OK, so this is going to be a controversial statement, so sit back, gird your loins, and get ready because here it comes… CEOs should not be the guardians of their corporate culture. In fact, I don’t think they can do it. From the lofty position in which they sit, on gilded thrones in their boardrooms on top of the rigid corporate hierarchies, the majority of leaders can’t possibly grasp the full extent of the problems within their organizations and they can’t possibly understand the impact of the decisions they make. And let’s be honest, the primary responsibility that CEOs have is to make their investors happy. Everybody else – employees, customers, vendors, and community members – all take a back seat to those investors. With this setup, it’s impossible for a CEO to be the guardian of purpose and culture.

Don’t believe me? Well, there are plenty of examples. Here are a few of my favorites. Most are from the ranks of companies originally recognized by the book, Conscious Capitalism, as being champions of integrity and values and have fallen, hard.

Howard Schultz, the founder and former CEO of Starbucks, once was a champion of great culture, cherishing the integrity of the warm environment of his coffee shops and believing that that warm environment would bring in customers, especially if it was stewarded by employees who loved their jobs and shared that love with our customers. And for a while, it was true; Starbucks was a great place to be a customer of and a good place to work. But when Starbucks introduced their famous app, life at the company started to change. The Starbucks app was immensely profitable, and the focus of the company shifted from creating a great environment to the store to optimizing the profits that that sweet app was bringing in. The needs and concerns of employees fell to the distant wayside. Now, Schultz is clutching his pearls at the indignity of his employees for wanting to unionize, and he’s breaking the law trying to stop them from doing it. Whatever happened to conscious capitalism and creating great environments?

Another lauded conscious capitalist was Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. And back in the day, Amazon was a great place to work. Now we hear stories of Amazon drivers peeing in bottles because they’re not given breaks and warehouse workers facing inhumane conditions and denied the ability to unionize. What happened to conscious capitalism?

Another self-proclaimed Conscious Capitalist, Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, spent two hours preaching about the importance of “family” in an all-hands meeting, blissfully ignoring the fact that he had just laid off a significant portion of his so-called “family.”

And the mother lode… The father of Conscious Capitalism and the author of the book Conscious Capitalism, John Mackey, the founder and Co-CEO of Whole Foods, loves to complain about lazy employees, never stopping to question if the compensation and culture he established decades ago are still relevant today. It’s so much easier to point fingers, isn’t it, John?

So why is this? I think the answer lies in the work that the researcher Sidney Yoshida did in the 1980s. His concept of the iceberg of ignorance illustrates the CEO’s predicament, where frontline employees see 100% of a company’s problems; CEOs, at their high position on top of the organization, are only aware of a measly 4% of the problems that organizations face. Their dictates can travel down the hierarchy, but the information about what’s working and what’s broken doesn’t go up, so CEOs never see the impact of their decisions and never understand the problems that the workers who deal with customers on a day-to-day basis deal with.

It’s also important to recognize that CEOs face tremendous pressure from investors. It’s very easy for CEOs to cave to the short-term financial desires of their investors over the long-term impacts that a good culture and being a steward to an organization’s purpose can create. Mark Benioff is a perfect example of this; he no longer owns a majority of Salesforce and he has to bow to the pressures of the activist investors who own significant swaths of the company. As a result, he just can’t be the guardian of Salesforce culture.

So what do CEOs do if they want to hold up the sanctity of their purpose and experience the value of a fantastic culture? I think the first step CEOs need to actively work to flatten hierarchies and eliminate cumbersome systems where decisions are made from the top. In the place of top-down decision-making, make sure the entire organization understands the purpose and values of the company and uses those tools to have teams make decisions as they see fit. Decisions that are guided by purpose and culture and will advance the goals of the enterprise.

Additionally, CEOs need to increase the importance of communication within the organization and, from their perspective, they need to listen. They can lead by example, demonstrating vulnerability, openness, and a willingness to listen to others. This sets the tone for the entire organization and encourages employees to share their thoughts and concerns without fear of reprisal. CEOs should create opportunities for employees to provide feedback, whether through anonymous channels, town hall meetings, or regular check-ins. Employees need to see, and experience, their CEO’s listening to difficult feedback. This helps create a culture where open communication is valued and expected. When employees do speak up, it is crucial for CEOs to acknowledge their input, address the concerns raised, and take appropriate action. This shows that the organization is truly committed to addressing issues and fostering a positive work environment.

The emphasis on psychological safety cannot be underestimated. Employees need to feel comfortable speaking truth to power, and leaders need to recognize that truth as the pearls of wisdom that it actually is, especially when it’s confronting.

I know change isn’t easy. But the world is shifting really quickly, and what worked three years ago isn’t working now. But you know what’s harder than change? Staying the same. Last year, Amazon had a profit of 7 billion, but they lost a billion dollars in potential profit because of employee turnover. Think about that for a second… I’m pretty sure making a dramatic change is worth a billion dollars. At least to me, it is.

About the author – Peter Laughter – I walked away from a 25 year entrepreneurial career in the recruiting and staffing industry because recruiting is screwed. I founded True Bearing to reinventing recruiting using purpose, values, and storytelling as the currency companies can use to supercharge referrals and cultivate pipelines of rockstar talent.