A toxic corporate culture is often a company’s Achilles’ heel. Unlike more quantifiable organizational risks—e.g., poor financial performance—bad culture is generally insidious. It lies undetected in financial statements and public records, and then reveals itself without warning in the form of sexual harassment, high employee turnover, workplace bullying, illicit sales tactics and other reputation- and value-destroying behaviors.

That is why executives, general counsels and boards of directors charged with ensuring the long-term health of their companies can’t afford to ignore the current—and long overdue—conversation on corporate culture. On the contrary, they should embrace it because, in the words of renowned management expert Peter Drucker, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”