Most Employees Don’t Build Culture
Two kinds of employees strengthen culture. All the rest quietly sink it.
I’ll admit this is a working theory. But the more I test it, be it in consulting, investing, and reflecting on the teams I’ve been part of, the more I believe it:
Culture is built by only two types of employees.
The Doer. The one who follows through, executes, and delivers.
The Idea Person. The one who sparks creativity, injects energy, and expands what’s possible.
Everyone else? They’re a drain.
That sounds harsh. But when you strip away the noise, culture isn’t about murals, perks, or mission statements. It’s about what people do every day. And only two behaviors add energy: doing and ideating.
The doer is the foundation. They’re the people who carry weight without complaint, the ones you trust when something simply must get done. They create stability because their consistency allows others to take risks. Teams without enough doers collapse under the weight of their own talk—they spend energy planning, debating, and aligning, but nothing ever moves.
The idea person is the spark. They bring oxygen to the room. They’re the ones who stop the group from repeating the same tired playbook. They’re willing to imagine new approaches, take intellectual risks, and ask “why not?” Without idea people, teams may be efficient, but they’re also stagnant. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they drift into irrelevance.
Everyone else? That’s where culture erodes.
Some show up as dreamers: big on vision, light on execution. Some are critics, quick to point out flaws but unwilling to build. Others are the disengaged middle: clock-punchers who do just enough to keep a seat, but never add real energy. None of these are neutral. They don’t just fail to contribute; they create drag.
The research backs this up. Gallup estimates disengaged employees cost the global economy $8.8 trillion a year—about nine percent of GDP. Harvard researchers have shown that a single toxic employee can increase turnover among their peers by more than fifty percent. It doesn’t take many drains to tilt a team’s culture from positive to negative.
When I think of the best colleagues I’ve ever had, they’ve always been one of the two. The teammate who took the hardest assignment and delivered it without hassle. The colleague who asked the one question in a meeting that changed everyone’s perspective. They weren’t perfect—but they gave more than they took.
Leaders, then, face a brutally simple mandate. They have to reward the doers so they aren’t invisible. They have to protect the idea people so they aren’t crushed by cynicism. And they have to move quickly on everyone else, because the longer drains linger, the more they normalize mediocrity.
Culture isn’t defined by the values on the wall. It’s defined by who you choose to keep in the room. And when you strip it down, only two types of people are adding anything at all: the doers and the idea people.
So here’s the question worth wrestling with: if you mapped your current team, how many of your people truly belong in one of those two categories? Because if the number isn’t high enough, you don’t have a culture that’s compounding, you have a culture that’s leaking.
And leaks, left unattended, eventually sink the ship.
What a weird and wonderful world,
Quick PSA
On a different note, I wanted to share something personal with you all. This year, I’m running the Chicago Marathon on behalf of the American Cancer Society. Cancer has impacted so many lives, including my own, and I’m honored to be running in support of research, treatment, and patient care.
If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter and want to support a great cause, I would truly appreciate any donation toward my fundraising goal. Every contribution, big or small, makes a difference.
Thank you for your support—it means the world to me!