Can you identify one common element that can:
decide whether you can find and develop a more profitable strategy in your company
attract the best people, allow them to grow, and at the same time push away people that do not fit the team
help newly recruited people step into responsibilities and stay in the company (onboarding)
shape how employees interact in the workplace
affect employee engagement and effectiveness
turn your company into one team
turn employees into company advocates and evangelists
reduce stress and help prevent conflict (and mitigate it when it occurs)
My answer is an organisational culture.
“Corporate culture / organisational culture / company culture – the values, beliefs, and behaviors practiced in an organisation. Formed over time because they are rewarded or punished (e.g. by formal or informal rules, rituals, and behaviours).” [1]
I like this definition. It’s simple, practical, and helps to focus on the key aspects of this very complex phenomenon. The culture starts to be created immediately when people start to work together. The culture is always dynamic, and it changes day by day, just as the people who contribute to it are changing.
It shapes and changes with the passage of time because all its manifestations are rewarded and punished (by formal and informal rules, rituals, management reactions and colleagues etc.). Interestingly, and surprisingly a company culture is also shaped through a lack of reaction as well. What you tolerate also teaches people what is acceptable. Each company has its own unique culture. It includes shared values, norms, and the unwritten rules people follow when nobody is watching.
Have you heard the saying - “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”?
Your company culture effectively determines what you can do with your business, because it shapes decision-making patterns and everyday behaviours. Culture influences whether you will be able to implement, for example, a new more profitable business model. It’s a cliché for a reason.
An effective, healthy culture acts like an immune system that defends companies against problems. It also creates psychological safety when people need to raise issues early. It also supports innovation by making it safe to learn, challenge assumptions, and act on real feedback, rather than politics.
This is a hot question, and I am very aware that many of you will have a strong opinion here. Let me share what I stand for: I think this question should be answered with yes and no at the same time.
Yes: we can design elements of culture. We can promote shared values and behaviours. We can be very aware in rewarding desired behaviour and challenging undesirable behaviour (through leadership, communication, policies and procedures), especially through role modelling. We can support people who develop the desirable elements of culture.
No: we can not. Culture happens. Management efforts are interpreted independently by culture contributors, and they (consciously or not) decide how to react to them. Its shape is also influenced by external factors. In addition, the world is not perfect, so all the actions taken are also not perfect. Even positively intended actions can cause unexpected effects. The decisions made are superimposed by logical errors and imperfections of perception that affect the actions taken.
To add to all of this, culture is also shaped by our omission (and our omissions are often a result of lack of awareness).
Personally I really like the metaphor of the garden. Let’s imagine you are a gardener. You can design a landscape, you can plant the seeds of plants you like and you can look after your garden, but the garden is dynamic. It changes every day. Even if you act for good, for example while watering the garden, you can never be 100% sure if you have provided the plants with the right amount of water (or maybe they are just beginning to have too much water and the roots have started to decay). Also, the end result is affected by weather, pests, plant diseases and many more. The garden is constantly subject to the laws of nature. If you leave an aspect of your garden without attention, nature will immediately demand its rights and the garden will change. It’s closer to daily gardening than installing a policy.
Writing in the previous paragraphs about “good” cultures, I used the term healthy and unhealthy (desirable and undesirable) culture, which I had not previously defined. Let’s try to ask ourselves whether there is any “good” universal culture, which can be introduced and always improves the company’s situation.
The answer in my opinion is, unfortunately, that this is not possible. Every company on the path to greatness must find its own recipe for an organisational culture that will help it achieve success and allow people in a company to thrive (and I describe such a culture as healthy and desirable).
Each company is different and has (needs) its own culture. Let’s consider whether transferring Amazon’s culture to Apple would help Apple or rather cause a catastrophe? And yet Amazon’s culture allowed the company to achieve the position it has achieved.
I have conversations regularly, and sometimes I observe some frequent misunderstandings around culture. Here are the top three:
the organisational culture is not your company mission, although the company mission can have a great impact on your company culture
the organisational culture is not leadership, although your leadership will have a great impact on your company culture
the organisational culture is not your policies and procedures, although they will have a great impact on your company culture
There are well established tools and processes to understand and influence company culture. The key is to stop treating culture as something “soft” and start treating it as a system you can observe, learn from, and shape over time.
Don’t let your culture just happen.
Citation:
[1] This definition has been developed by Strategyzer
