.
This is why companies can spend heavily on employer branding while ignoring the person employees interact with every day.
For owners, the lesson is not simply hire better managers.
Managers need an operating system too.
Clear priorities.
Reasonable spans of control.
Training.
Feedback.
Authority.
Enough time to manage rather than performing two jobs while being told to coach twelve people.
Gallup’s current data show only 29% of U.S. employees strongly agree they received recognition or praise for good work during the previous seven days. Just 31% strongly agree someone at work encourages their development. Only 32% say they had opportunities to learn and grow during the previous year. Gallup.com
Those do not require another culture initiative. They require a manager paying attention.
You can write culture centrally, and employees receive it locally.
WORTH KNOWING
01 / Manager engagement fell hard
Gallup reports global manager engagement dropped nine percentage points between 2022 and 2025, from 31% to 22%. Individual-contributor engagement declined only one point during the same period.
The people responsible for motivating everybody could apparently use a word with management.
02 / Recognition remains surprisingly rare
Only 29% of U.S. employees strongly agree they received recognition or praise for good work in the previous week.
Please wait for the annual awards banquet.
03 / Culture connection changes retention
Employees who strongly feel connected to their organization’s culture are 47% less likely to be actively looking for another job or watching for opportunities, according to Gallup. Gallup.com
Turns out culture may be cheaper than recruiting.
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WORK SMARTER
Give every one-on-one four questions
A useful one-on-one does not need a complicated template.
Ask:
What matters most this week?
What is getting in your way?
What do you need from me?
What are you getting better at?A weak manager creates costs in other departments
Poor management rarely appears as a line item.
It appears as turnover.
Recruiting.
Absenteeism.
Rework.
Missed deadlines.
Employees who stop suggesting improvements.
Senior leaders spending time fixing problems that should have been solved lower in the organization.
Culture looks soft until you follow the invoices.
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STILL MONDAY
COMPANY VALUES
Ownership.
Trust.
Transparency.
Growth.
MANAGER: Don’t make that decision without me.
EMPLOYEE: Got it.
MANAGER: Also, I need you to take more ownership.
EMPLOYEE: Got it.
MANAGER: Why do you keep saying “got it”?
EMPLOYEE: Growth.
ONE MORE THING
Employees do not experience the average culture of a company.
They experience the culture of their team.
That means two people working for the same organization can describe completely different workplaces and both be right.
One company.
Hundreds of managers.
Hundreds of versions.
Before you go...
Vote below and tell us the best thing a manager has ever done that made your job easier.
And forward this to a good manager.
They hear about everything that goes wrong.
They should occasionally receive evidence that something went right.
Technically Monday. Emotionally check-in at 9:00.
— The Still Monday Desk