A Jerry Macnamara term
What is the Cross the Street Test?
The Cross the Street Test is a culture metric I coined: ten years from now, when someone you led spots you across a street or a parking lot, do they cross it to avoid you, or cross it to come say hello?
Where it comes from
I gave the test its name at the Jacksonville Football Club Coaches Symposium keynote on August 8, 2026, but I’ve used it with every organization I’ve ever led or advised. It is the only culture metric I have never, not once, seen lie.
The picture I gave that room: a player you coached at eleven sees you at twenty-one. He’s tall now, and he spots you before you spot him. In that moment, he votes. Run it the other direction and it still works. Think about the bosses and coaches from your own life. There’s one you’d cross four lanes of traffic to hug and one you’d duck behind a minivan to avoid. The difference was how they made you feel, and your feet still remember which way to walk.
How to use it
The trap is thinking the test gets administered in ten years. It’s being administered right now, in every interaction, and there is no neutral. Every meeting you run, every word you say after a loss, is a deposit into one of two futures. You just don’t get your results for a decade. It’s the cruelest grading system in the world, and the most honest one.
In business, run it on the people who used to work for you. Would your last three direct reports cross the street to shake your hand, or would they spot you first and change direction? Then run it on the company: customers, vendors, the candidate you didn’t hire. The sum of their votes is your reputation.
If you already have a name in your head and a knot in your stomach, culture debts can be repaid. One honest conversation, then be boringly consistent about the new you. It’s never too late to change which way somebody crosses the street.
Questions people ask
Is the Cross the Street Test a real metric or a metaphor?
It’s a real test with a real result; it just gets scored late. Every person you’ve led already has an answer. You can get it faster than ten years by asking the people who left.
How is it different from the Driveway Test?
They’re a matched pair. The Cross the Street Test measures a person’s relationship with you. The Driveway Test measures their relationship with the work itself. Pass the first and fail the second, and you were a nice leader who didn’t light the fire. Pass both and you won, permanently.
What earns the crossing?
Trust, and trust stands on four pillars: competency, consistency, integrity, and compassion. Competency gets you respected. Consistency gets you believed. Integrity gets you followed. Compassion gets you loved, and loved is what gets someone crossing a parking lot toward you ten years later.
The full story is in the essay The Cross the Street Test. I teach the test on stage in Creating a Culture of Accountability. If your team or your conference needs to hear it, start at speaking.