Beyond Corporate Theatre: A Conversation with Walter Susini

Walter Susini built a career spanning more than three decades in global companies, including serving as Vice President of Marketing at Coca-Cola, where he was behind the iconic slogan “Open Happiness.” In 2023, he joined Happiness Camp as a speaker, bringing a sharp and uncompromising perspective on organisational dynamics.

More recently, Walter published BULLSH*T INC., a book that challenges how we think about leadership, power and culture inside companies. In this conversation with António Pedro Pinto, Founder and CEO of Happiness Camp, Walter unpacks what genuine culture looks like, how organisational theatre erodes performance and when leadership turns into corporate illusion.

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In your experience, what signals reveal that culture is genuine rather than just a well-designed narrative?

Genuine culture isn’t what a company declares. It’s what it tolerates when no one is watching.

Culture becomes real when a mistake is analysed publicly without a witch hunt. When a director can say “I was wrong” without being punished for it. When a top performer’s bonus is affected because he destroyed the team. When a brilliant but toxic talent is invited to leave. When a failed strategy is reviewed before it is reframed as a “learning narrative.”

Genuine culture appears when a company sacrifices short term results to protect coherence. When it says no to a profitable deal because it violates its principles. When it protects someone who raised a problem instead of protecting the person who created it.

Real culture lives in incentives, fears and rewards, not in slogans or values written on walls.

Corporate culture, very often, is a well rehearsed theatre piece performed for investors, candidates and the press. The true culture is the invisible system of incentives, fears and rewards.

If you want a brutal test, look at three things:

Who gets promoted.
Who gets protected.
Who gets silenced.

If behaviour contradicts declared values without consequence, what exists is theatre, not culture.

If those who speak the truth lose space, the culture is fear. If toxic high performers rise quickly, the culture is cynicism. If those who protect their teams are seen as naïve, the culture is politics.

How does organisational theatre compromise psychological safety and long-term performance?

Organisational theatre creates the illusion of alignment while removing real dialogue.

It begins when people understand that the most important performance is no longer the market performance. It is the meeting performance.

Everyone starts acting. The director performs confidence. The CEO performs vision. Nobody performs doubt.

Psychological safety disappears when disagreement carries risk. When an honest question is seen as a political threat, people stop solving problems and start performing competence.

In the short term, it works. PowerPoint looks coherent internally. But the market does not watch the theatre. It responds to reality.

Companies do not die because they lack talent. They die because intelligent people learn that staying silent is safer than speaking up.

When does leadership stop being strategic vision and become organisational bullsh*t?

Leadership becomes bullsh*t when vision is no longer tested against reality.

Strategy requires hard choices and trade offs. Bullsh*t replaces decisions with slogans.

If everything is a priority, there is no strategy. If everything is win win, conflict is being avoided. If the plan never admits risk, it is corporate fantasy.

The shift happens when leaders start selling optimism instead of confronting trade offs. When the discourse becomes more sophisticated than the results.

Bullsh*t begins when the leader prefers to be admired rather than challenged.

Real leadership accepts tension and challenge. Bullsh*t seeks applause and admiration.

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Walter Susini’s reflections are not comfortable, and that is precisely the point. His work invites leaders to examine the gap between declared values and lived behaviour, between performance and integrity.

Understanding that gap may be the first step in closing it.

His book, BULLSH*T INC., is available here: https://www.amazon.com/BULLSH-INC-Unfiltered-Survival-Corporate-ebook/dp/B0G6FF4BN3