Culture Is Not The Same As Behaviour

It's Not What It Says On The Label

Culture is now readily recognised as having a significant influence on safety outcomes. It often gets mentioned in relation to what organisations want- "We want to build a strong safety culture", and will commonly be invoked when things go wrong- "That site has a culture problem".

Most large organisations therefore are now trying to tackle culture directly, and the poster above is a common example of what the outcome of that approach can look like. However, if you read the detail, what it talks about is not what the title says it is about. In reality, this poster should be titled "Our HSE Behaviour". Have another look and you will see that it only talks about the behaviours the organisation wants, and the prevalence of this type of approach has reinforced a methodology within orthodox safety where culture is now seen as being the same as behaviour.

"So what?" I hear people ask. Well, the issue is that culture is not the same as behaviour, and that taking this view is most likely making things worse, including (ironically) your culture.

How Did We Get Here?

Seeing culture as behaviour has come from a Behaviour Based Safety paradigm (which in turn comes from a cognitive psychological paradigm). It is surfaced in the commonly espoused view that "Culture is the way we do things around here". This is a convenient and easily communicated concept as it allows organisations to describe the culture they want in the form of the behaviours they want (like the poster above). It's convenient, but it's wrong.

In behaviour based safety the focus is on the behaviour (this shouldn't be a surprise, it's in the name right?), and whether it's OK/ not OK, wrong/ right, above the line/ below the line etc. It brings attention to the individual and what they are doing, and from a psychological point of view, how a persons attitude and beliefs affect their behaviour. This isn't wrong as such, it's just that it's only discussing a fraction of what influences people.

Individuals Or Sheeples?

Have you noticed that people (maybe even you) modify their behaviour depending on where you are and who you are with? Is this OK? Aren't we meant to be individuals? Isn't it bad to be a sheeple and follow the flock? Of course, it's actually completely normal, done mostly unconsciously, and is a necessity of life. In reality, both are true. We are individuals, driven by our own attitude and beliefs, ands we are influenced by the people and world around us.

However the second part is mostly missing from behaviour based safety programs (except classical psychology stuff about positive and negative reinforcement of behaviour, which describes only a fraction of how humans moderate their beliefs), and so looking for cultural solutions in a behavioural paradigm will never work.

So The Problem Is Two-Fold

1. BBS focusses on individual behaviour and hugely minimises the unconscious influence on behaviour from the people and world around us.
2. BBS has created a view where culture is the same as behaviour, which further reinforces the approach that it's OK to just focus on behaviour as a way of changing beliefs.

Shared Beliefs and Assumptions

The working definition of culture that I use is that it is about shared beliefs an assumptions. This comes from Edgar Schein's much more comprehensive definition (which I have included below). From this view, a focus on culture becomes a focus on the shared beliefs (that influence the behaviours you want) that are both learnt and taught throughout the organisation*. It also recognised that there are sub-cultures, or clusters of shared beliefs, within organisations that may differ. This helps explain differences in behaviour between day and night shift, even though the same people might rotate between the two.

*- I've had a really rough go at reframing the behaviours from the poster above into beliefs and have included it at the end of this article. As I mention, it's not really how I would tackle it, but it just shows the difference in framing.

Influencing Shared Beliefs Instead of Changing Behaviour

Looking at culture this way means that the focus of culture programs should be on influencing shared beliefs (including where they come from and how they get shared), not changing behaviour. This is because we know that behaviour change will be an outcome of shifting shared beliefs and assumptions.

Of course, this isn't to say you shouldn't also call out and discuss behaviour (especially if it is considered unacceptable), but just don't call that approach a cultural one, and be aware of the trade-offs that come with it (like labelling shortcuts as unsafe and wrong, when there is a shared belief that shortcuts are OK because staff learnt that from watching management do it...).

Underreporting Culture or Lack Of Belief In Reporting?

Let's take an example of incident reporting. Many organisations I go into state they have a problem with underreporting of incidents. They might even say they have a "culture of underreporting". But do you see how that is actually describing a behaviour, not the culture (a shared belief)?

A culture as behaviour/ behaviouralist/ BBS view would be to reinforce the importance of reporting and explain how it helps the workforce and the company. A culture as shared beliefs approach would mean asking- "What are the shared beliefs and assumptions that are driving the underreporting?" Instead of just trying to convince people why reporting is good, you instead end up having to engage and learn to find out what people think.

You learn that the workforce believe that- "If you report things around here you get labelled a trouble maker", or "Nothing changes when you report things anyway, so why bother". This is of course an undesired set of shared beliefs and assumptions, but at least you have learnt what is driving behaviour, and can now work away at where those beliefs have come from (which we could probably guess is actually a result of the historic behaviour of leaders........).

Final Word

In my experience, every organisation should be intentionally focussing on culture, however there has to be an acceptance that it is messy and complex, and that it requires its own skills and strategies. Organisations should invest in their senior leaders to ensure have the cultural literacy to talk about culture in a meaningful way, and they must be willing to look in the mirror as they discover and learn about the the beliefs and assumptions that drive behaviour. They have to be OK with asking- "What have we done as leaders that might have created those beliefs within our organisation?", instead of making frontline workers wrong for just trying to do their jobs.

Extras

Schein's Definition of Culture

This is Schein's full definition of culture. It's complicated, but that is the nature of culture. Importantly though it tells us that any approach to culture must address shared beliefs, how they are learnt, and how they are communicated and taught others. Addressing culture therefore has to be more complicated than just trying to change behaviour.

A pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaption and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.

Our Shared HSE Beliefs

So this is the same template as the one we started with, but trying to describe the beliefs that might support the behaviours. It's not a perfect model, and is not really the way I would recommend it be done, but it hopefully shows the difference it approach between focussing in behaviours versus beliefs. Hopefully you can also see the amount of extra focus and reflection leaders (and the organisation in general), would have to go through when they start going- "Right, so do we actually believe that our rules keep us safe, and what do our frontline workers think?". This is where the real cultural work starts....