The Culture of Yesterday’s Successful Company Will Not Build Tomorrow’s Success

By Alexis Halkovic, PhD Co-CEO of CultureCamp

TL;DR: The culture that got you here won’t get you there — the future demands new insight into what’s really driving your people.

As coaches, we’re seeing this firsthand. Clients are confused about how to lead across generations, respond to burnout, and retain people whose motivations feel unfamiliar. If we don’t understand what’s actually driving the people in the room, we risk applying yesterday’s strategies to tomorrow’s challenges.

Distinct Generations Hold Distinct Work Cultures

The way we work, and what we expect from work, has been rewritten in recent decades. Generational divides, political polarization, technological leaps, and global crises have all left their mark. The result? A workforce whose motivations, values, and boundaries look nothing like those of twenty years ago — yet many organizations are still running on a cultural operating system built for a different time.

We are in an era of unprecedented and unpredictable change — technological, political, economic, and employment. I can’t scroll through my phone without seeing something about generational differences — Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z — and nowhere is this more obvious than in the workplace.

The 2025 Conference Board Job Satisfaction survey puts some numbers to it:

• Ages 18–24: 57.4% satisfied

• Ages 25–54: 67.7% satisfied

• Ages 55 and over: 72.4% satisfied

  
  

The lowest satisfaction levels are among the youngest workers. That should be a wake-up call for anyone leading an organization AND at the heart of this is culture.

How defining events shape work culture

In my own career, I’ve seen firsthand how major events leave their imprint on workplace culture and expectations.

When I was at Goldman Sachs during the destruction of the World Trade Center, it was a deeply personal, shared experience for my team. On September 11th, my colleagues in Business Information Services made sure we knew where every team member was — that everyone was out of the building and moving together toward safety. I walked to the 59th Street Bridge with several coworkers, then on to Queens to stay with friends. The day was surreal, and the days after were filled with new challenges as the reality set in.

We went back to work while the building still smouldered. We supported colleagues who had lost friends in the towers. We found new ways to get to the office with the transit center destroyed. We endured crowds of look-i-loos visiting the site. We had survived — and we had survived together - and that made us closer.

The pandemic was a completely different kind of event — universal, but not shared in the same way. Some people, like restaurant workers, lost their jobs — and many of those jobs never came back. Essential workers shouldered the risk and kept going, often without the pay or protections they deserved. Those who could work from home faced isolation and uncertainty.

In the U.S., 9.6 million people lost their jobs during the pandemic. Women’s unemployment rates were 2.7% higher than men’s. The youngest workers experienced the steepest losses. On top of this, people were juggling childcare, remote school, health risks, and the question of what work even meant to them anymore.

Why yesterday’s culture can’t move us forward

The pandemic’s ripple effects, combined with increased political polarization, widening inequality, and the rapid adoption of new technologies, have changed the way people want to show up at work. These shifts aren’t temporary — they’ve rewritten the playbook for motivation, retention, and engagement.

Leaders can no longer assume that what worked in the past will work in the future. It’s not enough to offer perks or tweak policies — we have to get underneath the surface to understand what’s driving people now.

This is where I turn to culture assessment tools. The right tool can reveal where team members’ values align — and where they clash — so leaders and coaches can address issues before they cement into dysfunction. Pairing that data with the skill of a certified coach can turn vague “people problems” into clear, actionable strategies.

For me, that’s the promise of the CultureCamp AI assessment and assistant — a way to bring deeper insight into the coaching process so we can help leaders build cultures ready for tomorrow, not stuck in yesterday.

Curious how you could use CultureCamp in your coaching practice? Take the assessment yourself, or book a walkthrough to explore how we help coaches drive cultural clarity.

And always, feel free to reach out to me at: coach@alexishalkovic.com