There's a lot of nuance in the distinction between cultural excellence and product excellence.
In IT and a few other fields, a lot of people have come to associate "cultural excellence" with "work is a really fun activity because of perks/getting to do whatever I want/having a very fraternal relationship with all of my colleagues". That's an extreme, and, I think, harmful, spoiled, and incorrect understanding of cultural excellence.
When confronted with that that claim (that the perk/fun-based definition of cultural "goodness" is wrong), however, people tend to argue against it from extremes "Are you saying I shouldn't feel good while at work? That I should just tough it out while being abused/overworked/discriminated against? That it's some weird character-building masochistic activity?!"
No, of course not. Cultural excellence includes professionalism, compassion, making employees feel valued and rewarded, and making sure they don't feel persecuted or attacked in the workplace. But that's a line that's hard to draw, especially when participants in the conversation are entitled ("well, $big_company_x gives me a ball pit and a nap room, so I think you're stodgy!") or truly threatened ("To me as $underrepresented_demographic_x, any cultural statements short of radical inclusivity and protection sound suspiciously like excuses for discrimination and cultural oppression in the workplace!"
--a suspicion that is unfortunately justified quite often).
When it comes to product excellence, the nuance and difficulty discussing it comes from the perceived dichotomy between product/cultural values. Valuing cultural quality isn't at odds with product quality unless you do it wrong; a good culture facilitates more ideas, employee growth (an employee who grows makes better contribution to the product), and helps make the structures for acquiring, keeping, and getting rid of employees more fair and productive.
However, discussions about that dichotomy often end up with "well we can either not grow or value radical workaholism/Uber-style cults of personality/whatever, so might as well prioritize the product and forget about the irrelevant soft stuff!" That's false, because you need both to succeed. Different strategies might work better or worse depending on what phase of it's life the business is in, or on other factors, but the strategies shouldn't be split into "cultural" and "product". You can't get by with one or the other; thinking about it as a tradeoff is myopic and harmful.
TL;DR conversations about culture/product excellence are important to have but tricky to conduct in practice because of misperceptions, participants' prior bad experiences, and the tendency to argue from extremes.