What "Business Culture" Is, and What It Isn't

Hi, I'm Flip Brown, Founder, Owner, and Sole Provider (Soul Provider, on a good day) of Business Culture Consultants. Twenty-four years ago, when I chose this name for my business, people would ask "Hey Flip - what do you mean by 'business culture'?" Well, these days nobody asks me that, but they all have their different definitions and assumptions. Since business culture now seems to be ubiquitous, I thought I would share my experience in this elusive term, which at time seems like "trying to nail Jell-O to a tree" (one of my all-time favorite metaphors).

I refer you to my mentor, and the social psychologist who really established the core meaning and practice of the term - Dr. Edgar Schein. I had to good fortune of attending a five-day seminar with him before he passed, and four of his books remain as cornerstones of my practice - Organizational Culture and Leadership (now in its fifth edition), Process Consultation Revisited, and two of his final books - Humble Consulting and Humble Leadership.

Here are some of my takeaways from both Dr. Schein's work and my own experience being in over two hundred organizational cultures as a coach, facilitator, and consultant:

1. Culture is broad, deep, and cannot be totally understood. Think of two countries or two states, even. How would you describe their "culture?" What would you include - food, economy, language, weather, demographic composition, stories and mythologies? As you can see, the list goes on and on.
2. Resist the current trend "dumb down" culture such that it is a term for how people feel about what it's like to come to work. "Happiness" has many, many factors - some related to work, some external to work, and some rooted in our own psychological strengths and quirks.
3. Culture change takes time. When I am asked to guide a business or nonprofit organization in a true culture change initiative, I ask them to make a twelve-month commitment. When we're talking about changing patterns they need to be examined, relearned, implement, integrated, and sustained. It almost always takes the first two or three months before the participants even begin to sense that we're getting true traction.
4. The myth of training dies hard. In my experience millions of dollars are wasted sending people to workshops, seminars, and off-sites, where new skills and models are rolled out, only to see it all evaporate when its not consistently practiced over time. If information was sufficient to change human behavior there wouldn't be a single tobacco smoker left.
5. The biggest impediment to culture change? It's when owners, leaders, managers - anyone with designated power/authority have behaviors that are significantly out of alignment with the stated and espoused values. When staff members need to be punctual and consistent in their attendance, and the boss strolls in at 10:30 talking about their golf game that morning cynicism and resentment fester.
6. The core element of any successful culture is open, trusting, and caring professional relationships. There's no way around this. Internal politics, extra large egos, and wounded souls are just a few of the elements that get in the way of a harmonious, cohesive culture.

I'll close with some of my favorite Edgar Schein quotes:

“What troubles me is the misuse of the word culture and the failure of people to see that culture is not this surface phenomenon, but it is our very core—that we live in culture, we display a culture, we are always driven by the culture. It troubles me that people don’t see that.”

“Bright people doing stupid things falls in a bucket we call culture.”

“You only begin to truly understand your culture when you try to change it.”

“Our pragmatic culture that’s all about ‘get the work done, don’t bother me with feelings and relationships’ is working less and less well.”

“What builds relationships, what solves problems, what moves things forward is asking the right questions.”