Culture Curious

Everybody talks about their organization’s culture with much ease- some describe how the Leaders are, others talk about the colleagues that they work with and then some others describe how they are building a great organization that is beyond just revenue and profits. Is all of this really culture? Yes, and more.

The layman definition of organizational culture describes it as “How things get done round here”. True, though culture is best understood in the underlying reasons.  Culture is manifest in the norms, shared assumptions and beliefs that exist in an organization. These inherently shape behaviours. So what you see on the surface of the water is just the tip of the iceberg, much exists below the surface. Culture therefore is not what is written on the walls or on the website but it is what is lived everyday on the shop floor and among the cubicles.

An understanding of these shared assumptions and norms helps proactively guide the design of strategies and programs- in a way it guides not just the “what” but also the why and the how. Program design based on a clear understanding of cultural norms is more likely to find success through employee adoption and ownership.

To understand culture therefore is to study something that an organization inherently lives with every day but might find difficulty articulating. It is as omnipresent as the air that we breathe, and interestingly, it is as inconspicuous. So how does one understand culture?

One of the instances when organizational culture becomes highly apparent is when business as usual gets disrupted or tested. Just like they say people display what they really are when under some duress or stress, the same applies to organizations. So whether it is a product complaint, or a workers strike, or a IT breakdown, the behaviours of people around and the meaning making around that is really what culture is. In essence it is not just the behaviour but the reason for that behaviour, as explained by the organization that describes culture.

For e.g. During a worker’s strike, the Management might decide that it will not negotiate wages with any group that holds production to ransom, the reason being that it violates the value of “organization above all else”. At the same time they could also decide that workers’ family linked benefits will not be curtailed in the event of an impasse, as they do not want healthcare and education of the workers’ family to suffer, as “people care” is something that was a founding value of the organization. It is in these seeming contradictions that culture truly sits. It is also what makes culture fascinating (and complicated)

Even during business as usual, watch out for the norms that guide how meetings take place, how decisions get taken and how people interact with one another. Get curious around the underlying norms in there, what’s ok and not ok, what’s part of folklore, what is getting recognized, what is the shared definition of success etc.

And the next time you hear “Oh it has always been done this way!” get curious, a culture nugget is just around the corner.