Latest / The Internal Move Podcast with Fexingo: Lateral Roles, Internal Transfers, and Staying at Your Company / How an Internal Transfer Can Help You Uncover Hidden Company Culture
Transcript
- Lucas: We have talked in a hundred episodes now about almost every practical reason to make an internal transfer — better pay, new skills, escape from a dead-end project, building influence without authority. But there is one reason we have never explicitly covered, and it might be the most underestimated reason to move internally. Luna: Okay, I am genuinely curious. What is it? Lucas: An internal transfer can help you uncover the hidden company culture. Not the mission statement on the wall or the values deck from onboarding. The real unwritten rules about how decisions get made, who actually has power, and what behaviors get rewarded versus punished. Luna: That is such a good point. I think a lot of people assume they already know their company's culture because they have been there a year or two. But that is usually just their team's culture, or the floor they sit on. Lucas: Exactly. And this is backed up by data. A 2025 Gartner study on internal mobility found that employees who made an internal transfer reported a 40 percent better understanding of their organization's true culture within six months of the move. The researchers called it a 'cultural reset effect.' Luna: Forty percent is huge. And I bet it cuts both ways — some people discover the culture is better than they thought, and some realize it is worse. Lucas: Right. And both pieces of information are valuable. Let me give you a concrete example. I spoke with a marketing manager at a large retailer — I will call her Priya — who had been in the brand marketing team for three years. She liked her colleagues, but she felt the team was siloed and a little competitive internally. Luna: That sounds draining. Lucas: It was. She transferred to the e-commerce division — same company, same building even, just a different floor. Within two months, she told me she realized the broader company culture was actually quite collaborative. The siloed, competitive vibe was specific to her old team leader, not the organization as a whole. She had been judging the entire company based on one manager's behavior. Luna: That is a perfect example. And it is so common. People attribute team-level dysfunction to company-level culture when it is often just a bad boss or a weird team history. Lucas: The flip side is also true. I have heard from people who transferred from a great team to a broader division and realized the company tolerates mediocrity in ways their old team did not. That is also useful — it tells you where the real career ceiling might be. Luna: So the internal transfer acts like a diagnostic tool. It strips away the curated version of culture that you get as a new hire, or the filtered version you see from within one team. Lucas: Exactly. And this is especially relevant right now — July 2026 — because many companies are still figuring out hybrid work norms. The unwritten rules around flexibility, visibility, and who gets promoted in a hybrid environment are still being written. An internal transfer lets you compare two teams' interpretations of the same company policy. Luna: That is a huge advantage over an external hire. Someone coming in from outside has to guess at all that from a few interviews and a job description. An internal mover already has context for the formal rules, so they can focus on the informal ones. Lucas: Let me give you another specific angle. A friend of mine — let us call him Derek — was a data analyst in the risk department of a regional bank. He transferred to the product team. He told me the biggest cultural insight was not about collaboration or meetings. It was about failure tolerance. Luna: How so? Lucas: In risk, any mistake was documented, escalated, and reviewed. The culture was zero-defect. In product, failure was expected as part of experimentation. The same company, same HR policies, but two completely different relationships with risk. Derek said he would never have understood that unless he lived both sides. Luna: And that kind of insight is gold for career navigation. If you know which parts of the company are more failure-tolerant, you can position yourself for the kind of work that matches your style. Lucas: Right. And this connects to something we talked about in episode 97 about personal brand. Understanding the subcultures of your company lets you strategically choose where to build your brand. You might be a risk-taker in a risk-averse department — that is a mismatch no matter how good you are. Luna: So practically, if someone is listening and thinking about an internal move, how do they use this? How do they investigate culture before they move? Lucas: Great question. I would say three things. First, during the informational interviews for the new role, ask specific questions about how decisions are made. Not 'what is the culture like?' but 'if you have a disagreement with a peer, how do you resolve it?' or 'tell me about the last time a project failed and what happened.' Luna: Those are much better questions. They force concrete examples. Lucas: Second, pay attention to the physical or virtual environment. If you are in the office, look at how people interact in hallways or break rooms. If remote, notice meeting start times, camera on or off norms, chat etiquette. Those are cultural signals. Luna: And third? Lucas: Third, after you move, keep a journal for the first 90 days. Write down moments where you feel surprised, confused, or frustrated. Those are cultural friction points. They tell you where the new team's unwritten rules differ from your old one. Over time, you will see patterns. Luna: That is smart. And it turns the transfer into a learning opportunity rather than just a job change. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that is actually a fitting way to mark episode 100. We have spent a hundred episodes arguing that internal moves are underrated career levers. But maybe the most underrated reason is simply this: they teach you about the place you already work. And that knowledge makes you better at your job, no matter what role you are in. Luna: I love that framing. And speaking of the show reaching a hundred episodes — we have never run ads, and we plan to keep it that way. If you have found value in these conversations, the simplest way to support the show is at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That really does help us keep going ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, and we appreciate it. It lets us focus on the content without worrying about sponsors. So thank you to anyone who has ever supported us. Luna: Alright, back to culture. Lucas, you mentioned the Gartner study — how did they measure that 40 percent improvement? Lucas: They surveyed employees before and after internal moves, asking about their understanding of decision-making processes, influence networks, and unwritten performance criteria. The 40 percent was the average self-reported increase six months post-move. The effect was strongest for people who moved to a different function, not just a different team within the same function. Luna: That makes sense. A cross-functional move exposes you to a whole new set of stakeholders and norms. Lucas: Right. And the study also found that people who made two or more internal moves over five years had significantly higher organizational awareness scores than those who stayed in one role. They became, in effect, anthropologists of their own company. Luna: That is a great phrase — corporate anthropologist. It sounds like a skill that would make you more valuable for leadership roles too. Lucas: Absolutely. Senior leaders need to navigate across silos. If you have already done that through internal moves, you are essentially pre-training for broader responsibility. Luna: So for anyone on the fence about an internal transfer, maybe frame it as: you are not just changing jobs. You are doing a deep dive into how your company actually operates. Lucas: Exactly. And a hundred episodes in, I still think that is one of the most compelling reasons to consider it. Thanks for being part of this journey, Luna, and to everyone listening. Luna: Here is to the next hundred.