Culture Isn’t a Poster on the Wall

From Season 1, Episode 3 of How’s Work, a podcast from The Kindling Agency

There’s a version of “workplace culture” that lives in a values deck, a mission statement, maybe a mural in the break room. Sabrina Saunders Mosby wants Pittsburgh’s business leaders to forget that version entirely.

“Culture is not vibes,” she says early in the conversation. “I don’t care what anyone tells you; it is a feeling. It’s who’s promoted. It’s what respect looks like on the work floor. That’s culture.”

Saunders Mosby is CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh, the organization working to make the region a place that will attract and retain diverse talent. Her path there started, fittingly, with a workplace culture lesson she didn’t know she was learning: as a teenage candy striper at what was then Western Hospital in Pittsburgh, she noticed two boys in the elevator wearing white shirts instead of her red one, and getting paid for the same work she was volunteering to do. That small observation led her into a summer youth employment program, then a job in the hospital’s HR department, then eventually a seat on the board of the same hospital system. “The relationships I was able to build, even as a kid, have certainly stuck with me and been really important to my entire trajectory,” she says.

That thread- access, information, and who gets pulled into the room- runs through everything she had to say about work today.

Burnout is a clarity problem, not a workload problem

Saunders Mosby recently wrote that burnout today is less about how much people are carrying and more about working in the dark: exhaustion sets in when clarity doesn’t keep pace with change. On the podcast, she discusses how parenting has changed the way she leads and thinks about leadership. 

“My son is five. We are in the question-and-answer phase of life.” He’s not asking questions because something is wrong. “He’s asking questions because he wants to understand and prepare.“ There may be nothing he can do about this thing I’m going to tell him, but his ability to understand and prepare creates some level of security for him. “Employees are the same way.”  If we want our people to rise to the occasion and know what to do. They need information in moments of ambiguity. A little clarity when they can't see the entire picture. It's not necessarily just the information that provides clarity; it's the process of building trust with your people, giving them a sense of control, and giving them a stake in the path ahead. In her words, "Now I am accountable to this thing. Now I'm in it with you." Stay quiet, and they fill the gap themselves, with conclusions reached alone and carried in private.

Her point isn’t that employees need to know everything. It’s that when leaders default to “you’ll know when you need to know,” they’re not protecting anyone; they’re eroding trust. “When you don’t have that sense of security or trust, that’s where burnout comes in. You’re stressed, you’re coming up with your own conclusions about what’s next and where we’re going.”

The gap between stated values and lived values

If there’s a single line that captures her philosophy, it’s this: culture is the difference between the values that are stated and the values that are lived.

She’s seen the failure mode up close: leaders who chase a repeatable tagline instead of a felt experience. “Culture is not a poster. It’s not a tagline,” she says. “Just because you say it doesn’t mean it’s true.” The better test, she argues, isn’t whether employees can recite the company values. It’s whether they can tell you a story about each one, unprompted. That’s the difference between a value that’s rehearsed and one that’s real.

It’s also, notably, a business case rather than just a feel-good one. “If culture is inside the business, it’s a lever for success. A culture built on clarity and trust means people show up ready to scale when the moment calls for it. A culture built on uncertainty means you’re never quite sure who’s showing up Monday, or why they’re still there Friday.”

Loyalty isn’t what it used to be, and that’s not necessarily bad

The conversation took a candid turn on retention. In today’s economy, Saunders Mosby points out that people are staying in roles longer, but leaders shouldn’t mistake that for loyalty or a good culture. “That’s reactionary behavior in response to the economy,” she says. “You still need to understand how engaged your employees are, if they believe the work they’re doing matters.” Otherwise, organizations risk missing that some people who are staying have quietly checked out.

She also pushed back on nostalgia for the “workplace as family” model. Employees today are more willing to leave for something better, and she doesn’t see that as disloyalty. It’s about their clarity on their own goals. “I’m not going to choose this company over myself, and my goals and my plans for my family,” she says, describing a mindset she sees as increasingly common and reasonable.

Remote work’s access problem

One of the sharper observations in the episode: Saunders Mosby argues that flexibility around remote and hybrid work isn’t landing evenly. “People of color and women are unfortunately suffering the most around exposure, relationship-building, and opportunity for growth in those environments,” she says. Without the networks that in-person visibility builds, “you’re not building your network through the remote experience” the way others might be. It’s not an argument against flexibility. It’s a caution against assuming its costs are distributed equally.

Why she does the work

Asked how she describes her job to her son, she answers with a mission statement: “I spend every day trying to make better neighbors for myself, selfishly.” At Vibrant Pittsburgh, that means helping employers build places where people want to come, stay, and put down roots, because a thriving region and a thriving business are, in her words, impossible to separate. “If the community is not doing well, my business isn’t going to do well.”

It’s a fitting note for a region she describes as perpetually “becoming,” not stuck, not finished, but continually reinventing itself. Her own career, from a hospital elevator to a hospital board, is a small proof of concept for the thing she’s now trying to build at scale.

Listen to the full conversation on How’s Work, from The Kindling Agency.