The Energy’s Gone, But Everything Still Looks Fine
John Elliott • May 27, 2025

Why Culture Decay in FMCG Is a Silent Threat to Performance

It doesn’t start with resignations.

It starts with something much quieter.

A head of operations stops raising small problems in weekly meetings. A sales lead no longer defends a risky new SKU. A team member who used to push ideas now just delivers what they’re asked. Nothing breaks. Nothing explodes. It just... slows.

And from the outside, everything still looks fine.


The illusion of stability

In food and beverage manufacturing, where teams run lean and pressure is constant, performance often becomes the proxy for culture. If products are shipping, if margins are intact, if reviews are clean, the assumption is: we're good.

But that assumption is dangerous.

According to Gallup's 2023 global workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while a staggering 59% are "quiet quitting", doing just enough to get by, with no emotional investment. And in Australia? Engagement has declined three years in a row.

In a mid-market FMCG business, those numbers rarely show up on dashboards. But they show up in other ways:

  • New ideas stall at the concept phase
  • Team members stop challenging assumptions
  • Execution becomes rigid instead of agile
  • Everyone is "aligned" but no one is energised

And by the time the board sees a drop in revenue, the belief that once drove the business is already gone.


The emotional cost of cultural silence

One thing we don’t talk about enough is what this does to leadership.

When energy drains, leaders often become isolated. Not because they want to be, but because the organisation has lost the instinct to challenge, question, or stretch.

I’ve seen CEOs second-guessing themselves in rooms full of agreement. Seen GMs miss red flags because nobody wanted to be "the problem". Seen founders mistake quiet delivery for deep buy-in.

The emotional toll of unspoken disengagement is real. You’re surrounded by people doing their jobs. But no one’s really in it with you.

And eventually, leaders stop stretching too.


We train people to disengage without realising it

Here’s the contradiction that most organisations won’t admit:

We say we want initiative, but we reward obedience.

  • The safest people get promoted
  • The optimists get extra work
  • The truth-tellers get labelled difficult

So people learn to conserve energy. They learn not to challenge ideas that won’t land. They learn not to flag risks that won’t be heard. And over time, they stop showing up with their full selves.

This isn't resistance. It's protection.

And it becomes the default when innovation is punished, risk isn't buffered, and "alignment" becomes code for silence.


Boards rarely see it in time

Boards don’t ask about belief. They ask about performance.

But belief is what drives performance.

When culture begins to fade, it doesn't look like chaos. It looks like calm. It looks like compliance. But underneath, the organisation is hollowing out.

By the time a board notices the energy is gone, it’s often because the financials have turned, and by then, the people who could've helped reverse the trend have already left.

In a 2022 Deloitte study on mid-market leadership, 64% of executives said culture was their top priority, yet only 27% said they measured it with any rigour.

If you don’t track it, you won’t protect it. And if you don’t protect it, don’t be surprised when it disappears.


The real risk: you might not get it back

Here’s what no one likes to admit:


Not all cultures recover.

You can try rebrands. You can run engagement campaigns. You can roll out leadership frameworks and off-sites and feedback platforms.

But if belief has been neglected for too long, the quiet ones you depended on, the culture carriers, the stretchers, the informal leaders, they’re already checked out.

Some have left.
Some are still there physically but not emotionally.
And some have started coaching others to play it safe.

Once that happens, you're not rebuilding. You're replacing.


So what do you do?

Don’t listen for noise. Listen for absence.

Absence of challenge.
Absence of stretch.
Absence of belief.

Ask yourself:

  • When was the last time someone in the business pushed back? Not rudely, but bravely?
  • When did someone offer an idea that made others uncomfortable?
  • When did a leader admit they were unsure and ask for help?

Those are your indicators.

Because healthy culture isn’t silent. It’s alive. It vibrates with tension, disagreement, contribution and care.

If everything looks fine, but no one’s really leaning in?

That’s your problem.

And by the time it shows up in the numbers,t might already be too late.

Your Culture Report Won’t Show You This

By John Elliott • June 6, 2025
On paper, they were fully resourced. No complaints logged. No formal red flags. Delivery metrics holding steady. But behind closed doors, the signs were there. Delays. Fatigue. Silence in meetings where pushback used to live. And a growing sense that key people were leaning out, emotionally, if not yet physically. When the cracks finally showed, the conclusion was predictable: “We need more people.” But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was trust. And most organisations never see it until it’s too late. The Hidden Cost of Disengagement In Gallup’s 2023 global workplace report , only 23% of employees worldwide reported being actively engaged at work. A staggering 59% identified as “quiet quitting”, psychologically detached, going through the motions, doing only what their job description demands. Source: Gallup Global Workplace Report 2023 Disengagement is expensive. But it’s also quiet. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t send a Slack message. Disengagement isn’t new, just silenced. And in executive teams, it looks different. It looks like polite agreement in strategy meetings. It looks like leaders shielding their teams from unrealistic demands, instead of confronting the system causing them. It looks like performance metrics still being met… while people emotionally check out. The issue isn’t always capability. It’s safety. Psychological, political, and professional. Many senior leaders don’t raise concerns, not because the problem isn’t real, but because they don’t believe they’ll be heard, supported, or protected if they do. And this is where the failure begins. The Leadership Lie No One Talks About We talk a lot about leadership capability. About experience, commercial acumen, execution strength. But we don’t talk enough about context. Every leadership hire walks into a culture they didn’t create. They inherit unwritten rules, quiet alliances, and legacy power structures. If those dynamics are broken, or if trust is fractured at the top, no amount of capability will compensate. According to a 2022 Deloitte mid-market survey, 64% of executives said culture was their top strategic priority. But only 27% said they actually measured it in a meaningful way. We say culture matters. But we rarely structure around it. And so new leaders walk in with pressure to perform, but little real insight into what the role will cost them emotionally, politically, or personally. We Don’t Hire for Trust. And It Shows. In executive search, the conversation is often dominated by pedigree and “fit.” But fit is often a euphemism for sameness. And sameness doesn't build trust, it maintains comfort. We rarely ask: Does this leader know how to build trust vertically and horizontally? Can they operate in a low-trust environment without becoming complicit? Will they challenge inherited silence, or unconsciously uphold it? Instead, we hire for confidence and clarity, traits that often mask what’s broken, rather than reveal it. And when those hires fail? We call it a mismatch. Or we cite the usual: “lack of alignment,” “wasn’t the right time,” “they didn’t land well with the team.” But the truth is often uglier: They were never set up to succeed. And no one told them until it was too late. The Cultural Infrastructure Is Missing One of the most damaging myths in leadership hiring is that great leaders will “make it work.” That if they’re tough enough, experienced enough, skilled enough, they’ll overcome any organisational dysfunction. But high-performance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It requires psychological safety. A clear mandate. The backing to make hard decisions. The freedom to speak the truth before it becomes a PR problem. When that infrastructure isn’t there, when the real power dynamics are unspoken, good leaders stop speaking too. And the silence spreads. What Trust Breakdown Really Looks Like Often, the signs of a trust breakdown don’t show up in dramatic ways. They surface subtly in patterns of underperformance that are easy to misread or excuse. You start to notice project delays, but no one flags the root cause. Teams keep things moving, quietly compensating for the bottlenecks rather than surfacing them. Not because they’re careless, but because they’ve learned that early honesty doesn’t always earn support. New leaders hesitate to make bold calls. Not because they lack conviction, but because the last time they did, they were left exposed. Board reports look flawless. Metrics track nicely. But spend five minutes on the floor, and the energy tells a different story. These are not resource issues. They’re relationship issues. And the data backs it. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report , just 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged. Worse, around 60% are “quiet quitting.” That’s not just disengagement. It’s people doing only what’s safe, only what’s required, because trust has quietly eroded. Gallup also found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a staggering figure that reinforces just how pivotal leadership trust is. When people don’t feel psychologically safe, they shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. Invisibly. What’s breaking isn’t the org chart. It’s the ability to speak plainly and be heard. And by the time it’s visible? The damage is already done, and someone calls for a restructure. “Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $8.8 trillion, 9% of global GDP.” Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 So What’s the Real Takeaway? If you’re seeing performance issues, before you jump to headcount, ask a different question: Do the leaders in this business feel safe enough to tell the truth? Because if they don’t, the data you’re reading isn’t real. And if they do, but you’re not acting on it, then they’ll stop telling you. Leadership doesn’t fail in obvious ways anymore. It fails in the gap between what people know and what they’re allowed to say. And the price of that silence? Missed opportunity. Reputational damage. Cultural decay. Sometimes, the problem isn’t who you hired. It’s what you’ve made it unsafe to say.

The Succession Lie: Why Most Leadership Pipelines Don’t Exist

By John Elliott • May 19, 2025
Most companies I speak to say they’re planning for the future. But it’s a lie. When the CEO resigns, the shortlist is blank. The board scrambles. I get a call for help. The talent that was supposed to be “next in line” either isn’t ready — or quietly left two years ago. That’s not succession planning. That’s performance. And in Australia’s mid-market, it’s happening everywhere. If You Have a Deck but No Decision, You Don’t Have a Pipeline Look at your last board strategy pack. There’s a succession slide — probably colour-coded. Key roles mapped. Names in boxes. Risk flags on anyone nearing retirement. But what happens when that person leaves tomorrow? Does someone step up — with board confidence, cultural alignment, and commercial readiness? Or does everything go into pause mode? Most leadership pipelines aren’t pipelines at all. They’re documentation exercises. Names written down so the company appears prepared — not because anyone’s seriously investing in readiness. And the data backs it up. In the 2024 CEW Senior Executive Census, just 27% of ASX300 companies had gender-balanced executive leadership teams. Only 1 in 8 CEO appointments in 2024 were women — a sharp drop from 1 in 4 the year before. Worse still, 20 ASX300 companies had no women at all in their executive teams. And 82% of pipeline roles like COO, CFO and Group Exec are still held by men. Why Is This Happening? Because it’s easier to pretend you’re planning than to actually commit to it. Real succession means risk. It means stretching people before they’re “ready.” It means visibility. Investment. Accountability. It means putting someone in the room who might one day replace you. That’s uncomfortable. So companies hedge. They focus on process instead of outcome. They delegate it to HR. They call it “talent mapping” or “development planning” — and convince themselves that’s enough. But when succession is treated as a compliance task, you get structure without substance. Most Pipelines Are Demographically Narrow — and Strategically Passive The succession conversation is often framed as a future-looking exercise. But the truth is, it reveals everything about a business now . Who’s trusted. Who’s stretched. Who’s seen. And if the answer is: people who already look and think like the current executive team — the pipeline is a mirror, not a mechanism. According to CEW, it could take another 54 years to reach gender parity in CEO roles at the current rate. Not because women aren’t ready — but because succession is still being run by legacy instincts, not performance or potential. This isn’t a gender issue. It’s a visibility issue. It shows just how narrow — and self-reinforcing — most internal pipelines are. Boards Are Talking Succession — But Avoiding Succession Events In public statements, succession is always described as a “priority.” But when a CEO departs, the replacement is usually external. Why? Because the plan wasn’t real. It wasn’t built into performance cycles, role design, or investment decisions. It wasn’t modelled for readiness. It wasn’t supported by real-world testing. So when the vacancy comes, the board looks around and realises: no one’s actually ready. And that’s when they default to external search — time pressured, high-stakes, and often misaligned. Even companies with formal succession frameworks fail to develop internal successors who can genuinely step up. According to McKinsey, only 29% of high-potential employees globally say they are being actively developed for future leadership roles. Real Pipelines Aren’t Built on Potential — They’re Built on Pressure Most “high-potential” employees never get tested. They’re praised for being strategic, collaborative, well-liked. But they haven’t led transformation. They haven’t navigated crisis. They haven’t made the call when it really counted. That’s not their fault — it’s the system’s. If your future leaders aren’t being put in rooms where the stakes are high, the talent is being wasted. Because without context, potential is just a guess. Real succession means stress-testing people before the vacancy. Not waiting for a resignation to find out if they’re ready. Why Leaders Say Succession Is a Priority — Then Undermine It Because it forces difficult conversations. What happens if the COO is better suited to the CEO role than the founder’s chosen successor? What if your most capable future CFO is currently in HR? What if your only succession-ready leader doesn’t want the job? Succession exposes reality. It tests assumptions about who’s loyal, who’s capable, and who’s trusted. And many leadership teams would rather protect the illusion of unity than confront the truth of readiness. So they hold back. They over-prepare weak candidates and underinvest in strong ones. They promote for loyalty, not capability. And they hope tenure will somehow turn into executive presence. HR Isn’t the Problem — But It’s Often Trapped HR leaders are often tasked with “running succession.” But they rarely hold the real power to make it happen. They can facilitate calibration, run talent reviews, maintain the spreadsheet. But they can’t override political appointments. They can’t force development budgets. And they can’t get future leaders into strategy sessions unless the CEO signs off. So they manage the optics. They keep the plan updated. They run performance frameworks. But they don’t challenge the organisation’s tolerance for risk or its lack of bold placements. And succession — like so many other critical issues — becomes theatre. What a Real Pipeline Looks Like It’s small. It’s specific. And it’s active. The top 5 succession candidates have documented development goals. They’re being exposed to investor conversations, board updates, or crisis moments. They’re sitting in on decisions they don’t yet own. And they’re receiving feedback not just on performance — but on readiness . Real succession isn’t about names on a slide. It’s about signal. Are you giving your future leaders enough signal — authority, exposure, context — to actually grow? Or are you keeping them in reserve, hoping they’ll stay warm until you need them? Most Internal Candidates Are Lost Long Before the Vacancy Opens Talent attrition isn’t just about pay. It’s about perceived opportunity. If your best internal leaders aren’t being stretched, seen, or spoken to, they’ll find someone who will. That’s not speculation. It’s playing out across Australia right now. The 2024 CEW Census shows that companies without clear succession action are more likely to lose top talent, especially women in pipeline roles. And when those people leave, they take with them the last thread of credibility in your internal bench. The Cost of Cosmetic Succession Planning The price isn’t just reactive hiring. It’s loss of culture. Institutional memory. Momentum. When succession isn’t planned properly, the outgoing leader often overstays. Or worse — leaves chaos behind. And the people who could’ve brought continuity and fresh thinking are either too green… or already gone. You don’t just lose a leader. You lose your rhythm. And in the world of FMCG — where category cycles are brutal and competitor innovation is relentless — rhythm matters. So What Now? Ask these questions: Who are our five most critical leadership roles? If any one of them left tomorrow, who steps in? Would that person command confidence from the board, the team, and the market? And if not — why haven’t we done something about it? Succession isn’t about the future. It’s about the decisions you make now — when you still have time to act. Because when the vacancy hits, theatre ends. And only the real work will matter.