Cash and Culture

Editor’s note: This piece sits within Cultivated Studio as a mental model for the employment value exchange. It frames salary and culture as two sides of a system — economic and behavioural factors that shape 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.