Stay-or-Go Culture Diligence
Test the culture before joining or leaving instead of judging every company alike
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Stay-or-Go Culture Diligence treats a career decision as an evidence problem rather than a verdict on all companies. First assess whether changes inside the current organisation could make the role workable. If considering another employer, research beyond official values statements: contact people at your level and below, ask what their experience is actually like, and listen for both problems and candour. The aim is not to find a supposedly perfect company. Look for a culture where you can learn, where values align, and where leaders acknowledge unfinished work and allow employees to contribute to change. Comparing lived evidence across organisations distinguishes a local culture problem from a universal assumption and supports a more informed choice among staying, moving, or building something new.
Origin
Purushothaman's book chapter called “stay or go” began with her own question about leaving and incorporated the sharply different corporate experiences described in the interview.
Core principles
- 01Corporate cultures differ materially
- 02A bad environment does not prove every organisation will be the same
- 03Current employees provide evidence that recruiting messages cannot
- 04Alignment and openness to improvement matter more than claims of perfection
How to run it
- 1
Define the failure
List what is not working in the current role and distinguish local team issues from organisation-wide patterns. Identify any realistic internal experiments.
Watch out Do not universalise one company's culture without evidence.
- 2
Research lived experience
Contact current or recent employees at your level and below in each prospective organisation. Ask direct questions about advancement, respect, values, and how problems are handled.
Pro tip People below your target level may see consequences that senior recruiters do not.
Watch out Do not rely only on leaders, recruiters, or published culture statements.
- 3
Test alignment
Compare the evidence with the conditions you need to learn, contribute, and remain healthy. Look for behavioural examples rather than slogans.
- 4
Assess openness
Check whether leaders admit where the culture falls short and whether employees can participate in improvement. Openness can matter more than a claim that everything is already solved.
Pro tip Ask what changed after employees raised a difficult concern.
Watch out A new inclusion title without budget, access, or authority is not evidence of change.
- 5
Choose the path
Use the evidence to choose among an internal change, a move to a better-aligned employer, entrepreneurship, or exit. State why the selected path is more credible than the alternatives.
Watch out Research lowers uncertainty but cannot guarantee another culture will work.
In the wild
Hala Taha described feeling freely promoted and able to imagine becoming CEO at Hewlett-Packard, then moving to a boys-club culture at Disney where she could not imagine becoming a department director even after 20 years. The contrast showed why company-level culture evidence matters.
→ She left the environment where she felt her contribution could not control her trajectory.
Common mistakes
Assuming all companies are identical
Cultures can produce radically different experiences for the same person. Investigate before concluding that moving cannot help.
Asking only senior insiders
Senior people may experience the culture differently or repeat its official story. Include people at your level and below.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for professionals deciding whether to improve their current situation, move to another employer, or exit corporate work.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when an unsafe environment requires an urgent exit before extensive research is possible.
From the transcript
“there's a chapter in the book called stay or go because that's honestly what where this book started for me like should i stay or…”
“before you go somewhere call people at your level or even below you and ask questions”
“look at cultures where you can learn where you're aligned with their values but also where they're open to the fact that they're not all…”
From the episode
Deepa Purushothaman: Redefining Power In Corporate America
Deepa Purushothaman