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.



A group of business people are walking in front of a city skyline.

Executive Exodus: How FMCG Leadership Gaps Are Threatening Australia’s Future

By John Elliott • July 18, 2025
Australia’s FMCG sector is confronting a leadership crisis. CEO turnover is accelerating, succession pipelines are underdeveloped.

The Quiet Collapse of Australian Vegetable Farming

By John Elliott • June 26, 2025
You don’t hear about it on the nightly news. There’s no breaking story. No panic. No protests. Just rows of vegetables being pulled out of the ground with no plan to replant. Just farmers who no longer believe there’s a future for them here. Just quiet decisions — to sell, to walk away, to stop. And if you ask around the industry, they’ll tell you the same thing: It’s not just one bad season. It’s a slow death by a thousand margins. 1 in 3 growers are preparing to leaveIn September 2024, AUSVEG released a national sentiment report with a statistic that should have set off alarms in every capital city: 34% of Australian vegetable growers were considering exiting the industry in the next 12 months. Another one-third said they’d leave if offered a fair price for their farm. Source: AUSVEG Industry Sentiment Report 2024 (PDF) These aren’t abstract hypotheticals. These are real decisions, already in motion. For many, it’s not about profitability anymore, it’s about survival. This isn’t burnout. It’s entrapment. Behind the numbers are people whose entire identity is tied to a profession that no longer feeds them. Many are asset-rich but cash-poor. They own the land. But the land owns them back. Selling means walking away from decades of history. Staying means bleeding capital, month by month, in a system where working harder delivers less. Every year, input costs rise, fuel, fertiliser, compliance. But the farmgate price doesn’t move. Or worse, it drops. Retail World Magazine reports that even though national vegetable production increased 3% in 2023–24, the total farmgate value fell by $140 million. Growers produced more and earned less. That’s not a market. That’s a trap. What no one wants to say aloud The truth is this: many growers are only staying because they can’t leave. If you’re deep in debt, if your farm is tied to multi-generational ownership, if you’ve invested everything in equipment, infrastructure, or land access, walking away isn’t easy. It’s a last resort. So instead, you stay. You cut your hours. Delay maintenance. Avoid upgrades. Cancel the next round of planting. You wait for something to shift, interest rates, weather, prices and you pretend that waiting is strategy. According to the latest fruitnet.com survey, over 50% of vegetable growers say they’re financially worse off than a year ago. And nearly 40% expect conditions to deteriorate further. This isn’t about optimism or resilience. It’s about dignity and the quiet erosion of it. Supermarkets won’t save them, and they never planned to In the current model, supermarket pricing doesn’t reflect real-world farm economics. Retailers demand year-round consistency, aesthetic perfection, and lower prices. They don’t absorb rising input costs, they externalise them. They offer promotions funded not by their marketing budgets, but by the growers’ margins. Farmers take the risk. Retailers take the profit. And because the power imbalance is so deeply entrenched, there’s no real negotiation, just quiet coercion dressed up as "category planning." Let’s talk about what’s actually broken This isn’t just a market failure. It’s a policy failure. Australia’s horticulture system has been built on: Decades of deregulated wholesale markets Lack of collective bargaining power for growers Retailer consolidation that has created a virtual duopoly Export-focused incentives that bypass smaller domestic producers There’s no meaningful floor price for key produce lines. No national enforcement of fair dealing. No public database that links supermarket shelf price to farmgate return. Which means growers, like James, can be driven into loss-making supply contracts without ever seeing the true economics of their product downstream. But the real silence? It’s from consumers. Here’s what no one wants to admit: We say we care about “buying local.” We say we value the farmer’s role. We share those viral posts about strawberries going unsold or milk prices being unfair. And then we complain about a $4 lettuce. We opt for the cheapest bag of carrots. We walk past the "imperfect" produce bin. We frown at the cost of organic and click “Add to Cart” on whatever’s half price. We’re not just bystanders. We’re part of the equation. What happens when the growers go? At first, very little. Supermarkets will find substitutes. Importers will fill gaps. Large agribusinesses will expand into spaces vacated by smaller players. Prices will stay low, until they don’t. But over time, we’ll notice: Produce that travels further and lasts less. Fewer independent growers at farmer’s markets. Entire regions losing their growing identity. National food security becoming a campaign promise instead of a reality. And when the climate throws something serious at us, drought, flood, global supply shock, we’ll realise how little resilience we’ve preserved. So what do we do? We start by telling the truth. Australia is not food secure. Not if 1 in 3 growers are planning to exit. The market isn’t working. Not when prices rise at the shelf and fall at the farmgate. The solution isn’t scale. It’s fairness, visibility, and rebalancing power. That means: Mandating cost-reflective contracts between retailers and suppliers Enabling collective bargaining rights for growers Building transparent data systems linking production costs to consumer prices Introducing transition finance for smaller producers navigating reform and climate pressure And holding supermarkets publicly accountable for margin extraction But more than anything, it means recognising what we’re losing, before it's gone. Final word If you ate a vegetable today, it likely came from someone who’s considered giving up in the past year. Not because they don’t care. But because caring doesn’t pay. This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about sovereignty, over what we eat, how we grow it, and who gets to stay in the system.  Because the next time you see rows of green stretching to the horizon, you might want to ask: How many of these fields are already planning their last harvest?