Experience: if you build it, culture will come

Yes, this trope from Field of Dreams (or was it Wayne’s World 2?) really does have a hidden lesson in making our working lives better.?

If you want to change culture the best place to start is in the future:?a vision built by your customers and your people.

So, how do you ask the right questions to uncover that vision? Classic culture change methodology asks people to consider the ideal future state of an imagined culture. Or you can ask more directly: What culture will we build together??

But I often find it hard to get the conversation going this way.

Over the years, I’ve spoken to a lot of people about the culture of their organisation. And I realised something: in talking about culture, what people are really describing is their?experience.?How they felt at the last all-hands meeting. What they saw last week in the office. What they heard outside the meeting room or (more recently) in the chat box on Zoom.

When working with teams hoping to change their ways of working, I found that asking about the experience they wanted to build got to the nub of their ideal culture pretty quickly.?So I started asking ‘What experience will we build here together?'. And guess what? It did the trick.

Here’s why:

Experience is tangible

We can describe it by talking about what we see, hear and feel. So, asking about culture in terms of what we experience gives us something tangible we can describe in a language we can all understand.

Experience is specific

You could ask about common values, norms and assumptions (all of which are underlying drivers of culture). But when you ask about experience, you will get really specific ideas about how to create better ways of working. Like ways to learn from each other, communicate with one another or practical ideas to support the transition to hybrid working. And these ideas all translate to building a better culture.

Experience is the signal for how we do things around here

If culture is ‘the way we do things around here’ (Deal and Kennedy, 1982) and you want to change something about it, you could consider everything about the behaviours you see at work. But, as individuals, our behaviour can be explained by *so* many factors (neurobiological, hormonal, genetic and evolutionary to name but a few….). So, we have to be careful to focus on only the behaviours common to the group.

Talking about our experiences can give us that focus. When we’re in a group (like a team or an organisation), the experience we have gives us something common to observe and act upon. It tells us: this is how we do things in this group. (Just think about what you do when you start a new job – you spend time observing what everyone else is up to, right?)

So, by shaping that experience, you and your team will be signalling what’s important in how you do things when you are part of that group. And the culture will follow suit.

Asking about experience works for customers and employees alike

If you want to be a real culture change pro: consider customer experience and employee experience at the same time. They are two sides of the same coin after all. (If you don’t have customers, you can speak to consumers, service users or any stakeholders). By asking them what experience they’d like to have of you, you’ll get some gems of insight that will align nicely with what you ask of your people. And you'll be able to build that culture with both sides of the coin accounted for. ?

Building an experience is galvanising

Culture change can only happen when everyone is involved. By asking people to think about the experience they’d like to build together, it immediately encourages them to take responsibility and make it happen.

So, if you want to understand and change the culture of your team or your organisation, you can certainly ask people to think about a desired future state. And build a vision from there.

But if you really want to bring it to life, ask them what they want to experience, focus on building it together.?And then, the culture will come.

Bye for now,

Erin

PS: My LinkedIn Learning course ' Leading Culture Change in your Team' has all the steps you need to know to do just that. You can find it by clicking on the image below. I could have used a screen grab from the course - but let's face it, Jim Morrison from Wayne's World 2 is so much better.

PPS: Yes I did spend too much time on the internet while I was supposed to be writing this newsletter.