The distance between your stated values and your people's lived reality is where talent is lost.
Most organisations have values. They're on the website, on the walls, in the onboarding pack. Collaboration. Respect. Inclusion. Integrity. Belonging.
And then there's what people actually experience.
The distance between stated values and lived experience is one of the most significant — and least well-understood — drivers of disengagement and departure. Particularly for women, who are often attuned, through both necessity and socialisation, to the gap between what is said and what is done.
What the gap looks like
I hear about the gap in the therapy room. The woman who joined an organisation because of its reputation for flexibility — and found that in practice, leaving early was noted and the note never forgotten. The woman who was told the culture was meritocratic — and watched the informal networks that drove advancement remain closed to her. The woman whose feedback in a 360 was described as 'direct' while the same quality in her male colleague was described as 'strategic.'
These experiences are not unusual. They are patterns. And patterns tell you something about culture that values statements cannot.
Why it matters commercially
Culture is not a soft concept. It is a commercial reality. Organisations with significant gaps between stated and experienced culture pay for it in turnover, in disengagement, in the invisible loss of women who narrow themselves rather than leave — and in the inability to attract and retain the talent that has choices.
Closing the gap
Closing the culture gap starts with understanding it. Not through survey data alone, but through genuine, confidential access to what people are actually experiencing — the moments, patterns, and accumulations that shaped how they feel about working for you.
You cannot fix what you cannot see.
The Women at Work Listening Project is designed to make the invisible visible. nataliemccandless.com/working-with-me-organisations