To get digital right we properly need to start talking about the C word

No not that C word! Or the other one!

I mean the C word that everyone likes to throw around corporate documents and , but that virtually nobody EVER manages to practically do anything about.

Culture.

I personally use the word culture a lot. Particularly when it comes to my work around digital. It's one of the four pillars that we address in our work around digital at Sector Three and I'd go as far as to argue that it might be the single most important factor in doing, becoming or being digital. I'm aware that's quite a bold statement.

It's also the one I get the most moans about on LinkedIn. In fact late last year I received quite a long random message from a friend of a friend, in reference to my use of the word in one of my posts, berating how it's thrown around by everyone with so little understanding. I generally concur, but presumably this reference meant me too ??.

Let's try and do something about this. Here and now.

What the culture!?!

If you dare to Google the word culture it will open your eyes to how confusing and messy the term is. For example “[culture is] the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves” by Anthropologist Clifford Geertz. This is lovely and poetic, but difficult to bridge to work culture. Let's try Wikipedia: "an umbrella term which encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups".

You get the jist. Culture is complex. Culture is confusing.

But it doesn't need to be. If you know what to look for, and make sure you look for it then you'll see it. It's everywhere and it's pretty hard to miss. I'll try and simplify this a bit within the context of work with examples:

• When, where, why and how we hold meetings is usually culture. What happens in those meetings and how they are run is culture. How we make decisions inside and outside of these meetings is culture.
• The way we collectively email each other, the formality, who we include and what we ask for or tell people to do is usually culture.
• What is open and accessible or private and inaccessible, online or offline, editable or locked down is often culture.
• How we try things or don't, plan or experiment, showcase and share (or don't), innovate (or don't), learn together (or alone), ask permission or forgiveness, collectively ask others and form dependency, or try as groups independently. These are often invariably culture.

All of the examples above reference different aspects of our day-to-day work, or things that impact it. Pretty much all of these could be described as: when a pattern of behaviour starts to emerge and become the norm, or possibly when an attitude starts to dominate what we do, why and how.

The eagle eyed among you may argue that in many places, I've referenced things that might be due to an organisational policy, an IT or digital system, that we may do on our own or be a direct consequence of skills, or other external factors. They definitely are, and in combination.

However, as a consequence of these, something may happen that is separate to them, an almost tangible force that occurs when groups of people start creating patterns or habits. The tech, skills and set rules define the parameters of the culture, but since culture can in turn affect these three in turn, it is a separate and meaningful thing.

Yet all too often we ignore this thing, or make it about sentiments, statements or slogans. When this happens we create a mess, which I'll try to illuminate below:

Let's look at a common cultural 'teenager's bedroom' in the workplace: Email.

Across the world people in white collar jobs hate their inbox. They moan about too many emails, and the inability to get things done because everyone sends them emails. I have never worked with a health organisation where staff haven't cited this as a top 5 issue.

But what's the cause? Is the technology of email broken? To a degree yes, it lacks structure, it's not massively sophisticated, hasn't really evolved that much, and it's too open. But it also works technically: Open box. Type names. Write words. Send. Repeat.

What about skills then? Not really - pretty much everyone in work knows how to write and send an email. Or to respond. It may not make for a good email, and one person may like to write in Comic Sans, with red text and a blue background, which drives everyone mad, but understandably that would rarely become the norm.

How about the organisation rules? In some cases policies, processes, legal requirements and procedures may contribute and define who needs to do or receive certain things, but again it doesn't really explain WHY EVERYONE WON'T STOP SENDING ME ******* EMAILS!!!

The answer is that email is an open system, a blank canvas if you will, that allows us to fill each other's inboxes with messy guff and fluff - often resulting from a lack of discussion and definition around key things. Do any of the common behaviours below resonate?

Email meltdown is just one of many examples where problematic culture stems from the fact that we don't (or can't) discuss the tricky stuff, explore what does and doesn't work, and work through it collectively and forming fair and clear agreements. Conversely, great culture happens when we do it well. But often we don't.

This is a real problem right now, but things may be about to get a lot worse (or - positive angle - not if we face the music and do something different).

Cultural explosion or implosion in a digital age

In a few of my previous articles I've talked around the digital shift that's taking place, the very different kinds of modern digital systems that will change how we work, and the new softer kinds of skills that we will need in the future. Modern digital technologies have very different characteristics to what came before, they require us to do things differently, and for our organisations to be different.

IT systems were more fixed and set usually aligned with set processes; whereas now the Teams, M365s, Slacks, Power BIs, Asanas, Airtables, Google Workplaces, Trellos, and an endless host of emerging workplace technologies are extensible, flexible, changeable, focused on collaboration, and largely open ("a blank canvas if you will").

More open and extensible systems is a wonderful opportunity. I've seen, driven and facilitated the benefits in lots of different places and they're great. But they also come with a major risk of there being more places for us to put all that messy political fluff and guff. It's not inconceivable that we could take all of that pain and misery that we see in our inboxes into more, and more sophisticated, digital systems, creating compound pain and misery.

This isn't even a hypothesis, it's actually happening, with some in the mainstream media citing that the most open tools like Slack and Teams ruining work (Wired / Vox or Google "negative impact slack"). The more open the system, the higher the perceived failure rate.

And yet the growth of tools like Slack and Teams in 2020 has been epic (Teams had 20m daily active users in Nov 19 and 119m in Oct 20 - source). In the UK's Health Service Microsoft Teams has more or less become required by the NHS and we'll see it sweep the nation over the next 2-3 years, along with other high profile, high risk digital systems.

This is where I make my stand (AKA mini rant) on culture ??

Hype cycles around digital are common. I've lost count of the times I've talked or worked with an organisation that expects that implementing an open digital technology will solve very cultural issues, such as fragmented information, over emailing, too many meetings or unproductive meetings, lack of innovation or responsiveness and so on.

My response every single time is that technology is 20% the tech and 80% people, and by people I mean people in groups. By people in groups I mostly mean Culture.

By this I really, truly mean:

If you don't make your digital transformation about addressing what is under the surface then you're at risk of moving the mess into a place with more room to make mess.

Here's the good news. Whilst addressing culture is clearly uncomfortable, in my experience if you do it with genuine intent and ask big questions without fear of consequences then it is enlightening, engaging, incredibly productive and it's pretty much free. No new expensive systems, just focused discussion and building open plans (I prefer charters) to collectively fix it.

Digital is a shift, and as much as the technology and the skills bits, we absolutely need to make it about changing mindset; about conversations and collective agreement. Open, facilitated, democratic conversations that lead to exploration and experimentation with what works, and keep evolving.

Quick tips (because this article has become another Middlemarch!)

• Try and get an independent person in your organisation to facilitate this work, better it's not actually a dominating leader. Treat it like an independent review.
• Start with asking questions and then finding ways to help people feel safe to agree or disagree.
• Anonymous or independent surveys with targeted questions are great to look at the wider range of where issues may occur. I have some great questions to ask.
• Try and use this to build or co-build a first version of a charter to address this. To borrow a term I picked up working with the Royal Navy in 2020 on charter forming, make it 'rankless', democratic and about the users.
• Exploring email issues might be a great place to start, and usually productivity improvements are impressive. Have a read of Deep Work by Cal Newport for inspiration (or we have a workshop session on this we can share).
• Consider how much or little that any form of digital strategy has about culture. Try and address. We'd advocate four equal pillars: Tech, Org, Skills and Culture.
• Really (please) consider the pre-existing culture in any implementation of open digital systems.
• Go where this takes you, you might just find yourselves in an unexpected place. Solely through big questions, big discussions and big (collective agreements).

Liam Cahill is the founder of Sector Three Digital. For more articles, ideas and insight please follow or connect with Liam here.