Are we drifting into mediocrity?

Mediocrity doesn’t break in with a bang. It creeps – slow, quiet, and barely noticeable until it’s too late. And in business, mediocrity is simply this: being unclear and unambitious in what you expect from your people. It’s letting “good enough” pass as excellence.

That drift is dangerous. When culture becomes soft or “fluffy”, it loses its edge as a performance driver. You can have values etched on walls and employer brands polished to perfection, but if culture isn’t setting a clear bar for excellence – and holding people to it – it isn’t working.

And right now, the stakes are high. The energy sector is being reshaped by decarbonisation, digitalisation, geopolitical volatility, and shifting regulation. In this environment, cultures that coast don’t just risk mediocrity. They risk falling short of ambition.

From description to driver

The core problem is simple: culture has become a description, not a driver. It’s too often a set of words designed to inspire, not a system of behaviours that fuel growth.

Values ≠ value:
Culture gets framed as emotional flavour rather than commercial fuel. Too few organisations make the link between how people behave and how the business performs. Excellence isn’t being defined, reinforced, or rewarded. Employees are left without a clear standard of what high performance looks like.

Employer brand as gloss:
To attract talent, companies polish their employer brands and EVPs. But this work often sits on the surface. When it’s divorced from business goals, it becomes a veneer – identity work instead of performance work. Culture ends up as marketing collateral, not as a competitive edge.

And so, organisations drift into comfortable mediocrity: cultures that feel good but do little to power growth.

What needs to change

Energy businesses can’t afford to coast. The transition requires cultures that are not just engaging but relentlessly performance-driven. That means rethinking three fundamentals:

1. Rewire the growth equation. Progression can’t just reward effort or tenure. It must reward impact – the tangible contribution to business growth. In a sector where innovation, resilience, and pace matter more than ever, careers should advance on the strength of outcomes, not activity.
2. Rethink the EVP as ambition. For years, EVPs sought to describe who you are today. What matters is who you need to become. The EVP should be a cultural ambition – an organising principle for performance and transformation. Not a campaign. Not a slogan. A design principle that aligns people strategy directly to business strategy.
3. Kill the employer brand. There is no separate employer brand. There is only one brand: the one your business builds through every action and decision. For energy leaders, this means recognising that people strategy is business strategy. Every policy, investment, and behaviour is part of the brand – and ultimately, part of performance.

From drift to direction

Cultural mediocrity is a silent threat. It doesn’t make headlines, but it erodes advantage one decision at a time. In the energy sector, where the future is being rewritten in real time, the companies that win won’t be those with the most polished values statements. They’ll be the ones where culture is hardwired into performance.

The real question isn’t whether you have a strong culture. It’s whether your culture is making you stronger.