The beauty and perils of traditions

In most well-intentioned organisations we strive toward building a culture founded on strong, well considered values and ethics. We consider the questions, who are we and how do we want to be?

This motivation to build something meaningful to the majority typically gives rise to traditions. The habits, behaviours, practices that support the building of that culture. Sometimes these are created consciously but many seemingly just emerge. In fact, many are because of the impacts of hierarchy – how the most senior leader does things around here.

Examples of ‘traditions’ or habits in an organisational culture sense includes things like:

~ whether we start any team meeting with a well-being check in

~ whether we allow people to take a half day on Christmas Eve without taking leave, or

~ whether we thank people for their work.

When these become part of the system and are handed down from ‘generation to generation’ they become traditions.

Done well, consciously and with genuine relationship values at their core, some traditions can create a sense of community, belonging, connection and fulfilment.

Creating powerful traditions though bears further examination because we can also find that what starts out motivated by positive aims can, over time, become hollow prisons held in place but without any meaningful quality at their core.

Rigidly or blindly upholding fixed traditions can sometimes be because we are fearful of evolving them to become even more inclusive and meaningful to the current group members. We’ve become overly reliant on the mechanics of the tradition rather than the essence of what underpins it – building community, relationship and connection. In some cases it may be that we realise we don’t know how to bring these traditions up to date or to evolve our own behaviours to match what’s needed now so we stick vehemently with what is already there.

When we consider the traditions within our own lives and organisations we might ask ourselves some key questions:

~ How clear am I/are we about the essential values underpinning this tradition and are they still alive and well? Are they still relevant?

~ Who or what does the tradition serve?

~ What can I/we do that would evolve the tradition to an (even) more meaningful point?