Tone from the Top, Echo from the Bottom - Why Culture Is a Strategic System — Not a Slogan
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is often quoted and is just as often misunderstood. Culture isn’t something that sits alongside strategy.
It’s the system through which strategy is interpreted, executed, and sometimes quietly undermined.
Two phrases help make this visible:
Tone from the top
Echo from the bottom
Together, they describe culture not as a statement of intent, but as a dynamic feedback loop.
Tone from the Top: Leadership as a Signal System
“Tone from the top” refers to the ‘ethical climate, priorities, and expectations set by senior leaders — boards, executives, and top management’. Importantly, this tone is communicated less through speeches and policies, and more through:
What leaders pay attention to
What they reward or tolerate
How they respond under pressure
The trade-offs they make when values conflict with targets
In practice, leaders are constantly sending signals about what is really acceptable. If leaders bypass controls, downplay risks, or reward results without questioning how they were achieved, those behaviours don’t stay at the top. They cascade, and humans are innately good at recognising pattern. We all notice quickly when the stated values and the lived reality don’t align.
Echo from the Bottom: Where Culture Becomes Real
The echo from the bottom is how those signals are received, interpreted, and reflected back by people across an organisation. It shows up in:
Everyday decision-making
Willingness to speak up (or stay silent)
How problems are framed or hidden
Informal conversations, not formal reports
This is where culture moves from rhetoric to reality. A strong echo means employees feel psychologically safe to raise concerns, believe integrity will be supported, not punished and see their judgment and insight as valued,
A weak echo means the opposite — even if the “tone” sounds right. When the echo is muted, distorted, or fearful, leaders lose access to reality.
Why the Connection Matters: Culture as Strategic Infrastructure
The real risk isn’t bad tone or weak echo in isolation. It’s the disconnect between the two. When leaders believe they are setting a clear tone — but the echo doesn’t match — strategy quietly starts to drift. Culture, in this sense, becomes a form of strategic infrastructure: it determines how information flows, what gets amplified or what might get suppressed.
Which raises a deeper question: to what extent do lower-level employee communications actually influence strategy and leadership decision-making — especially in large, multinational organisations?
What the Research Shows: Employee Voice Does Shape Strategy — Conditionally
A review of academic research suggests a clear conclusion: lower-level employee communications demonstrably influence strategic planning and leadership approaches in multinational corporations — but not uniformly. The strength of that influence varies systematically across four dimensions.
1. Cultural Context - In high power-distance cultures, where hierarchy is emphasised and authority is rarely challenged, upward communication tends to be weaker. Employees may:
Self-censor
Avoid delivering bad news
Assume strategic thinking is “not their role”
In lower power-distance contexts, challenge and dialogue are more culturally legitimate — making the echo stronger and more informative.
2. Institutional Environment - The impact of employee voice is stronger in highly integrated national systems — where governance norms, labour protections, and institutional trust reinforce participation. In fragmented or less supportive environments, speaking up can feel risky, even when leaders encourage it rhetorically.
3. Organisational Structure - Decentralised organisations — especially those granting real autonomy to subsidiaries or frontline units — benefit more from bottom-up insight. This is because proximity matters. People closest to customers, operations, and local risks often see:
Emerging threats
Unintended consequences
Practical constraints long before headquarters does
Centralised, tightly controlled structures struggle to access this intelligence in time.
4. Leadership Approach - Perhaps the most decisive factor is leadership style. Participatory leadership models consistently outperform command-and-control approaches when it comes to leveraging employee insight. This isn’t about consensus decision-making. It’s about who is invited into sense-making — and who isn’t.
How the Impact Actually Works: Three Mechanisms
The research also highlights how employee communication translates into strategic value.
Psychological mechanisms
Empowerment
Trust
Engagement
When people believe their voice matters, they invest more cognitive and emotional effort.
Organisational mechanisms
Knowledge sharing
Information flow
Early signal detection
Strategy improves when leaders receive unfiltered, timely insight.
Social mechanisms
Inclusion
Relationship-building
Mutual understanding
Strong relationships reduce distortion as information moves upward.
Practical Implications for Leaders
For organisations genuinely seeking to harness the “echo from the bottom,” the implications are clear:
Invest in participatory leadership development
Adapt leadership approaches in high power-distance contexts rather than importing models wholesale
Preserve meaningful local autonomy where insight is generated
Systematically cultivate psychological safety, not just performative openness
Crucially, leaders must be willing to hear messages that challenge assumptions — not just confirm them.
Closing Reflection
Culture doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly — through silence, distortion, and disengagement. Setting the tone is necessary. But listening to the echo is what keeps strategy grounded in reality. The organisations that do this well don’t just behave more ethically. They think better, decide earlier, and adapt faster. In complex environments, that may be the most important strategic advantage of all.
