Willow Cosenza

For years, companies viewed culture as a competitive advantage. Strong cultures helped attract talent, retain high-performers, and build loyalty during periods of growth and uncertainty. Recently, the conversation has shifted. Leaders are under pressure to increase output, tighten accountability, and move faster with leaner teams. Return-to-office mandates are back, and performance expectations are rising. In many organizations, culture has quietly moved down on the priority list.

My favorite aspect of being a professor was the gift of working with young people. Not because they were naïve—they weren’t. In fact, the best students I taught could be brutally poignant about what was broken. They could spot contradiction quickly, challenge inherited logic, and ask the question many in the room had learned to swallow. At its core, humanities education trains young people to think critically about the world around them.

A new CEO does more than introduce a new strategy. They reshape how employees understand priorities, decision-making, expectations, and success. The moment leadership changes, employees begin recalibrating in real time, asking: What matters now? What behaviors get rewarded? How fast should decisions move? What risks are acceptable? What kind of company are we becoming? In healthy transitions, leaders answer those questions quickly and consistently.