Friends’ teenage daughter works at a local Starbucks. One of her daily tasks is to turn away customers (mostly adults) who didn’t wear masks. With the most infected cases confirmed and death toll in the world, many people among us chose not to comply with this simple request: wearing a mask when going out in public.

Despite the complexity of the pandemic and how it affected the entire world, there are many reasons that contributed to the situation we are in today as a nation: political partisanship, individualism, various personal interpretations of freedom (especially in the unprecedented time) and the belief that the whole thing is a conspiracy, etc. According to the Pew Research*, despite the partisan combat between the two parties over wearing a mask or not, nearly 60% of U.S. adults say ordinary Americans have a great deal of impact on the spread of the coronavirus by their own actions.

While these beliefs and practices exist across the world since at the human level we all hold similar humanity values, the fact that the Americans are the most impacted tribe made me wonder the reasons underneath our behaviors that made us different from the rest of the world.

Since the pandemic started, local governments and health experts tried to use all sorts of strategies to control the virus with very little results. When strategies don't work and the virus keeps spreading fast and strong, I began to wonder the role that our culture has been playing in this mess. As the famous quote from Peter Drucker says, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.

Culture by definition is: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Also the characteristic features of everyday existence shared by people in a place or time. Culture is supported by values that are both expressive and operative.

Expressed values are the ones that we talk about as a business, community and society, such as: happiness, empowerment, freedom and human dignity. Operative values (I call it behavior values) are the ones we usually don’t talk about and even unaware most of the time. They are the ones that we make our judgments and decisions on how to behave in the working environment and personal lives. We use operative values as the overarching and guiding principles to tell us what is always right and wrong, for example, generosity, transparency, comfort and convenience.

In the American culture, two core behavior values are important to understand: comfort and convenience. Being comfortable is the key goal for people to decide what we need in life to keep this comfort level. It includes both physical and social comfort for example: being in harmony with others by avoiding confrontational and awkward situations, sometimes hard conversations.

Convenience is even more deeply rooted in the society. And the core idea about convenience is by doing less to achieve more comfort. Some good examples are: choosing fast and processed food over fresh produce and ingredients, using smart phones with apps that handle almost everything we need in life without leaving the house, Amazon’s rise to the power, etc. When you are on the road trip, how often would you exit the highway and join the drive-thru line at one of the fast food chains or gas stations when you are hungry? When you are juggling between work and kids, how often do you go to the grocery store to grab a quick bite or processed food for an easy dinner (like me)? Our entire society is largely built on the values of comfort and convenience.

Comfort and convenience don't always lead to better lives.

But comfort and convenience have not always been helpful for us to have better lives, quality lives. On the contrary, they cause severe damages if we are not aware of their negative impacts: constantly avoid hard conversation when we need to address some critical issues such as marriage or partnership at work that would eventually cause pains and regrets for life, eating processed and unhealthy food that are directly linked to obesity, other health issues and environmental damages.

When blending in other factors into the mix, it’s not hard to understand why opting out of wearing a mask when going in the public is not such a big deal for many. By all means, it is neither comfortable nor convenient. The pandemic has proved one more time that comfort and convenience are not helping us, the Americans, fight the virus. It is the uncomfortable and inconvenient action, wearing a mask, that works and saves lives.

When changes happen, so are the values and our behaviors. Being aware and identifying the values that don’t work for us any more are the first step in winning the fight. If the goal of our nation was to be the superpower in the world for the past, I believe the goal that we need to have right now is: let’s make America healthy again.

This has also reminded me of the branding work we do. To build a strong brand and company to reach the goal for the next level in growth, business owners need a strong culture with supporting values that guide everyone to work together. Embracing operative values and defining them in the positive light help business, organization even a country build the culture and tribes that not only we'll witness efficiency at all levels but also the sense of belonging that everyone can thrive, love being part of, and contribute. The beautiful cycle!

* The Pew Research: