Cultivating Intentional Culture

When I interview new hires I often hear the question, “What is your culture like?” Do you ever get that question? It’s straightforward yet challenging to answer. Culture is like a cloud; you can see it but it’s hard to get your arms wrapped around it. Imagine if you could not only convey what your culture is like but also show how that gets expressed and reinforced throughout your organization? You can.

There is no shortage of stats that substantiate the important role culture plays with organizational health and performance. Most leaders know that your culture affects nearly every aspect of your organization, including:

• Your ability to attract and retain the best talent
• Your ability to improve engagement in a remote or hybrid environment
• Your ability to execute on your key strategic initiatives

And yet, while most of us have systems for our finances, operations, sales, and almost every other critical function, it seems very few have a coherent framework or system for culture. Listening sessions, surveys and data analytics are commonly deployed tactics, leading to single-set solutions such as rewards & recognition, perks & benefits, training & development, performance management, etc. But, unless these are interpreted and connected to one-another through a coherent and complete lens they’ll only result in one-off “solutions” that can’t drive the cultural shifts you know your organization needs. Over time, this can leave leaders feeling like they are playing a game of whack-a-mole, chasing new issues, deploying one-off initiatives and puzzled why it’s so hard to make real progress.

I’m passionate about building workplaces where people know who they are and what they do make a difference. My experience has shown me that people respond to the environment they are in, and that in the workplace leaders play a pivotal role cultivating healthy and productive environments that increases both employee fulfillment and organizational effectiveness. Companies pay a big price for not knowing how to support their leaders to intentionally design and cultivate culture. We’d like to change that.

What we found through our research is that there are any number of things that contribute to your culture — culture is the manifestation of a complex, every-changing ecosystem. However, this is tractable. There tend to be six interrelated culture influencers that cast a much larger shadow and play an outsized role informing the daily experience by reinforcing ways of interacting and working:

Stories — The stories employees talk about inside and outside of the company about the work, the people and events.

Rituals and routines — The daily norms and practices that influence the behavior, perception and interactions of people.

Symbols and artifacts– The visual representations of the company including images, sayings, decor and formal or informal dress codes.

Organizational structure and process — Both the structures defined by the organization chart, as well as the unwritten lines of power & influence that are produced through policy and process.

Control systems — The ways that the organization is controlled including financial systems, quality systems, and rewards.

Power structures — The positions and people with the greatest amount of influence on decisions, operations, and strategic direction.

Adapted from Johnson & Scholes

Introduced by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes, the Cultural Web is a model that helps leaders focus on the key factors of culture and their impact on strategic issues. By understanding culture as an integrated system, teams are able to make their culture visible and holistically understand what contributes to the culture they are striving to create.

How we help leaders use the Culture Web

The Culture Web can be used to design for broader organizational culture, but it is particularly powerful when used to cultivate a specific aspect of culture. Some examples include:

• You want to cultivate bravery and belonging to advance your diversity, equity and inclusion journey
• You want to foster a growth-mindset and agility to support an innovation strategy
• You need to strengthen reliability and accountability as you engage in rapid growth

Step #1: Start by defining the aspect of culture you want to shape

We always start in the center of the model to uncover the organizational paradigm- the values, principles, beliefs and behaviors needed to enable your strategy. We call these Fundamentals. These don’t have to be refined or perfect, but just well-enough understood to discern how well your current system amplifies and reinforces them. We help leadership explore how grounded the Fundamentals are today:

• Are these beliefs and behaviors formalized today (i.e.- core values)?
• Are they clear & explicit to all employees?
• Are they relevant to the daily experience (“I know what it looks like in my world”)?
• Do we know what people would be saying or doing if they were living these beliefs?

Step #2: Assess how your choices amplify & reinforce the intended culture

Next we move to the “outside” of the wheel starting with Rituals and Routines. We help teams first evaluate, then visualize the current state. Teams evaluate each element based on four domains:

• Intentionality (Are [Rituals and Routines] intentionally designed to amplify and reinforce the beliefs and behaviors?)
• Alignment (To what degree are [Rituals and Routines] aligned to the desired beliefs and behaviors?)
• Consistency (What level of consistency are [Rituals and Routines] practiced?)
• Ownership (What scope of ownership with [Rituals and Routines] across employees, leadership and organization?)

Step #3: Make the culture web visible

Then we have teams visualize the current state by mapping what exists today. We ask, “Which of our Rituals and Routines amplify & reinforce our (specified) beliefs and behaviors?” Visualizing on a canvas enables the team to see:

• How many exist (and what it missing)
• Which ones are intentionally designed (and which are out of touch with the intended impact)
• How well they actually align to the desired beliefs/behaviors (and which are in conflict with them)
• If they are happening daily/weekly/monthly, and which are created & owned by employees vs. leadership (and which are infrequent and inconsistent)

The conversations this process produces are rich and enlightening.

We repeat this exercise for each element in the Culture Web. In doing so, teams are able to quickly and holistically reflect on the gaps, the impacts and the opportunities for culture contribution.

Step #4: Create your Culture Blueprint and design changes

The Culture Web provides a simple, holistic and structured approach to culture building. Teams are able to use the Web to build what we call “blueprints” or recommendations for action that help them align their actions with the intended beliefs & behaviors AND ensure that their choices are in concert with one another. We are our habits and even the smallest changes made with intention, care and consistency can result in big impact over time.

We teach teams that they don’t have to start with a lot of change. However, there are 2 tenets to design from:

• Leaders and teams truly embrace the beliefs and behaviors they are shaping
• They view each idea they design as a test they can learn from and continue to improve and/or add to it

We don’t always know what works, for whom, under what conditions. The Culture Web gives teams freedom within a framework to continually create. The Culture Web is a visual learning tool and process for leaders and teams to continuously assess how they are doing, make adjustments and adapt their cultures as conditions change.

Depending on their size, it typically takes 1–2 days for a team to map their current culture and design their blueprint for change. The Culture Web provides leaders with an easy-to-follow and structured process (almost like an operating system) they can use with their teams to continuously assess, create and contribute towards a shared culture.

Great organizations and leaders know that stewarding culture is challenging. Culture takes time to define and it takes work to execute. Yet we create and reinforce culture-either on purpose or by default- everyday. It makes sense to be intentional about it and it’s our mission to help you do that.

YOU CAN make your culture and the activities that nurture it visible.

YOU CAN make your Fundamentals visible to teach people what they are and why they matter.

YOU CAN make each element of the Culture Web visible to help teams understand what needs to be intentionally designed to amplify and reinforce the Fundamentals, as well as how they weave together to form the fabric of your culture.

YOU CAN make the process to contribute to culture creation visible that gives teams greater ownership around culture creation and guides ongoing culture efforts.

As Edgar Schein famously said, “If you do not manage culture, it manages you…” We think it’s time to start managing our culture by managing the process that creates it.