Culture and Change
What is culture and how do you build and nurture it?
A couple of interesting articles got me thinking about culture and change in an organisation. What causes it to work or not? How do you create it and whose responsibility is it to nurture it? Is it simply the accountability of the big bosses or do we all hold ownership in developing an organisation that we want to be a part of?
From Jerome Parisse-Brassens, is this excellent Quora thread:
Culture is created from the messages people receive about is valued. Your people receive those messages from three main channels within the organisation: behaviours, symbols and systems. If you want to change the culture, you need to change the messages people receive through these three channels. Transforming culture is about identifying and sending the messages that will tell your people things are going to be different from now on.
The purpose of a culture audit is to identify the messages staff currently receive and then to assess whether those messages are the right ones, or if they are sending contradictory signals. A culture audit aims to create increased levels of insight, so that you can determine the extent to which your current activity will collectively shape the target culture your organisation needs.
Brian Chesky, one of the Airbnb founders, writes they build culture:
By upholding our core values in everything we do. Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times. It’s living the core values when you hire; when you write an email; when you are working on a project; when you are walking in the hall. We have the power, by living the values, to build the culture.
He suggest culture is so important in that is creates an environment that limits the need for company process:
When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. And if we have a company that is entrepreneurial in spirit, we will be able to take our next “(wo)man on the moon” leap. Ever notice how families or tribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trust and culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes.
Jocelyn Goldfein outlines an exercise she once did which got to the heart of their company culture:
Imagine I’m a new hire, a protégé of yours, and I show up in your office on my first day of work, and I ask you ‘So what should I do to get ahead at [this company]? What makes people successful here? What made you successful?’”
Brainstorm all the things you can think of that answer this question, and what you have at the end it the company culture. Whilst the corporate slogans may contain buzzwords like “building a high-impact learning culture” or “physiological safety” this exercise might be revealing.
There are a number of culture documents available online from successful companies that make for thought provoking reading. None necessarily being better than others, all providing different points of view:
- Googles Project Aristotle — uncovering what makes teams effective
- Spotify culture
- Netflix culture
- Defmarco
- Book in a Box Culture
- Buffer Values
A great example of how to go about cultural change is provided by the Mckinsey model in the article “ The four building blocks of change”
Despite an amazing ability to learn new things, human beings all too often lack insight into what they need to know but don’t. Biases, for example, can lead people to overlook their limitations and be overconfident of their abilities.
Instilling a sense of control and competence can promote an active effort to improve. As expectancy theory holds, people are more motivated to achieve their goals when they believe that greater individual effort will increase performance…
Research tells us that role modeling occurs both unconsciously and consciously. Unconsciously, people often find themselves mimicking the emotions, behavior, speech patterns, expressions, and moods of others without even realizing that they are doing so. They also consciously align their own thinking and behavior with those of other people — to learn, to determine what’s right, and sometimes just to fit in.
While role modeling is commonly associated with high-power leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Bill Gates, it isn’t limited to people in formal positions of authority. Smart organizations seeking to win their employees’ support for major transformation efforts recognize that key opinion leaders may exert more influence than CEOs.
This article can also be backed up by the review of how Toyota changed the Culture at NUMMI. John Shook outlines how the car manufacturing site turned themselves around through recognising how important it is to act your way into a new way of thinking rather than thinking your way to a new way of acting which is often the approach.
