How (and how not to) create organizational culture

I'm increasingly starting to believe that company culture or values should not be written down, and should not be promoted through various HR efforts. This would have come as a shock to my own self from a few years back, as someone who has taken part in more than one offsite/retreat where a leadership team agitates over what the organisation's values should be, exactly how each value should be worded and how it should be promulgated internally (graphics, competitions, awards, recognitions etc.). But if you have been an employee on the receiving end of such efforts, it should come as no shock to you that they often fall flat the further you down the organisational chart: employees will ignore them at best, or cynically regard them as disingenuous at worst.

With good reason. Real world human cultures, or societal cultures, almost never develop this way. Societal cultures are almost never codified in writing (except after the fact). But they are very robust. They spread not through written communication, but primarily through observation by the young, and example-setting by the old.

Even visitors to a country experience its culture primarily non-verbally. For example, if you're visiting a country famous for the hospitality of its people, you will not experience it through billboards or pamphlets declaring the fact. You will experience it from the taxi ride out of the airport onwards. And if you spend a few years among its people, you're likely to unconsciously adopt some elements of their culture without anyone asking you to do so.

Another difference between organisational cultures that are "engineered" through a set of drafted values, and societal cultures, is that the latter are not about individual performance or output, but the group. Every culture has some element of subjugating individual will in favour of the collective welfare. Culture also aims to uplift the less advantaged within the group, while smoothening out inequities and anomalies (sometimes, unfortunately, to the detriment of those who are born too different).

Organisational cultures that celebrate superstars while being quick to eject low performers, therefore, are not cultures in the true sense of the word, but probably represent the absence of culture. "The strong shall thrive; the weak shall perish" may be how life naturally begins, but as a species becomes more gregarious and more intelligent, culture emerges. From culture emerges civilisation. From civilisation emerges achievements that nature cannot produce.

Organisational cultures cannot be created by executive decree. Nor can they be engineered to achieve arbitrary goals. They especially cannot be created by repetition of exaggerated one-liners such as "we are customer obsessed". Such extreme language (e.g. "obsessed") in value statements is often a result of attempting to overcompensate for past failures -- perhaps when presented in more moderate language, the idea was ignored by employees. If such decreed values do work at times, it is because management is strongly signalling that individuals who exhibit the desired behaviours will be rewarded. There is no true psychological buy-in. But societal cultures work the opposite way: they usually ask individuals to give something up so that the whole group can benefit.

Given all this, how do you go about creating an organizational culture? The same way you would go about creating a societal culture, only at a smaller scale, over a shorter time period. So, it must start with the behaviour (and not words) of the "elders" or the founders/leadership team. The cultural values of the organisation must be evident to any new or prospective employee from their first interaction with the organisation, which is usually the recruitment process. And it must aim to replicate in employees, the beliefs and habits of those in leadership; leadership absolutely cannot hope to create within their organisation, behavioural norms from which they themselves are exempt.

This may sound like a lot of words to say "lead by example", but there is somewhat more to it than that.

Say quality (as opposed to quantity) is important to the organisation's leadership. Employees should see leadership spending more time, effort and resources on it (e.g. a senior manager personally getting on calls / onto the floor and helping a team that is struggling with a quality issue, providing more quality related training, investing in quality checking tools). Employees should also see why quality is important to the founder/leader: they should take time to share past experiences and learnings that led them to develop their beliefs, just as an elder in a community would. Only as a last step, should they point out why quality is important to the business.

That last bit may sound counterintuitive at first but will sound less so when you consider that a culture exists primarily to benefit the participants of the culture. So an organisational culture must primarily benefit employees. Any benefits to the shareholders/owners must come through secondary effects on motivation, efficient collaboration and a low-conflict environment.

Finally, cultural values cannot be too contrary to human nature. Nor can they completely give into human nature. There needs to be a balance. For example, a culture that promotes absolute, direct honesty goes against human nature and therefore can only be kept in place through force or incentive (in which case, it is no longer a culture). At the same time, a culture that is completely permissive in letting people avoid uncomfortable conversations, will harm the organisation and everyone in it in the long run. A culture of complete autonomy is bad; but so is a culture of complete authority.

In summary, you cannot create a culture by drafting a set of organisational "values" over a leadership meeting, based on the direct needs of your business. What you will create through such an exercise is a management strategy that will require driving from the top. But a culture is self-managing and self-perpetuating, because it is designed to primarily benefit the participants of the culture, in this case, the employees. Values cannot be decreed in writing or "marketed" internally. Such values will either not be taken seriously or will be used politically. Values need to be demonstrated through the actions and decisions of leadership. And leadership needs to invest the necessary time in replicating the thinking behind their values to the employees, rather than attempting to have it "drilled in" through repetition and rewards.