You cannot fix culture while the building is burning.
Miscellaneous Notes and reflections
Culture work (rebuilding trust, changing norms, improving how people work together) requires a degree of stability and leadership attention. Staff can’t focus on “how we collaborate better” when they’re worried about layoffs next week or whether the organization survives the year. Trying to fix culture during an acute crisis often backfires: it feels tone-deaf, it distracts from survival, and whatever progress you make gets wiped out by the next emergency. You have to stabilize first before you can really make progress on the deeper work.
What I talk about often is that culture should be tended to and not be a separate "thing" to address. When culture is treated as infrastructure, and a healthy work environment evolves over time, teams can better navigate/manage the natural ups and downs that we know exist in the nonprofit world.