07/21/2026
What My 11-Year-Old Taught Me About Culture:
This morning, my phone buzzed with a text no parent wants to receive.
My 11-year-old daughter was in tears.
“Mom, please come get me.”
She wasn’t hurt or sick...She was heartbroken.
She had arrived at a brand-new summer camp excited for the day ahead. Instead, she spent the first hour sitting in a room where the kids were on screens watching a movie. No one greeted her. No one explained what was happening. Hardly anyone spoke to her.
She felt invisible.
Like many working parents, I’ve enrolled my daughter in all kinds of camps over the years. She’s adventurous, incredibly empathetic, and remarkably aware of the energy around her. Within minutes, she can tell whether a place feels warm and welcoming or whether something feels off.
I tried to encourage her to give it a little more time. Starting somewhere new is hard for anyone.
But forty-five minutes later, another message came through.
“Mom, I’m begging you. Please come get me.”
So I did.
When I arrived, I asked one of the counselors a simple question:
“Can you help me understand the morning schedule?”
She explained that every morning is “downtime” until 9:30 before activities begin.
Had we known that ahead of time, my daughter would have walked in with completely different expectations. Instead, she assumed this was the camp.
This was a communication issue.
Later that afternoon, I was talking with another consultant about employee retention and organizational culture, and I realized something.
Every one of us has experienced a version of what my daughter felt that morning.
We’ve all been the new person, starting a first day.
The outsider walking into a room where everyone else already knows each other.
The employee wondering where to sit, who to talk to, or whether they belong.
Culture isn’t built during annual retreats or by hanging core values on the wall.
Culture is created in the first five minutes.
It’s built in how someone is greeted, whether someone introduces themselves, whether expectations are communicated clearly.
After we got home, I emailed the camp and explained what had happened. I also shared that we were willing to give it another try the next day, but with one request: Please greet her.
Help her feel like she belongs from the moment she walks through the door.
To their credit, they responded quickly. They took ownership of the experience, apologized, and committed to doing better.
That’s culture, too.
Not perfection, just accountability.
As leaders, we often think about recruiting, onboarding, engagement, and retention as separate initiatives. They’re not.
When someone walks through your door, what do they experience in the first five minutes?
Because people rarely leave organizations over a single policy.
They leave because they never truly felt like they belonged.
Belonging starts the moment someone arrives.
