Two Apple TV Shows, Two Leadership Lessons on Culture Change
Apple TV’s Severance takes workplace control to an unsettling extreme. On Lumon Industries’ “severed floor,” employees have no memory of their lives outside work. Information is tightly controlled, questions are discouraged, and compliance matters more than curiosity. The premise is fictional, but the warning is familiar: when leaders value obedience over honest feedback, they undermine the trust, learning, and purpose that culture change requires.
Ted Lasso offers the opposite picture. Ted inherits a demoralized team and wins it over through curiosity, not control—asking questions, owning his mistakes, and treating everyone from the kit man to the star player as worth hearing. His motto, “Be curious, not judgmental,” is a good standard for any leader.
Throughout my career, I have learned that changing a policy can be straightforward. Changing culture—how people think, communicate, and work together—is much harder.
Leaders set the tone. If they want honesty, they must welcome opposing views. If they want accountability, they must acknowledge their own mistakes. If they want innovation, they must give employees room to think, experiment, and act.
A lessons-learned report stored away and forgotten is not continuous improvement. Leaders must decide what will change, who is responsible, and how progress will be reviewed—and tell employees. Learning matters only when it changes how the organization operates.
The good news is that culture change can work—and when it does, the difference shows in how people behave when something goes wrong.
Before launching a culture-change initiative, leaders must honestly assess the culture they have. Surveys, forums, and listening sessions can reveal whether people feel empowered—or afraid to speak up, make decisions, and take risks. Asking for feedback is not enough. Leaders must be willing to hear uncomfortable truths, examine their own role, and act on what they learn. Employees need to know that speaking up leads to real change, not another report.
That commitment to listening should continue once an initiative is underway. After major efforts, organizations should pause to ask:
· What worked?
· What did not?
· What should we do differently next time?
The purpose is to learn, not assign blame. Accountability still matters, but acknowledging a mistake should open a conversation about what needs to change—not close it with embarrassment or punishment.
When Alan Mulally became CEO of Ford in 2006, the company was losing billions, yet his executives kept reporting their projects as “green” in weekly reviews. Mulally pointed out that a company losing that much money could not have everything on track. When Mark Fields marked a serious launch problem red, many expected him to be fired. Instead, Mulally applauded and asked who could help. Within weeks, the charts filled with red and yellow, and the team could finally tackle real problems.
Ford weathered the 2008–2009 financial crisis without the government bailout its Detroit rivals needed. The detailed story is in the non-fiction book American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Bryce G. Hoffman (Crown Currency, 2012). Mulally demonstrates how a leader changes behavior: rewarding the truth-teller, admitting what they did not know, and making it safe to raise problems early. When that happens, people stop hiding problems and start solving them together—and when candor leads to action, they keep speaking up.
In Severance, employees who break the rules are sent to the “Break Room”—not to rest, but to repeat a scripted apology until management believes they mean it. In Ted Lasso, Ted puts up a suggestion box, and when a player asks for better water pressure in the showers, he gets it fixed. The Break Room demands compliance; the suggestion box invites candor and proves it matters. Every leader is building one or the other, and employees can tell which.
What could you do differently as a leader to help people feel safe asking hard questions—and confident proposing new ideas?
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