Bathrooms and Culture

I can tell a lot about an operation before I ever see a single metric. I check the bathrooms.

Not the ones near the executive suite. Those are always clean. Always stocked with fresh soap, full paper towel dispensers, occasionally a candle or flowers. Sometimes better lighting than my home office.

I check the warehouse and shop floor bathrooms. Because that's where the culture lives. Tissue on the floor that's been there long enough to become part of the floor. Empty soap dispensers that have been empty long enough that nobody reports it anymore. Paper towels gone with no refill in sight. A smell that suggests the last deep clean happened during a different presidential administration. The hand written "out of service" sign on the door.

That's not a facilities problem. That's a leadership problem. It tells me exactly how the people doing the actual work are valued by the people making the actual decisions. And it tells me they already know it.

I've walked into beautiful facilities with state of the art equipment and dirty warehouse bathrooms. I've walked into older buildings with modest equipment and spotless ones. Can you guess which operation had better morale?

The truth is how you maintain the spaces your team uses every day is a direct statement about how you see them. You don't need a culture deck to communicate that. The soap dispenser does it for you.

If the executive bathroom gets restocked daily and the warehouse bathroom gets checked weekly - your team has already done the math. They know exactly where they stand.

Let the bathrooms tell you everything that metrics will not.