Cash and Culture
Salary is a blunt instrument. Culture is the other side of the employment exchange. In this Studio essay, I explore cash and culture as two sides of the system that shapes why people join, stay, and leave organisations.
Cash and Culture
Not every organisation can take money off the table.
Most shouldn’t try.
Salary is a blunt instrument.
It attracts attention, but rarely creates attachment.
Over time, I’ve come to think of employment as a set of scales.
On one side: cash—salary, bonuses, pensions, benefits.
On the other: everything else.
Cultivated Studio
The rest of this note is for Studio members.
What follows are more observations on this topic — the kind of things that take years to learn. Studio is where this kind of working note lives, alongside extended frameworks, field essays, and over four hours of Idea to Value video.
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