Franca Mercurio

International leader at SC Johnson, currently serving as Supply Planning EU Director, with a strong track record across Quality, R&D and Operations.

Her career has been shaped by transformation and cross-functional leadership, giving her a pragmatic understanding of how corporate culture is experienced through day-to-day decisions, trade-offs, and behaviors within organizations.

When the shift is not just operational, but also cultural.

Over time, I’ve learned that culture becomes most visible when resources are constrained and pressure is high, not when everything runs smoothly, but when leaders are forced to make trade-offs.

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Recently, there was an unexpected gap in the team at a time when we were running multiple critical activities. Backfilling was not immediate, and the question quickly became: how do we cope in the short term without putting delivery at risk?

 

Within my management team, the initial reactions were telling. Each manager naturally focused on protecting the continuity of their own area. Some highlighted the strategic importance of their work to secure available talent, while others highlighted the effort required to continuously absorb and develop new hires.

 

I could sense the discussion becoming more anchored in individual priorities than in collective problem-solving. Beneath the surface, it was less about resources and more about ownership, fairness, and recognition.

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The risk was clear: if left unaddressed, this could have led to fragmentation within the team. Decisions would be driven by local optimization rather than what was best for the organization, with potential impact on trust and execution at a moment when we needed the opposite.

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At that point, we consciously stepped back and reframed the conversation. Instead of asking “who needs the resources most,” we asked “what setup gives us the best outcome as a team?”.

 

This opened different options: moving people across teams, creating internal growth opportunities, and being more deliberate about where external hiring would have the highest impact.

 

We also addressed the situation transparently with our teams, acknowledging the temporary stretch and asking for an extra effort, while making clear the intent behind our decisions.

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For me, the key takeaway is that culture is shaped in these moments of tension. It is defined by whether leaders choose to defend their perimeter or step back and act for the collective.

 

The difference is not in the values we state, but in the trade-offs we are willing to make when it matters.

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​​​​​Franca Mercurio

Guest contributor _ Values & Value Magazine, March 2026

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