"THE WAY WE DO THINGS AROUND HERE"

"Culture is the way we do things around here"

...Is it, though?

Marvin Bower and the Invention of an Industry:

[Bower's Legacy and its Impact on Business Culture]

That phrase at the top was coined by Marvin Bower in 1966, the famous management consultant who took McKinsey & Company from a small engineering and accounting firm to a global behemoth and, in so doing, invented an industry—Management Consulting.

Now, Bower was a serious player. So, I do feel a little self-conscious disagreeing with him. Well, it's not that I disagree; I just think he doesn't go far enough, at least not in that statement.

The Limitations of Bower's Definition

[A Call for a Broader Perspective]

You see, part of the problem I see in the general garden-variety business thinking around culture is that it is too thin. It often draws its understanding of itself from business only, with only its own variables – things like expenses, profits, employees, bosses, managers, engagement, productivity, efficiency, etc. Now, while I do believe culture arises out of what we make of the variables at play in our context, I think (particularly in the business context) we need outside input when trying to understand, abstractly, what the phenomenon of culture actually is in the world of work.

Culture Beyond Business

[The Societal Roots of Culture]

The concept of culture doesn't originate in business; it's rooted in society – in human relationships, in the family, in loose networks, and in traditions and practices that are not mandated but that have arisen democratically. They have grown out of the consensus of what is a compelling way to act in the context. Primarily all of these things are in response to the specifics of a particular environment.

The Agricultural Origins of Culture

[From Cultivation to Cultural Growth]

The word itself, "culture," comes from the field (literally) of agriculture. "To cultivate" is to prepare the soil for crops, to get the conditions right so that life will result – so that culture will grow.

Because of this I prefer to take my lead in understanding culture from the humanities – from agriculture and social science, anthropology, and sociology.

When we look at those arenas, we see that culture is always a response to the specificity of an environment. It may be partly, "the way we do things around here," but only insofar as that way is a response to "what we find around here."

Environment and Culture

[How Geography Shapes Ethnic Cultural Practices]

In the Mediterranean, for instance, olive oil drips heavily into the human story of living in that part of the world. It's no coincidence that there happen to be a lot of olives there.

In regions that have a lot of trees, that's where houses are made out of wood. Where there is ice, well, they get made out of ice... (or they used to be.) Whether it is bamboo, reeds, clay, or rock, traditionally the houses in that region are made in the image of the land.

A culture is always rooted in the place in which that culture was formed and exists—in the land, the geography, the terrain.

Because of this, some authors in the anthropological and sociological traditions describe culture as "what we make of the world" – in other words, what we make of the specific variables in the part of the world in which we find ourselves in.

Culture as a Human Response

[Tradition, Practice, and Human Interaction]

“What we make” then, is a human response to the context. Practices become traditions which becomes "the way we do things around here." These get passed on through the generations, to become the shape of the culture we share. But those practices, by themselves, are not the culture; those things are the artefacts within a culture, the expressions of "what we have made of..." the specifics in the environment.

But the next step is where the nuance lies. Because it is within those practices, and on and around them, that human beings make something of each other.

And this is what I think is at the heart of any culture. The nature of human interactions within the context that we have built from the materials at hand.

The Artifacts Within a Culture

[Understanding Cultural Practices and their Significance]

When the traditions become entrenched, they breed intricate rules and norms that shape the human beings themselves within those contexts: shape them to think in certain ways—about self and other—to act and respond in certain ways to each other, maybe to those who are older or those who are younger, or those of a different class or caste.

Culture is not the tea ceremony; it's what the tea ceremony comes to mean in the relationships at play.

Nuances of Human Interaction

[The Role of Traditions in Shaping Interpersonal Relations]

And these human nuances, well, these are the things that make up the fragile, intangible dynamics of the life of any culture. The culture is not what the house is made out of—ice, or wood. It's not the clam in the chowder or the shark fins in the soup... no, the culture is the human experience of those things, in relation to the other humans in that context. Culture is what those traditions and artefacts hold – the memories and behavioural norms. Culture is what grows on the framework of those cultural artefacts.

And what grows on that frame is a shape of who we are, collectively.

Culture is the normative response — to each other, in the context of what we have "made out of" the materials at hand — how we interact within the parameters of the framework of what we make out of that material world.

Culture is always organic, and it is always rooted.

So, culture is not simply, "the way we do things around here." Rather, perhaps a better way of understanding Bower's framing is to say culture is "The contextual human relational result of the way we do things around here, built out of what we have at our disposal in this context."

Culture in the Business Landscape

[Business Variables and Cultural Formation]

So, what does that mean for us then, in the working world, where we are not rooted in the land but in things like P&L and Labour Law, and "the invisible hand of capitalism," when our variables are things like "willing buyer, willing seller," or "best practice", or advice from management consultants. How do phrases like "it's not personal, it's just business" act as the material out of which we shape something – making something "less than" of the other?

When these are our variables to build culture from this opens up a challenge for us.

None of these variables listed above are unique to one region or business. These are the raw materials that we find in business the world over. So, unlike with ethnic cultures, this set of business variables is not very varied, is it? We're all singing from the same song sheet: wages, expenses, turnover, "cash is king," "being professional."

If culture is built from the specificity of the context, and we all play with the same tired principles, ideas, and rules of capitalism, then why is one business culture so different from another?

Well, because in the contrived environment of a business entity, a democracy of ideas and traditions, allowing the most compelling and mutually agreeable practices to rise is not as easily seen as we see it in wider society.

In Business, the market decides what's valuable, the consumer not the shaper. In Business we have the proverbial 'tail' of capitalism wagging the 'dog' of human contribution.

Under the principles of capitalism, a work context usually has a hierarchy which dictates policy and practice for the purpose of pleasing a market external to those who operate in the business culture. In a context like that, the leaders have the power to build artefacts that become frameworks on which human beings engage. Salaries and KPIs are powerful elements in that contrived context that skews the natural process of how culture develops (by meaningful democratic consensus) in other contexts, like ethnic groups and broader society.

The Cultural Work of a Leader

[Designing a Trellis for Growth]

Where does this leave us, then?

How then might a leader think about their cultural power in an organisation?

I like to think of the cultural work of a leader as being the exercise of building a sort of trellis in the shape of the character they hope the company will develop.

But it would be a mistake to think that the trellis is the culture; no, the trellis is just a frame. The culture is the plant.

The culture is the organic result of the life in the company relationships, the staff, responding to the artefacts the leadewrs have put in place in the framework of the trellis they are building: the practices, and "the way we do things around here".

Have the leaders cultivated a framework of behaviour to prepare for human flourishing? A framework for both personal and collective well-being, health and growth, or for the extraction of value from human workers?

Well, whatever kind of trellis they build, the culture is whatever shape the plant takes on that trellis frame.

The leader with the ability to shape the trellis for human flourishing, well... that's a leader with the power to help humans "make something of each other" a synergy that generates more, that humanises us all.

At Mygrow we are on a mission to build an Emotionally Intelligent world. One where humans contribute to the health and well-being of each other, one where we "make something" of other humans that adds to them, instead of extracting from them.

That's the world we dream of... Not just for our own sake, but for yours too. Would you join us in that mission?

If you'd like some ideas on how to build trellises that lead to growth... well, that's what we try to do at Mygrow all the time, reach out and let's have a conversation.

Inward and upward!