Every organization tells a story about its culture. The mission is on the website, and their stated values appear in onboarding materials. Leaders talk about how decisions get made, how teams collaborate, and what behaviors the company rewards.
Then you start working there.
Over time, another story begins to emerge. You notice whose opinion carries weight in a meeting, which ideas need to be socialized before they move forward, how leaders prefer to communicate, and which relationships matter more than the org chart suggests. These signals reveal a layer of culture that can be difficult to see from the outside and essential to understand once you are in it.
For Andrea Perez, board director and advisor and former executive at Nike and PlayStation, learning to read that deeper layer has been one of the most important lessons of her career. When she once took a major role in a new company and industry without first meeting the people she would work for in person, she later recognized how much context she had missed.
“You really have to know the people you’re working for,” she told leaders in a recent LEAP Essentials session with Michelle Hagen, who oversees global partnerships at Paramount.
Understanding a new company, culture, or team requires looking beyond what an organization says about itself and becoming a student of how it actually operates. Their framework for doing that is the Culture Iceberg: a way to distinguish the visible signals of an organization from the beliefs, relationships, power structures, and norms shaping behavior beneath the surface.
Above the waterline sits the organizational narrative: the mission, values, stated behaviors, communication, and other signals leaders can readily observe. Andrea described these as the parts of a culture that are relatively easy to find and understand.
At Nike, for example, the company’s mission and maxims created a strong narrative about innovation, athletes, curiosity, and sport. One maxim, “be a sponge,” reinforced the expectation that employees remain relentlessly curious about consumers. That philosophy showed up throughout the organization, Andrea recalled, to the point that even presentations on subjects like finance often included a consumer perspective.
Beneath the waterline sits the lived experience of the culture: how leadership behaves, how decisions really get made, which relationships carry influence, what communication styles are expected, and which behaviors actually get rewarded.
Andrea saw that distinction clearly when a group of former WNBA athletes joined Nike through a fellowship program. Asked what had surprised them most about the company, they described expecting the culture to feel like a team sport, with everyone working together toward the same goal. Their experience felt closer to an individual sport, where people were also competing to win the gold medal themselves.
Both realities could exist at once. The organization genuinely valued sport, teamwork, and competition, while the lived culture also reflected individual ambition and competition for opportunities. Leaders who understand the landscape learn to hold both pieces of information at the same time.
The same principle applies to smaller signals. When Andrea joined PlayStation, she quickly learned that keeping your camera off during a virtual meeting violated an unwritten expectation. More consequentially, she discovered that ideas often required extensive socialization and buy-in before becoming reality. The practice reflected nemawashi, a Japanese approach to building consensus that was embedded in the broader Sony culture.
Those experiences illustrate why curiosity becomes such an important leadership capability. When entering a new role, Andrea recommends approaching the organization almost as you would a foreign country: observe the manners, learn the language, and resist forming conclusions before you understand the context.
“Allow yourself to be extremely curious,” she said. Beyond the information provided through onboarding, leaders should investigate what is happening “under the water”: Who really has power? How are decisions made? How do people prefer to communicate?
Michelle brought the same curiosity to interpersonal dynamics. Leaders can easily observe someone’s behavior and create a story about the motivation behind it. That interpretation can then shape the relationship before either person has tried to understand what is actually happening.
Earlier in her career, Michelle worked with a demanding executive whose behavior left her feeling that her work was never good enough. She began avoiding him, while he responded by micromanaging her more closely. The cycle reinforced itself until Michelle learned that he was navigating a painful divorce and custody battle. That context allowed her to see the relationship differently and begin approaching him with greater curiosity. Their working dynamic subsequently improved.
“By staying curious, you can actually start asking questions and really listen with empathy,” Michelle said. The stories leaders construct about other people, she added, are often very different from what they discover once they ask questions.
The Culture Iceberg therefore asks leaders to separate observation from interpretation. A colleague blocks an idea. A decision takes longer than expected. A leader consistently seeks input from certain people. Those are observations. Understanding the beliefs, relationships, history, incentives, or power dynamics driving those behaviors requires another layer of inquiry.
That inquiry becomes especially valuable during change. A new CEO, reorganization, acquisition, or team leader can shift the culture beneath the surface even when the company’s stated values remain exactly the same.
“Culture will shift during time,” Andrea reminded the group. Leaders have to keep learning how the organization is changing, paying attention to both “what’s above the narrative” and “what’s underneath in the experiences.”
Understanding the landscape is an ongoing leadership practice. Organizations evolve, relationships change, power shifts, and new leaders introduce different expectations. The ability to read those shifts helps leaders respond with greater context and guide their teams through uncertainty with greater confidence.
The Culture Iceberg offers a practical starting point: pay attention to what you can see, then get curious about what may be driving it.
Andrea compared the process to travel: new environments make us smarter because they require us to stay curious, learn unfamiliar customs, and understand different ways of operating. The same mindset applies inside organizations. “Anytime there’s change, there’s an opportunity for growth if you stay open, if you stay curious,” she said.
What leaders see above the surface gives them useful information. What they learn beneath it gives that information actionable meaning.
Andrea Perez has led global marketing at Nike, Jordan Brand, and PlayStation. Today she serves as a board member and advisor, known for her ability to pair bold creativity with cultural fluency. She is celebrated for her capacity to build trust first, then lead transformative change.
Michelle Hagen is EVP of Global Partnerships at Paramount Pictures. With extensive experience across entertainment and media, she is recognized for her ability to decode complex environments and build strategies that align with both culture and business needs. She leads with curiosity and empathy, helping teams succeed by understanding how organizations truly work.