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Key Takeaways Culture is an operating system, not a perk, guiding decisions when leaders aren’t present.
Clarity in culture reduces friction, speeds execution and empowers teams during constant change.
The past year has been relentless for founders and CEOs. Taxes shifted. Tariffs reappeared. Regulations tightened. Geopolitics escalated. And technology (especially AI) continued to rewrite how work gets done. For entrepreneurs, volatility is no longer an occasional disruption. It’s the environment you’re building inside.
So, when leaders gathered at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit this fall, the most urgent conversation wasn’t about forecasting models or the next productivity tool. It was about culture.
Not culture as in perks or “how we like to work.” Culture as in the invisible system that determines how people behave when the plan breaks down. When priorities collide. When leaders aren’t in the room to make the call.
But how do you create a culture flexible enough to adapt, resilient enough to absorb shocks and disciplined enough to execute in constant change? This surfaced repeatedly in conversations with CEOs like AT&T’s John Stankey, Starbucks’ Brian Niccol and Chevron’s Mike Wirth.
Related: I Made Our Company Culture Public. Here’s What Happened to My Business
And Wirth’s experience offers an important lesson for entrepreneurs trying to scale without losing control. Culture doesn’t grow through inspiration. It grows through clarity.
Wirth became CEO of Chevron in early 2018 and was quickly tested. A global pandemic. Geopolitical conflict. Oil prices swung from negative territory to nearly $140 a barrel. Add a political environment that alternated between calling the industry irredeemable and denying climate change entirely, and you get a leadership stress test few founders would envy.
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