Why Culture Never Shows Up in Due Diligence
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About this Episode
Thirty minutes before the wire, the seller called to say he had an epiphany overnight. He was not selling.
Dr. Tony Bridwell has a translation. The epiphany is code for an overwhelming emotional reaction, and roughly 70 percent of your day runs on emotion rather than logic. That is the side that consumes a deal.
Lane Carrick opens with the paradox he has watched his whole career on the sellside: every buyer says culture makes or breaks an acquisition, and no buyer ever builds a process around it. Bridwell explains why toxicity only surfaces after the letter of intent, why 3 percent of an organization moves 90 percent of its culture and it is never the 3 percent you would guess, and what breaks the day the founder who was the de facto purpose, mission and vision hands over the keys.
The conversation then turns to Frank, the brilliant jerk everyone tolerates because he produces, and the only four things you can do with him: tolerate, isolate, eliminate, rehabilitate. All four carry a cost. Chasing Frank sent Bridwell into a doctorate, where the research told him it was never about leadership at all. Roughly $60 billion a year goes into leadership development in the United States. There is no comparable number for followership. He closes on why he gave a kidney to a close friend.
About Dr. Tony Bridwell
Dr. Tony Bridwell
Chief Talent Officer, The Encompass Group
Dr. Tony Bridwell is an organizational behaviorist with more than 25 years helping global organizations improve culture, leadership and performance. He has been Chief Talent Officer at The Encompass Group since March 2022, where he leads the firm's organizational consulting practice and serves as practice leader of the E3 Leadership Academy, the 12-month executive cohort he built and launched in July 2023. He is also Adjunct Professor of Executive Leadership at SMU Cox School of Business and adjunct faculty at Trevecca Nazarene University, and has spoken in 44 countries. Earlier in his career he was Chief People Officer at Brinker International, the parent of Chili's and Maggiano's, with responsibility for the people strategy of more than 60,000 team members across 1,600 restaurants. He then served as Chief People Officer at Ryan LLC from September 2017, where the culture he helped build was later named the number one place to work on Glassdoor's 2026 Employees' Choice Awards, and as a senior partner at Culture Partners. He holds a B.S. in Business and an MBA from Capella, a doctorate in leadership and organizational intelligence from Trevecca Nazarene University, an Executive Certificate in Senior Executives in National and International Security from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a data analytics certificate from the University of Michigan. He is the author of eight books including The Follower Effect (Wiley, 2026) and the USA Today bestseller Beyond the Leader (Wiley, 2025), sits on the Southwest Transplant Alliance Board of Directors as a living organ donor, and was named 2015 Dallas HR Executive of the Year and 2025 DallasHR Consultant of the Year.
Books by Dr. Tony Bridwell
The Follower Effect
A Fable About Flipping the Script on Leadership
by Tony Bridwell
The Follower Effect came out of the doctoral research Bridwell started in order to solve one problem: the brilliant jerk everyone tolerates because he produces. Two and a half years in, the research told him it was never about leadership at all. Studying four global companies, he found that people move in and out of leading and following continuously through a single day, regardless of title, and that the most effective executives move between the two fastest. The central finding is that how well someone leads is directly connected to how well they follow: ineffective in follower mode predicts toxic in leader mode, effective in follower mode predicts transformative. The book lays out the three anchoring attributes of effective followership, being an independent critical thinker, being mission focused, and being an active partner, and argues that roughly $60 billion a year goes into leadership development in the United States while there is no comparable number for followership at all.
Beyond the Leader
A Fable About the 7 Disciplines That Define Extraordinary Teams
by Tony Bridwell
A USA Today bestseller and the book that preceded The Follower Effect, Beyond the Leader is told as a fable rather than a framework, on the argument that people take in experience as stories rather than as lists. It works through the seven disciplines that separate extraordinary teams from competent ones, and sits alongside the model Bridwell uses in practice: that culture is fed by four anchor stories, a purpose, a mission, a vision and a set of values, and that those stories are either designed intentionally or they get dictated by whoever fills the vacuum.
