SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #2116

How to Leverage the 5 Hidden Signals That Predict Cultural Drift

with Kelly Blackmon

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~73 min, distilled

cultural driftchange managementemployee experience

"People don't experience the organization directly. They experience signals."

What it was about

Organizations don't experience conditions directly, they experience signals, which they interpret into meaning. Shared conditions don't produce shared meaning, and when that meaning fragments unnoticed, culture slowly drifts off course ('compounding drift') for 6 to 18 months before it surfaces as turnover, burnout, or resistance. By then, leaders are solving the wrong problem.

By the numbers

less than 20%

share of employees who actually used that $937,000 AI tool despite clear communication

60%, 65%

the success rate change management can reach when meaning is stabilized effectively

9 people out of about 1,000 full-time employees

size of a layoff that, when undisclosed beforehand, triggered ~200 emails to the CEO/COO by the following Monday

Key notes

Recognize that visible problems like turnover, burnout, and communication issues are usually symptoms of an underlying breakdown in shared meaning, not the actual root cause.
Use managers as a 'translation layer' rather than a relay layer, since employees experience the organization through their manager's interpretation, not through CEO or leadership messaging.
Run the ambiguous-expectations visibility check: ask different managers from different teams to independently define what success looks like on the same initiative, and use the variance in answers to detect misalignment.

The contrarian takeBetter manager communication training is often framed as giving managers clearer information to relay. But the real leverage point is that managers aren't relaying messages, they're the actual 'source of truth' who translates and creates meaning for employees. If a manager is scared or doesn't trust leadership, no amount of clear top-down messaging will overcome that.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

Ask three managers to independently define success for one current initiative, then compare answers to spot hidden misalignment.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Turnover and burnout are usually symptoms of fragmented shared meaning, not the root problem — so fixing communication alone won't fix it.

Watch out for

Responding to turnover, resistance, or communication problems by treating them as the root problem and throwing training or more communication at them, rather than investigating the interpretation layer underneath.
Assuming that because leadership communicated something clearly, employees received the same meaning ('shared conditions don't equal shared meaning').
Relying on anonymous poll surveys as the primary data source, when employees on small teams often don't trust anonymity and will give unreliable answers.

Fun fact · Kelly Blackmon

He invented his own named framework, the Relational Drift Cycle, to map how trust quietly erodes inside teams over time.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperThe Missing Middle of LeadershipZooms into exactly the managers this session calls the real source of truth, and their neglect.⇄ The counterpointState of the Workforce 2026: What to Keep, What to Change, and What AI Is Actually Doing to Your EmployeesGrounds engagement in stable, measurable predictors like pay and security, not just interpreted meaning.✦ The unexpected oneReturn on Intelligence: Move AI ROI Beyond Cost to Competitive AdvantageAI investments drift the same way culture does: judged on interpretation, not just deployment.