Culture S Curves

S Curves

I first came across these when famed Business School Professor and oft-No 1 Ranked Business Thinker Gary Hamel dropped them into one of his many talks I've been at.

I was fascinated because of the simplicity of an S Curve. It was 2007 and it was new to me. It's not a new phenomenon and indeed started in biology!

Here's what (yes I know) ChatGPT shared with me about them>

S-curves, also known as sigmoid curves, are mathematical representations of growth patterns commonly observed in various fields, including business. They depict the relationship between time and the growth of a particular variable. S-curves have been around for many decades and have been widely used in different disciplines.

The concept of S-curves can be traced back to the field of biology, where they were initially used to describe population growth. However, their applicability extends far beyond biology and has found utility in fields such as economics, technology, project management, and innovation.

In business, S-curves are commonly used to analyse and understand the life cycle of products, technologies, markets, or business processes.

Anyway, the S-shape shows slow starting, then up ticking, then tapering off.

It's not all maturity and tapering off and even dropping down or ceasing to exist mind. Because Gary introduced the concept of multiple S Curves.

i.e. as one S Curve of a business venture starts to taper off, you start another. Think multiple versions of software, products like iPhones or tablets, smart TVs and EVs.

I think this is somewhat useful when looking at culture. And not just in start-ups into scale-ups or M&As or big product pivots.

But in culture more generally.

Yes, the phenomenon that is organisational culture. The way we do things around here. Or the values we set that shape how we behave or whatever definition of culture you choose to use.

Culture then is also (potentially) about S Curves.

We start to look at culture - especially in a new or forming team or enterprise, company or venture, and it's ill-defined, uncertain and emerging. Then we can see that as we pay attention to it, we can improve how we make collective decisions, and how inclusive we are. How we recognise and appreciate people. How we deal maturely with conflict engagement. How we shine. Outperform. Become sustainably sound and culture becomes our key differentiator.

Then, something big happens.

We get bought out. We merge. We de-merge. We pivot. We get stale. People leave. Products shift. We introduce new tech. We get new investors. We change government/legislation. Stuff changes. So why not look at this as a chance to set a new Culture S curve approach?

And when things change, it feels like culture comes into the spotlight and the classic Marshall Goldsmith phrase (and book) "what got you here, won't get you there" applies.

So what do we do when our culture starts to slip down the top of our S Curve?

Well, I'd posit, we start on a new Culture S-Curve before it's too late.

And we end up in a slump which the latest Gallup Research sadly shows - massive disengagement (report available here: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx)

Of course, a new S Curve is only part of thinking even. And certainly not the doing. But maybe our mental models of culture (and shifting it, adapting it, enhancing it, unleashing it, harnessing it) could come into a new sense of being if we adopted S Curve thinking. To signal a renewal, a renaissance, a reimagining.

So instead of trying to adapt something that's had its day, symbolise a new dawn with it being framed around a new S Curve. Still paying respect to what got us here by showing that we're at the bottom of a new S Curve that is building on the old one. BUT departing from it into a new era. And so it could go on.

Like this.

And even as this diagram represents, before the top of the S Curve turns too far south, we're creating a new overlapping S Curve to get us back on the up.

It'll take interrogation, analysis, hard questions, behavioural change, psychology and process evolution, but this symbolising might just catch us before we fall and fail.

Culture S Curves.

Maybe we're missing a trick, maybe this is another modelled consulting intervention that won't move things on. But it's only recently I've found myself thinking like this. Culture as an eternal S Curve may just be the mental model of things this complex, that we've been looking for.