No One Drifts to a Better Culture

Most companies don't have a culture problem. They have an intentionality problem.

That's the insight Lee Marlow, Chief Culture Officer at Piedmont Service Group, arrived at after spending months listening, observing, and building trust across a fast-growing mechanical contracting company. Piedmont wasn't broken. The people were good. The work was good. But as the company expanded from one location to twelve, across three states, with over 450 employees, something had quietly gone sideways.

"We had a pretty decent culture," Lee told us. "We just did not have an intentional one."

That single sentence is the starting point for one of the most compelling culture transformation stories we've heard, and it's a story that will resonate with any leader who's ever felt their company becoming something they didn't quite plan for.

The Drift Is Real and It's Sneaky

When Piedmont operated out of a single location, culture was effortless. Employees learned by watching the owners. They absorbed values, communication styles, and decision-making patterns through proximity alone. Culture, in that context, was just the air everyone breathed.

But growth changed everything. As new branches opened and the owners could no longer be everywhere at once, each location began developing its own personality, shaped by whoever happened to have the strongest voice in the room. The result wasn't a bad culture. It was many cultures. And the gap between them was widening.

Lee describes it through a metaphor that's hard to shake: a company on a river, moving with the current. Nobody chose the direction. Nobody was paddling. They were just... going wherever the water took them. And the water, as it turns out, doesn't care where you want to end up.

"We were doing about 95% of everything pretty well," he said. "But the 5% that needed attention was all anybody ever talked about. It caused the relationship disconnects, the conflicts, the Sunday night scaries."

Sound familiar? It should. Most growing companies live in that 5%.

The Fix Was Simpler Than They Expected

The framework Lee brought to leadership was deceptively simple. First, label it.

Give your culture a name. Define the specific behaviors that bring it to life. Not values on a wall, but behaviors. Things people can actually do, practice, and can be held accountable to.

Then, build a system to drive those behaviors. Consistently. Repeatedly. Across every location, every team, every hire.

It was at a Vistage meeting shortly after that Lee and Piedmont’s incoming president, Chris Turner, encountered CultureWise and immediately recognized it as the system they had been planning to build themselves. “Why reinvent the wheel,” Lee said, “when this product is already developed?”

What followed was a leadership retreat at a hunting lodge in Madison, Georgia, where Piedmont's executive team locked themselves in a room and didn't move on to any other agenda item until they'd done one thing: decided who they wanted to be. CultureWise helped each leader identify the behaviors they believed mattered most, and through discussion and alignment, the team shaped them into 31 core behaviors—now known as The Piedmont Way.

Jet Fuel on a Plan Already in Motion

One of the things that makes Piedmont's story so instructive is what Lee did before the formal CultureWise rollout ever happened. For two full years, he laid groundwork, building relationships, having honest conversations, and preparing the organization for what was coming. By the time the launch week arrived in January 2024, ten rollout sessions across five days, every branch, every team, the soil was ready.

"We got more buy-in initially than we really thought we might," Lee said. Even among skeptical blue-collar technicians who had originally questioned why a "culture guy" was ever hired in the first place.

Now two years and four full rounds of fundamentals in, the results are showing up in ways that matter. A shared language across every level of the company. A team that leans into hard conversations instead of avoiding them. A culture of clear expectations and real accountability that follows.

"No one drifts to a better culture," Lee told us near the end of our conversation. "Just like no one drifts to better health, better relationships, or better finances. Everything we want is upstream. It requires paddling. It requires intentionality."

The Question Worth Asking

If you're leading a company that's growing, or one that's simply been running on autopilot for too long, Lee's story poses a question worth sitting with:

Is your culture something you designed? Or something that just happened?

Because the drift is always there. The current is always running. The only question is whether you're choosing your destination, or letting the river choose it for you.

Read the full Piedmont Service Group case study to see how Lee and his team built The Piedmont Way — and what it looks like two years in. 

About CultureWise

CultureWise helps organizations build strong, behavior-driven cultures by design. Through a proven culture operating system of leadership training, tools, and daily practices, we help companies align teams, strengthen accountability, and turn culture into a competitive advantage.