The Culture Problem Illusion

Think you have a culture problem in your team? Maybe it’s something else?

For decades Boards, Executives and team leaders have grappled with culture, often seen as the intangible hurdle in the way of achieving their goals. Peter Drucker‘s adage of “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, a constant reminder of its importance – but is it?

My experience reveals a different truth, where culture AND strategy make for a healthy breakfast when eaten together.

Culture is largely seen within the domain of Human Resources, something that aptly titled “People & Culture” teams tend to take the lead in. Yet, we continue to see the pendulum swing from left to right in continued attempts to solve troublesome culture problems, which, from my viewpoint is where we are missing an opportunity. We need new mental models for a different outcome.

What if culture is not a problem to solve?

Any organisation or institution lives or dies by two things:

1. its ability to adapt to the evolving context around it (partly the domain of strategy)
2. the strength of its relationships both internally and externally (partly the domain of culture)

Over the past 30 years I have been part of, subject to and an observer of countless workshops aimed at defining the ideal culture within a company or team. This is usually followed up with awkward attempts to shoehorn those values and behaviours into a rock-hard set of performance metrics and management frameworks. Two worlds often colliding and sometimes completely missing each other in chaotic abandon.

The command-and-control approach leads us to riding the inevitable merry-go-round of rinse and repeat leadership development programs and performance management training, around frameworks designed to keep the values and behaviours "in-check" with desired performance outcomes.

This approach indeed gives us the illusion of moving forward, when in fact we are just chasing the tail of the horse in front. Meanwhile cash is frittered away until it runs out, or the people get so dizzy and exhausted, they fall off your carousel!

What if we don’t need a singular view of culture?

In one of Donella Meadows[1] blog posts, this quote resonated strongly with me:

“Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning. Cuts back resilience. Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.”

In a different context, a great example of monoculture in farming methods, which is less adaptable to environmental changes and stresses compared to diverse cropping systems. It seems that adaptability is a core tenant of winners in both nature and business in an ever-changing, dynamic world.

Inside our organisations, if we treat culture as a part within our organisational system, it reveals a much broader view of what may be impacting our performance outcomes. This calls for deeper appreciation of all the system elements (physical, process, technological and behavioural) and how they work in relation to each other. It is through their interaction we see what behaviour emerges.

A systems diagnostic approach to culture, offers the opportunity to discover the unique levers for change to improve organisational health based on the current reality.

An organisational culture requires active polarity management, it’s a place where opposite tendencies will co-exist and the role of leaders is to accept and manage that tension well.

Sure, we can still have our desired state, yet, that state will emerge over time, as contexts shift. Leaders need to understand their levers for change, tune up their systemic sensibility and invest time in the feedback loops that both reinforce and balance the organisational system over time.

This is a continuous journey of listening and learning for sustained success, not a culture problem to solve.

So, before you hit the spend button on yet another leadership development project, or implement a tighter round of controls to increase performance – doesn’t it make sense to understand what’s emerging and where the true opportunities for positive, lasting change are lurking?

“Small changes can produce big results, but areas of the highest leverage are often least obvious” – Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

At The Change Executive we use multi-disciplinary methods engaging in dialogue to make meaning of the system at play. Together, we help you see clearly which problems are creating the most dissonance and require your attention to become unstuck.

What may start out as a perceived ‘culture problem’ - may reveal itself as a missing policy (and/or (in)consistent application), a simple process blip, or an organisational design flaw.

Don’t get caught up in the culture problem illusion.

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[1] a pioneering figure in systems dynamics and systems thinking, a prominent voice for environmental sustainability and social responsibility, and author of “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”