Having spent a fair amount of time over the last few months with CEOs in organizations with amazing cultures, I’ve been thinking about the role of the CEO. I’ve written about this before. It sort of bugs me that the CEOs have so much sway over culture, but they do. It’s not that other employees can’t shape the culture–they absolutely can. It’s just that they frequently choose not to, and thus cede that power over to the CEOs.

A lot of CEOs see this and subsequently put culture on their radar, at least long enough to develop a core values statement and maybe invest in some happy hours. But more often than not it ends up occupying just a small piece of their attention. It’s not that they don’t believe in the power of a strong culture or those values that you all came up with, but they never make it central to what they do.

I think they need to. This is just a hypothesis, so if you have a different experience, please share it with me. But I think employees can smell a partial commitment to culture a mile away. Even if you say it with conviction, unless it becomes your central focus, it ends up fading away, and at that point, the employees then get to choose which parts of your behavior define the culture at the organization.

So I urge CEOs to make a choice. Get clear on what you want your culture to be, and then make that your job. It’s not your only job, of course, but it has to be so central to who you are as a leader that there can be no question about what the culture in your organization is. That’s what I am seeing in the CEOs who are leading these spectacularly successful companies with strong cultures. If you choose not to do this (which is your prerogative), then understand that you are punting on the job of setting culture (despite your new values statement) and giving it back to the group of people who would rather you set the culture in the first place. Make your choice, because not choosing is basically making that second choice, and I just don’t think that’s the path to becoming an employer of choice.